How Welcome Break Uses Workvivo to Drive Frontline Connection
Discover how Workvivo helps Welcome Break drive frontline excellence through a connected people experience
91%
platform adoption within 12 months
87%
of new hires now staying beyond first 90 days
+11 NPS
increased customer NPS by 11 points year-over-year by implementing ideas from frontline employees
Welcome Break is a roadside retailer spanning the UK, the US, and Ireland (where it's known as Applegreen), providing essential services like fuel, food, and lodging across the network of main roads and motorways.
The company employs more than 17,000 people in 529 locations – and the sites often include a different combination of in-house and franchised brands, such as Burger King, Starbucks, and Pret a Manger. All onsite workers are employed directly by Applegreen or Welcome Break, while also representing well-known international brands.
Uniting so many employees across multiple brands and diverse work styles, from desk-based roles to the frontline, proved challenging, and Welcome Break knew it needed a more modern, unified way to communicate, engage its people, and strengthen its culture.
In this report from the Josh Bersin Company, Welcome Break Drives Frontline Excellence through a Connected People Experience, you'll discover how Workvivo helped the organization do exactly that.
People
17,000
Industry
Retail
Location
Global
Category
Enterprise
Welcome Break's Workvivo journey
Before Workvivo, Welcome Break was trying to engage a distributed and largely frontline workforce, but communications weren't landing. Without a central home that everyone could access, messages were getting lost, workers were experiencing content overwhelm, and employees didn't have a voice.
Moving past these hurdles required finding the right employee experience platform – one that would tick specific boxes, such as:
Inclusivity for different regions, languages, and cultures
- Private team collaboration spaces
- Direct messaging
- Access for both desk-based and frontline workers
- Strong analytics and reporting
- Two-way engagement
Together, these features and functionalities would allow Welcome Break to unite its dispersed employees like never before.
With a reliance on posters, intranets, regional and monthly meetings, and having messages cascade downward, we knew information was getting stuck – Nicola Marshall, People Director at Welcome Break
To date, Welcome Break has seen great success with Workvivo across a range of key areas.
- Adoption and training: After its first 12 months, 91% of employees had adopted the platform. It also saw a dramatic increase in training completion, which reached 98% through greater visibility and clearer communication.
- Retention: Retention has been steadily rising too, with labor turnover decreasing from 45% to 40%, and 87% of new hires now staying beyond 90 days.
- Campaigns: Beyond day-to-day communication, wider internal campaigns now have a home. The company's annual summer event, Service Fest, sets team goals with chances to win cash prizes. Organizers were able to host Service Fest messaging, information, stories, and updates on Workvivo. With the platform's help, the company saw improved results around goal attainment and recognition for frontline colleagues.
- Customer satisfaction: Even Welcome Break's customers have benefitted from its partnership with Workvivo. The company's customer net promoter score (NPS) jumped by 11 points year-over-year, with guest opinion scores also rising from 82 to 86.
Looking to the future
Less than a year into the rollout, Welcome Break/Applegreen saw compelling results from its new communication and employee experience platform. The team is excited about the opportunity to continue to optimize the digital employee experience, tap into new features, and explore more integrations. Eventually, they want their Workvivo platform to be a true “digital front door,” as Marshall calls it – a one-stop shop for employees to access everything they need in their role.
Want the in-depth story? Download the full report from the Josh Bersin Company to explore Welcome Break’s frontline engagement transformation.