Connecting and communicating with a remote, site-based workforce often brings a wealth of challenges. This is especially true in shopping centre environments, where a 24-hour staff presence means many staff are working shifts outside core working hours. Learn how Andron Facilities Management connected its employee’s at Golden Square shopping centre with a new one-stop-shop employee app and how this supported employee engagement, communication, and wellbeing.
Overview
Golden Square is a 740,000 sq ft shopping centre based in Warrington and home to top high street brands such as Zara, Next, River Island, H&M and Primark. Boasting a total of 135 stores, Golden Square Warrington is the destination for busy shoppers looking for great retail stores or somewhere to relax.
When Andron won the Bundled Services contract for cleaning and security at the shopping centre in 2020, Andron took the opportunity to implement its new employee app, MyAndron (powered by Actimo), to support its employees, improve communication, and ultimately ensure a smooth TUPE transfer process.
Key Wins:
- 90% employee activation rate on MyAndron.
- Using MyAndron’s Social Wall, we held our own fundraising activities, including Social Bite’s, Break the Cycle virtual fundraising challenge where we encouraged socially distanced physical activity
- Using MyAndron to connect, support and communicate with employees throughout the TUPE transfer process helped to reassure transferring staff and ensure a successful mobilisation.
- Using MyAndron, we created a bespoke, easy-to-follow and interactive induction to onboard employees.
Connecting a remote workforce
Connecting and communicating with a remote, site-based workforce often brings a wealth of challenges. This is especially true in shopping centre environments, where staff are often working various shifts over a 24-hour period.
Before the introduction of MyAndron, Golden Square Shopping centre’s management team relied on social media to communicate important messages to their cleaning, security, and waste management staff. However, not everyone had access to the group, which often resulted in important messages being diluted. Furthermore, with most staff being furloughed early in the year due to the pandemic, communication with staff had become even more difficult.
Kimberley Moate, Andron’s Training and Social Development Manager at Golden Square, detailed how this problem was solved through MyAndron:
“MyAndron provided us with a one-stop-shop for communication. The social wall feature meant we had a single place where we could communicate with everyone and send out key messages instantly. Even employees without phones can access the app through a web browser, meaning no more missed messages!”
Another crucial feature of MyAndron is the ability to send notifications to staff containing important information and updates. Through the app analytics, we can track the open rate and immediately identify employees who have not yet engaged with the update and require a reminder. This is particularly useful for updates that are sent outside of typical working hours.
Supporting employee wellbeing throughout lockdown and beyond
The added impact of the pandemic and a country-wide lockdown had led many staff to feel isolated and disconnected from their colleagues. The MyAndron Social Wall provided a place where staff could support one another and share mental health resources.
“MyAndron brought everyone closer during what was an exceptionally tough time. We were able to continually share stories to keep spirits high and check up on those who were struggling. MyAndron essentially acted as a wellbeing hub throughout lockdown. We celebrated World Mental Health Day and carried out mental health awareness refresher training to help support one another.”
The MyAndron Social Wall also offers our employees a private, safe space to communicate with their colleagues and/or manager. Employees can use the social wall to discuss anything from shift changes, wage enquiries, wellbeing advice and good news stories.
Through MyAndron, staff at Golden Square can also access Andron’s dedicated “wellbeing” section, full of free resources on looking after their mental health during COVID-19, as well as direct contact to our team of Mental Health First Aiders. Andron’s HR team also kept staff up to date with important COVID-19 updates, whenever government advice changed.
MyAndron proved not only good for our employee’s wellbeing, but for our communities too. Like Andron, Golden Square pride themselves on their commitment to giving back to their local communities. Using the MyAndron Social Wall as a communication hub, Kim was able to organise community volunteering initiatives with our staff including the Great British Spring Clean and Watch this Space.
Andron also used MyAndron’s Social Wall to organise their own Social Bite, Break the Cycle virtual challenge, in which employees took part in various challenges to raise money for 2 new Social Bite Villages in the UK.
Using MyAndron to support a successful TUPE and mobilisation process
Besides supporting employee wellbeing and engagement, MyAndron also played an instrumental role in the successful TUPE transfer process at Golden Square.
The shopping centre was mobilised as part of a bundled services contract, awarded earlier in the year to Andron by Jones Lang La Salle, and included 5 other shopping centres across Scotland, and the North of England.
Through MyAndron, employees were able to access everything from payslips to key employment information with a couple of clicks of a button, as well as voice any concerns on the social wall that they had throughout.
In addition to their extensive site-based induction, employees were given a short induction through the app, which included easy-to-follow and interactive training modules on everything from system how-to guides to a personalised message from Andron’s Managing Director.
Cheryl Stewart, Andron Director, commented how this was almost unrecognisable to Andron’s previous induction process:
“Previously, the only induction our remote, site-based employees had to our company was through powerpoint presentations by our managers on the ground. Through MyAndron, we can now create customised training to ensure employees feel more informed, connected, and like an integral part of Andron and our values.”
“Another key feature is that we can track employee engagement and training compliance metrics live on MyAndron. We can also send training reminders and ‘nudges’ to employees and support them every step of the way.”
Employees at Golden Square were one of the first to benefit from MyAndron and as we continue to roll this out across the company, we know many more employees, clients and communities will continue to benefit.