How BurgerFi improves frontline employee experience with YOOBIC

Last week we were honored to host a webinar with Kevin Cooper, Director of Leadership and Development at BurgerFi. Kevin chatted to our Senior Client Director, Jenna Goldstein, about the challenges of communication and training during the pandemic, why it’s important to empower your frontline staff, and how they use YOOBIC to achieve their learning and development goals. Read on for an overview of the key takeaways you might have missed.

Employee experience in the COVID-19 era

During the COVID-19 crisis, frontline teams have been everyday heroes. While many of us have had the luxury of working from home, they’ve been out there serving us.

These frontline workers need more support than ever before from HQ, which means that communication and training are key. But training is always one of the first areas of a business to experience budget cuts, and social distancing guidelines mean that in-person training isn’t really an option right now, regardless of budget constraints.

So how do you maintain that engagement in learning and development in such uncertain times? Here’s how BurgerFi did it:

BurgerFi’s story

BurgerFi, the fast-casual, all-natural burger chain founded in 2011, now has over 130 restaurants across the US. They pride themselves on their core values, two of which have become more important than ever over the last few months: “be family” and “be thoughtful”.

COVID-19 has hit the service industry hard and, true to their values, the BurgerFi team have responded exactly as you’d expect them to - they have gone above and beyond to support each other. Sharing shifts with others who might need them more than they do, rallying around each other and generally doing everything they can to help.

Meanwhile, BurgerFi partnered with the Marcum Foundation to feed frontline healthcare heroes. Together, they delivered 20,000 meals to 60 different hospitals in 14 different states - essential employees in the hospitality sector taking care of essential employees in the healthcare sector.

Seeing how dedicated their workforce was, it became clear that training, learning and development needed to remain at the heart of their culture amidst all the uncertainty.

But motivating the frontline workforce, retaining and nurturing talent, and continuing to ensure an amazing guest experience throughout it all is a tall order when there’s a global pandemic happening.

That’s where YOOBIC stepped in.

BurgerFi’s partnership with YOOBIC

In their search for a new learning and development platform, BurgerFi had a few key things in mind. They needed:

• An intuitive platform that combined training and communications into one user-friendly application
• A decentralized user management system that allowed franchisees to take control over learning and development for their network - they know their own teams best, after all
• A gamified, fun and engaging platform that could bring the BurgerFi family together

They found all of this and more in YOOBIC. With our all-in-one digitized platform - rebranded just for them as “Fido”, complete with cute canine mascot - BurgerFi are now able to reach their 3,000 employees instantly.

They can communicate critical information such as COVID-related procedures, limited time offers, and recalls with ease.

Their store visit process is more efficient, they have greater visibility into compliance across their network, and tasks can be overseen remotely as managers continue to work from home.

As for training, managers are able to build short, targeted courses customized to the fast pace of the restaurant atmosphere, meeting employees’ needs by taking into account their busy schedule. Franchisee partners have instant access to a vast knowledge base, enabling them to find the information they need, when they need it.

And most importantly, the gamified platform makes employees actually want to complete training, turning it into a friendly competition to get the most points.

It was a pleasure to speak to Kevin, and to hear how YOOBIC has helped BurgerFi thrive even in the most difficult of circumstances. If this little taster has you hungry for more, why not check out the full webinar by clicking the banner below?