Keeping Employees Close When They're Away
As many of you have moved to limited hours or have temporarily closed it’s important to keep the line of communication open with your employees. Constant communication will limit rumors, keep your employees engaged and possibly retain some of your workforce when it’s time to reopen.
With most casinos the line employees do not have a company email to receive updates about the closures, medical benefits or HR questions. Because of this, it is imperative to find other avenues of communication.
With so many ways to communicate these days you should find one or two channels to distribute information to employees. Here are a couple of cost-effective ways to set up communication with your employees that can be set up remotely and quickly.
Text Messaging
More than likely you do not have a text messaging program set up for your employees, but now may be the perfect time. If you currently have a text program for your guests you can easily create a new short code that is dedicated for communicating with your team. If this is the case, hopefully your HR department has an excel with your employee’s cell phone numbers that can be quickly uploaded.
If you don’t have a text platform, we recently came across an Instagram ad for a text service called Skipio. They are currently offering free text service to keep in touch with your employees. This may be the perfect time to take advantage of specials being offered by text message companies.
If you do decide to go the text route you obviously won’t have everyone’s cell number. As we all know your employees are very connected in their own social groups. To get your team enrolled in a texting program we suggest sending a message out asking everyone to share with their fellow team members. For example, “Hi team, we are texting updates now. Let others know they can sign up by texting 12345 to 54321.”
Facebook Groups
Another option for communicating with your employees is to create a Facebook Group. This allows you to communicate to a private group by invite only.
Setting up a group is simple and takes only 10 minutes. Once the group is created you can grant access to multiple admins or moderators and also set restrictions such as turning off/on comments. You can watch this quick video to learn about setting up a group and managing the privacy settings.
Youtube Channel
If you want to get more of a personal touch you can set up YouTube Channel where someone from the leadership can record and upload messages for the staff.
The videos don’t need to be highly produced as any of the newer smartphones will be sufficient. Just make sure you are in a quiet place when recording so the audio comes across clean. Once you upload a video you can hide it so the average YouTube enthusiast won’t stumble on it.
A fun idea to keep your employees engaged is to have each department head create a couple of videos and upload a new one every couple of days. You can touch on different topics that don’t necessarily need to be casino/gaming related. Make it fun!
Once the videos are made you can share the links though your Facebook Group, text message and email.
Things to Remember
- As with any messages you put out to employees, be very direct and limit sensitive information.
- Remember, even though the information would be to a closed group or through text message it will likely be shared outside of the specific platform.
- Do not announce your reopening to the employees until you have an approved internal plan. A reopening message to your employees will likely make it to the media before you have had a chance to officially communicate it from the casino.
- There is a lot of uncertainty these days. Stay positive in your communications and remind them they are not alone.
- Never discuss personal medical benefits/status or an employee’s salary/pay rate through social or text channels.
If you would like assistance setting up any of these channels just let us know and we will be happy to help.