It was recently the three-year anniversary of the first lockdown in the UK, which saw an immediate change to home working for many office-based employees. Although many parts of life have returned to normal, there are some that have remained changed; including the hybrid working approach.
Flexibility, in terms of where people work from, has become king. Data from LinkedIn reveals that a third of UK workers would quit their job if they had to be in the office full-time. However, almost half of company leaders in the UK and abroad said they would prefer their employees to work more frequently from the office; driven by a desire for team-to-team collaboration and connection.
The days of full-time office presence are seeming, at least for now, a thing of the past but there is clearly a desire, from both employer and employee, to be in the office for at least some of the working week. For very similar reasons it appears. For employers, it’s a desire to unite their workforce and allow them to connect and engage in a way that face-to-face contact allows. For employees, it’s also the aspect of seeing their colleagues that holds big appeal. According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 85% of employees would be motivated to go into the office to rebuild team bonds and 84% would go in if they could socialise with co-workers.
This is the key. If employers make the face-to-face connection between employees easy, they will be far more motivated to come in. And as the vast majority of colleague-to-colleague interaction at work takes place in the hospitality areas – whether that’s over a coffee break, lunch or in a team meeting – it’s the hospitality areas that should be focused on.
Employers should be asking themselves how they can make their hospitality areas as enticing and appealing as possible. Many workplaces are choosing to implement loyalty schemes and promotions, as a simple yet effective tool to attract people in. Our loyalty solutions enable hospitality providers to easily configure complex promotional pricing, ‘points’ campaigns and gift card services into their system, as well as providing a valuable channel of interaction with customers.
The loyalty promotions are automatically applied when the transactions are processed, so there is no need for additional resource to ensure the promotion is rolled out correctly. Plus, it provides rich transactional data – getting to know the purchasing habits of customers allows for more targeted offers and promotions in the future, which should in turn increase repeat purchase.
Loyalty programmes can be used to not only drive purchases, but also encourage footfall on specific days. For example, one business we work with introduced double loyalty points on a Monday and Friday, which are typically quieter days in the office to boost footfall and revenue.
There is no limit to what loyalty offer can be introduced. We can easily tailor the scheme so it’s completely bespoke to the organisation and what will appeal most to the specific employees. It could be driven by specific day-parts such as breakfast or lunchtime offers or linked to food groups such as vegan or vegetarian option. Equally, it could be used to drive sales of a particular item such as a ‘sandwich of the day’ or just purely price-driven so 2for1 or ‘buy four coffees and get the fifth free’ offers – and everything in-between.
These schemes can be linked to the payment tech that’s already installed in the workplace, so it’s all digitised and incredibly easy to roll out. This also means when someone purchases a food or drink item, their online account automatically updates with the loyalty ‘points’ or ‘rewards’.
Offering promotions aren’t just a nice perk for employees – although this is a key advantage – it goes far beyond this. Promotions will encourage increased footfall into the office itself and the workplace hospitality areas, helping to drive much-needed revenue as businesses recover.
