Amid Layoff Crisis, Harri Responds with Messaging Platform to Support Displaced Employees

Harri, a leading workforce management solution for restaurants, hotels, and retailers launches Carri, a personalized communication and engagement tool for employers impacted by layoffs. 

New York, NY (4/10/20) - Harri, a end-to-end workforce management software platform serving 20,000 restaurant and hotel locations that represent over 3 million hospitality employees, launches Carri, the first personalized communication platform that enables businesses to directly engage their displaced team members. Positioned as a response system, Carri acts as a conduit between an organization and both their active and laid-off team members, offering information and assistance throughout this challenging time.

Carri is an AI-powered, agile communication framework capable of delivering personalized SMS messages answering employee's most pressing questions, broadcasting communications and maintaining a connection with team members ahead of eventual return. Businesses can leverage pre-built FAQs, centralize and respond to unique questions and ensure that meaningful engagement can take place.

“It’s painful to witness the unrelenting rise in layoffs across our industry. We quickly identified that a major risk to employers is an inability to re-start their businesses due to permanent displacement of their employees over the weeks and months ahead” said Luke Fryer, Founder and CEO of Harri. 

“Carri provides a digital lifeline between employers and displaced team members to help reduce permanent displacement and industry abandonment. Simply put, you can’t reopen the doors if there is no one standing behind them to operate the business. It’s all about keeping talented employees close to make the re-building phase easier for all.”

The Carri platform, delivers multiple first-to-market solutions to communicate and engage team members during this challenging time:

• Ability to engage team members with pre-built FAQs

• Centralize and respond to unique questions and commentary

• Seamlessly broadcast messages

• Track meaningful engagement

“We’ve worked tirelessly to support the industry in ways that put recovery within reach via our HospitalityUnite campaign efforts. I’m pleased to announce that Carri is now actively part of that initiative and available to all businesses, free of charge” Fryer said. 

Lou Sposato, Sr. Director of Human Resources from First Watch Restaurants was one of the first to adopt this unique offering: 

“During these unprecedented times, our concern remains with our furloughed team members.   All of our restaurants are restricted from providing dine in experiences and have been forced to close as a result. While we wait for the outcome of this uncertain period, we remain committed to the future together and look forward to the time when we resume normal operations and continue the growth of First Watch, with our valued team members.  Until that time, it is our goal to remain connected and Carri has been an invaluable technology for us to achieve that goal. At First Watch we take pride in being innovative and staying ahead of trends, Harri has provided us with the perfect technology for preferred and engaging communication. As we navigate through these uncharted waters, our partnership has been a beacon guiding us toward a much anticipated return to “normal business.” 

If interested in participating or learning more about the effort, please email hospitalityunite@harri.com or visit https://harri.com/carri-rapid-response. To experience Carri in action, text UNITE to 863.722.2774

Harri Moves Quickly to Support Hospitality Industry in Time of Crisis

Harri, a leading workforce management solution for restaurants and hotels, partners with actively hiring sectors to redeploy displaced hospitality workers.

New York, NY (3/26/20) - Harri, an end-to-end workforce management software platform serving 20,000 restaurant and hotel locations that represent over 3 million hospitality employees is actively partnering with organizations like CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, Fareway, Amazon, and many others to offer temporary work opportunities to displaced hospitality workers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

By centralizing the surging demand of these actively hiring organizations, these businesses can rely on a channel that offers a concentration of talent possessing food handling qualifications, customer service expertise, and experience in face-paced working environments during the period of the crisis, free of charge.  On behalf of displaced workers, the portal offers a simple access-point to discover employment opportunities in a time of uncertainty.

“The unimaginable is happening to our industry. No one had a plan for an event of this magnitude and many are left to their own devices to ensure survival.  In the wake of that, we’ve moved quickly to help address the most immediate challenges faced by employees to help forge a path to recovery in the future,” said Luke Fryer, Founder and CEO of Harri. 

“It’s absolutely vital that we support those businesses who - tragically - must reduce their workforce during the crisis. By giving them the means to redirect their hard-working employees to a temporary home of employment, there’s an opportunity to keep displaced employees earning an income, thereby reducing permanent displacement and industry abandonment. It’s all about keeping talented employees close to make the re-building phase easier for all.” 

Effective March 25th, Harri launched job portals in the United States and the United Kingdom amassing over 10,000 open positions in sectors adjacent to hospitality such as grocery, retail, aged care, delivery and logistics.  That number continues to climb as more actively hiring organizations to join the #HospitalityUnite campaign.

If interested in participating or learning more about the effort, please email hospitalityunite@harri.com.

Industry’s First Fair Workweek Impact Survey Reveals Serious Compliance Headaches, Harri Releases End-to-End Solution to Address

Harri, a leading workforce management solution for restaurants, reveals 60% of operators feel at risk to comply; Nearly 80% experiencing labor cost inflation.

Harri, the disruptive end-to-end workforce management software platform powering hospitality businesses to build, manage and engage their teams today released its 2020 Hospitality and Food Service Fair Workweek Readiness Survey.

These survey results represent a range of restaurant operators from approximately 5,300 restaurants and over 45,000 employees across US markets impacted by Fair Workweek (aka Predictable Scheduling).

The report centers on analyzing the impact of scheduling legislation, enacted or proposed by more than 26 cities and states across the U.S. The findings point to a number of notable impacts on business and labor operations:

• 37% percent experienced labor costs increases ranging from 3 to 9%;

• To counteract rising labor cost, 41% reduced employee hours whilst 12% eliminated jobs

• Indirect costs are also having a major impact; 51% of respondents identified significant increases in weekly time spent by managers creating compliant schedules and 40% accounting for premiums in payroll and reporting workflows

“There’s been a publicized wave of high-profile violations stemming from a complex and confusing wave of recent scheduling-related legislation. Our first-of-a-kind research shows the effort to comply triggers a chain reaction of suboptimal outcomes as businesses attempt to counteract the direct and indirect costs of compliance,” said Ryan Mang, CRO of Harri.

“It's clear that Fair Workweek laws are well-intentioned and a framework that brings consistency and predictability of work patterns and earnings is of benefit to both employees and businesses alike. However the complexity and lack of clarity surrounding how these regulations translate to real-life scenarios, make them operationally untenable for even the most sophisticated and well-resourced operators.”

The survey reveals that the following areas are the greatest source of compliance concern amongst operators:

• Calculating and updating good faith estimate documentation 39%

• Publishing compliant schedules to employees in well in advance of working periods 49%

• Tracking employee and manager driven scheduling changes 54%

• Avoiding scheduling penalties 29%

• Reporting, tracking and paying premiums resulting from scheduling changes 27%

• Providing evidence that available shifts are first exposed to existing employees prior to posting jobs externally 39%

Harri Responds with Industry's First Complete Fair Workweek Platform Solution

Harri has launched the first nationally scalable, comprehensive technology solution that allows multi-unit operators to navigate the operational burden posed by Fair Workweek legislation. Central to the methodology is an agile framework capable of responding to the rapidly changing variations of these laws as they proliferate from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Deep consideration was given to eliminating all manual processes and intelligently linking multiple points of control throughout the employee lifecycle.

“As Fair Workweek laws became more prevalent, we identified that operational, HR, and finance leaders required a robust and cohesive technological solution that would intelligently connect multiple day-to-day functions impacted by Fair Workweek,” said Luke Fryer, Founder and CEO of Harri. “Onboarding, scheduling, time keeping, employee communications and payroll environments have traditionally been handled by fragmented, legacy solutions. We saw an opportunity to provide a single platform that would mitigate risk, drive business performance and ease managerial burdens.”

Harri’s Fair Workweek solutions platform delivers multiple first-to-market solutions for complex requirements including:

• Provision of Good Faith Estimates to employees

• Employee attestation capture

• Intelligent coordination of scheduling, timekeeping and payroll workflows

• Advanced reporting and audit response frameworks

• Easing the operational burden, imposed on managers, to build schedules that are both compliant and optimized for sales performance

Turning a Negative Into A Positive

Since 2018, Harri has conducted thousands of exit interviews of hospitality workers. This data has revealed that 65% of employees leave during the first 90 days due to scheduling dissatisfaction.

“We’re seeing a clear trend amongst the best performing operators to use Fair Workweek as a catalyst to improve the employee’s experience with more predictable, accessible and flexible scheduling agreements. We’re helping clients improve their Employee Experience whilst also addressing compliance, labor cost and employee engagement challenges. There’s a strong win-win scenario here.”

The full Fair Workweek Readiness Report results can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2V5V7cZ

For more information visit: http://bit.ly/38ovIhq

10 Things You Need to Know About Application Tracking Software

Does this happen to you?  Your employees leave faster than you replace them because of the following:

•  Intense competition

•  Performance issues (termination)

•  Job abandonment (voluntary quit)

•  Job promotions

•  Transfer out of position

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.  Human Resource Managers and hiring professionals like you struggle to meet staffing needs every day.  A strong national economy and low unemployment has created a shortage of candidates. You must use all your resources to gain access to a candidate as soon he or she becomes available.  

Once you attract a candidate, your ability to move him or her seamlessly through your hiring process is critical.  If your hiring process is disorganized, it will disrupt your flow and you risk losing an applicant. 

You must have (2) key components to run a hiring process smoothly:

Application Process and Interview Process

The candidates ability to apply to a job, consists of the multiple steps to advance your applicant from outside candidate to the internal interview. The steps include the following:

• Manage recruiting platforms

  • Collect applications and resumes

  • Organize applications by criteria (date submitted, job code, availability)

  • Manage application flow

  • Plan management meeting to discuss hiring needs

Interview Process—Includes all steps you complete once you make contact with the applicant. You must advance the next steps with minimum interruption to save time and money:

• Set up phone interviews

  • Schedule in-person 1st Interviews

  • Schedule follow-up 2nd interviews

  • Purge interview rejections

  • Send offers and intents-to-hire

  • Set up new-hire paperwork

  • Schedule orientation 

  • Schedule On-Boarding

To manage the hiring process takes an enormous amount of time. For example, during the application process, you must spend time organizing applications and resumes. Then, plan staffing meetings once a week. Finally, you must connect with your job search sites regularly. 

Add to that, the interview process (which can take up to 40 hours per week alone) and you can quickly become overwhelmed. Once you become overwhelmed, you make mistakes that will cost you time, money, and worse a qualified candidate.

To prevent a time-consuming breakdown, you need to a tool that can manage both processes.  A tool that will complete all of your steps on one single software application. A software system the can organize, collect, and store candidate data. The same system that can allow you to track and monitor candidates through all stages of the hiring process.  You need an Application Tracking Software. So, you can save your most precious resource: Time. 

Let’s face it. The interview process is tough enough. Setting up an application tracking software should be a top priority, here’s why:

• It Automates Your External and Internal Recruiting Efforts. 

1. Connects To Job Sites - Indeed, Monster, and CareerBuilder are power job search engines that reach thousands of applicants daily.  Your ATS (Applicant Tracking Software) gives you access to valuable candidates through your postings on the sites. Once you access the various talent pools, you have hundreds of applicants to select from.

2. Shares With Social Media Channels - Your ATS has social recruiting capabilities designed to meet applicants where they spend most of their online engagement.  Facebook, Twitter, and your website allows you to take a conversational approach to recruiting. You can attract attention by posting content that interests your candidates. This strategy makes the candidate feel like he or she “knows” you.

3. Leverages Employee Referral Programs - Do you have long-term employees who love working for you? Of course you do! Make your employees brand ambassadors by encouraging them to refer their friends. It’s a win-win!  You can reward your referrals and improve job satisfaction because employees love working with their friends.

• An ATS Eliminates Communication gaps to maintain constant contact with your applicants.

4.  Organizes Interview Scheduling - Have you ever tried to schedule an applicant at the best time for both of you? How about a 2nd interview with another interviewer? Then you appreciate how hard finding the right time to do interviews. ATS selects the best time based on your schedule and theirs. Then, populates your interview space to fit your management schedule. You gain more time to focus on your interviewing quality. 

5.  Streamlines Interview Workflow - After every interview, you must complete tasks to keep the application process flowing. Tasks include, but are not limited to: advancing a candidate to a 2nd interview or declining a candidate with an email. Your ATS sends a customized, automated message to a candidate with the next step in the process.  It prevents you from having a bottleneck of applicants waiting for your decision.

6.  Customizes Candidate Searches - This ATS feature resembles the online shopping process.  When you shop online, you type a keyword to describe what you’re looking for.  After thousands of results, you narrow down the size, color, brand, and other features that fit exactly what you need. The same goes for candidate search feature on your ATS.  

You can filter your search through these parameters:

• Job description

• Skills and qualifications

• Experience level

• Availability (day or night)

• Full-time or part-time

• New hire or re-hire

A customized candidate search works best when you have a specific job available, but don’t need to look through hundreds of applicants for the right fit.  The trade-off is the more you customize, the less applicants you can select. 

• An ATS consolidates the hiring process so you make adjustments to fit your needs. 

7.  Provides Manager Dashboard And Analytics - One of the most exciting parts of an ATS is the ability to receive performance reports. Through data and analytic tools you can measure the results of your recruiting efforts.  Questions such as: “which job search engine works best for me”?—can be answered based on the performance indicators you evaluate.  

Any step of the hiring process is measurable, which makes you accountable.  You have the ability to improve the most important metrics that will keep your hiring process flowing. 

8.  Integrates With Existing Workforce Tools - Once a candidate is hired through your ATS; you can to auto-populate his or her information directly into your back office system.  This also means your scheduling and employment verification apps populate the new hire as well. The ATS integration saves you from manually entering new hires across multiple systems. 

9.  Optimizes Onboarding - After you make an offer to a candidate and they accept; Congratulations! You have successfully converted a recruit to a new-hire! Your ATS can now be an on boarding tool. You can upload a new-hire packet that includes important information such as the following: benefit preview, company overview, and orientation schedule. As you can see, the applicant tracking software keeps you from searching for hiring forms. 

10. Drives Management Collaboration - It’s important for hiring managers like you to select the best candidates to advance after each interview.  However, no manager is a perfect interviewer. There are always applicants with great resumes and polished interview skills, that deceive the best interviewer. Your applicant tracking system lets multiple managers evaluate an applicants “hard and soft skills”, by giving your managers access to a candidate’s diagnostic reports. Your team can decide collectively whether a candidate is a fit. This will keep you a candidate from exploiting your interviewing blindspot.

The Advantage You Need to Succeed 

Your hiring process will always need maintaining to prevent interruptions within your applicant flow. An Applicant Tracking Software system can manage your entire hiring process fast and efficiently, leaving you time to solve problems that need your attention most.  Please, don’t waste your time trying to manage the hiring process without an ATS. You will lose time, applicants, and eventually your customers. 

Make Your Next Hire, Your Best

The hospitality industry is booming with increasing sales like never before. Hotels, resorts, and entertainment venues are benefitting from customers, who have more disposable income than ever.  Restaurant sales are also on the upswing, as new technology makes serving customers faster and easier.

With so much growth to be happy about, why are many industry professionals like you so stressed?

It’s because the hospitality industry’s turnover rate is at a post-recession high of 74.9% and you are understaffed, to put it mildly. 

You are gaining sales, but losing profits

Your typical day starts with customers complaining about poor service.  As you search for the causes of poor service, you see the effects of being understaffed:

• You have only one employee that takes care of customers instead of the three that’s needed. 

• Your employees are tired, because they’ve worked so many shifts without a day off.

• Your new hires don’t get along with others because of personality conflicts. 

• Your management team works in hourly positions to help the team get through the shift. 

So, you constantly “put out fires”, instead preventing them.  Out of frustration, you look at your team and ask yourself, “why are we so short-staffed and who hired these people?” To stop this cycle, you must get staffed and stay staffed.

Getting staffed means hiring enough qualified candidates to fill your staffing needs. The better interviewer you are, the higher quality candidates you can hire.  Master “The 5 signs to look for in an interview” to consistently hire the best candidates for your job openings.

1. Good Eye Contact

Good eye contact is an important indicator of the type of candidate you could be hiring.  Generally, candidates who are sincere will maintain good eye contact, without staring. If a candidate looks away often or blinks inconsistently, it may be signs of deception. Keep in mind there are exceptions.  Some people naturally make good eye contact (extroverts), while others struggle to hold brief gazes (introverts). The key to spotting good eye contact is watching how the eyes flow with the conversation or seem unnatural.

2. Appropriate Facial Expressions

Facial expressions are universal to all of us.  It conveys emotions, that are easy to read. For example, do you remember the “this is your final warning” look your mother flashed at you to stop your bad behavior as a kid? 

The most important facial expression to look for is a smile. Look for a natural smile from a candidate, because it indicates enthusiasm and interest.  A natural smiler will attract positive emotions from everyone that sees them. They make great customer-facing employees like front desk clerks and hostesses.  When you see a smile that contradicts the content or context of the conversation, be suspicious.

3. Great Gestures

Have you ever hit the “mute” button on your remote control while a political debate was happening? If you have, do you remember the non-stop hand gestures of pointing, grabbing, and crafting as if the person was telling “someone” to do something? That “someone“ was you, the viewer. Just like the speaker on the T.V., your job candidate will use gestures to communicate their ideas and feelings. The key for you is to know how to interpret the gestures.  Look for gestures like head nodding and thumbs-up that convey positive feeling. On the contrary, interlocked fingers and crossed arms indicate a negative disposition.

4. Confident Posture

A confident posture shows you how much a candidate believes what they say.  When a candidate believes in themself, their shoulders and back are straight, never slouching. This includes whether the candidate is standing or sitting. Look for their chin to be upright and head position in line with yours. If you see the following signs of bad posture it may mean a candidate lacks self-esteem and energy: forward head and shoulder tilt.

5. The Right Vocal Tone

How many times have you heard the phrase, “It’s not what you say, but how how you say it”? It’s a testament to the impact vocal tones have in communication.  You witness the power of vocal tones everyday. Just saying three words with different pitches, volumes, and emphasis make a big difference. For example when you say “I love you”, “I LOVE you”, and “I love YOU”, you communicate with different tones. If a candidate is increasing their vocal volume, rate, and pitch, it tells you they are happy, excited, or angry. But, if a candidate is decreasing the same tones, it indicates they are sad or indifferent. There are exceptions to these signs, but remember to listen for the dominant tone a candidate is using throughout the interview.

Putting It All Together

Mastering these signs go a long way to consistently hire the best fit for your company. No candidate will perfectly show you every positive sign you’re looking for. That’s ok, it means they are human, not unfit to be hired. The best way to use these signs is to combine them to get a “picture” of your candidate’s potential fit. Will this “picture” bring value to the your job opening and culture? You decide!

Now that you have a better way to interview, you will start building a winning team. That’s awesome, but since you’re so short-staffed like the rest of the industry, you need to hire a lot of quality employees now! 

The problem with getting staffed now is:

• You don’t have time to sit down for a 15-minute interview that may drag on for 30 minutes. 

• Your can’t schedule enough interviews for the limited time you have blocked off.

• You schedule interviews, but some candidates never show up.

• You can’t focus on the right signs to look for in a candidate, because you get interrupted.

• Your management team can’t give you any opinions on the candidate’s fit, because of scheduling conflicts.

Even though you have an application process, it’s not equipped to get you staffed fast. What you need is a feature that allows you interview the most candidates in the least time. 

This Is Where Harri’s Video Interviewing Comes In

With Harri Video Interviewing you can:

• Interview candidates when it’s most convenient for you and them.

• Involve your management team to assess candidate’s “fit”.

• Customize questions to get efficient answers from a candidate.

• Look at multiple candidates in a fraction of the time it takes to in-person interviews.

• Focus on the “5 signs” of a good candidate without distraction.

  • Eye Contact

  • Facial Expressions

  • Gestures

  • Posture

  • Vocal

Imagine being able to get that in-person feel of interviewing a candidate, using Harri’s Video Interviewing. Imagine also, being able to evaluate each candidate with the help of your managers. Now, imagine interviewing hundreds of candidate a week until you get staffed. When you adopt Harri’s Video Interviewing feature to your hiring process, you won’t need to imagine being staffed ever again!