Beekeeper Unites 1 Hotels with Real-time Hotel Employee Communication

At the intersection of luxury and sustainability, 1 Hotels offers a unique kind of accommodation. With properties in New York, China, Miami, and Los Angeles (and six more locations about to open worldwide), 1 Hotels prides itself on delivering an unforgettable guest experience. 

The success of that strategy is due largely to the company’s dedicated staff and the company’s dedication to creating an exceptional employee experience.

To streamline messaging, engage their workforce, make operational processes more efficient, and provide superior guest service, the 1 Hotels’ leadership team decided to pursue a digital solution for internal communications. 

They chose Beekeeper. Here’s what happened next. 

Making the Switch: From Consumer App to Professional Platform

As a 24/7 business operation with mobile staffers clocking in and out at all hours of the day and night, 1 Hotels’ workforce didn’t have access to traditional forms of communication such as text messaging and email. Prior to adopting Beekeeper, management created WhatsApp groups to connect hotel staff. But these groups only allowed employees to communicate within their own departments, like engineering, housekeeping, and front desk personnel.

With Beekeeper, team leaders can now create one message to post in Beekeeper that is visible by all hotel teams. Beekeeper connects the hotel’s frontline workers instantly, providing access to necessary information for 1 Hotels’ on-the-go hospitality workforce.

Aligning Employees Across Shifts and Locations

As 1 Hotels expands its portfolio, aligning communication and messaging to every employee within the company is essential to produce a consistent brand experience. Because the hospitality business operates around the clock, essential information needs to be available for both day and night shifts. Beekeeper creates a continuity of information, enabling a smooth transition and uninterrupted workflows.

Beekeeper is also used at 1 Hotels for:

• Maintaining 1 Hotels’ core values of celebrating employee contribution and company transparency 
• Using real-time communication to improve hotel operations
• Reporting maintenance items and keeping housekeeping teams updated on maintenance tasks.

A Mobile Solution for a More Engaged Workforce and Lower Turnover

1 Hotels realized that they needed an employee communication tool that reinforced leadership values, such as celebrating successes, and transparency in communication, to better engage their teams at their hotel properties.

Beekeeper has been instrumental in creating a connected company culture at 1 Hotels. It’s given everyone on the various hotel teams a voice and allowed them to actively participate in daily workplace activities. Ingraining the mobile collaboration tool into every aspect of their employee communication, managers have been impressed by how hotel employee engagement has increased while turnover has decreased significantly.

“The Beekeeper platform empowers all of our employees to participate, giving every employee a voice and a forum to use it in. After adopting this tool, our leadership team has noticed both increased levels of employee engagement and decreased turnover.” -Jason Brown, Director of People Operations, 1 Hotels

Migrating Onboarding to Mobile

Adopting Beekeeper at 1 Hotels allowed the leadership team to migrate several key operational tasks to mobile to support employee engagement and streamline processes. With Beekeeper, onboarding new employees is now a highly inclusive process for all team members involved. New staff members are given custom profiles with their picture and interests, providing opportunities for them to integrate with their coworkers and making them feel like they’re part of the team from the start of their employee journey.

Beekeeper and 1 Hotels: An Insider’s Perspective

Jason Brown, the Director of People Operations for 1 Hotels, has seen firsthand how Beekeeper has improved operations within the company. Here, he outlines three ways Beekeeper has unified communications, created a united team, and improved the employee experience. 

After weighing different solutions to help us improve the employee experience at 1 Hotels, we decided it was time to migrate our organization’s communication to mobile in order to give our employees immediate access to team members and company resources using a tool they already had in their pocket. Streamlining our communications and operations processes with Beekeeper’s team collaboration app has transformed how we function as a team at 1 Hotels.

1. Beekeeper Employee Communication Platform: Our 24/7 Town Hall

Beekeeper has transformed the way we communicate internally at 1 Hotels. Because our organization is so big and dynamic, daily, team-specific “Morning Rallies” and regular company-wide Town Hall meetings help us stay connected. For Morning Rallies, each team gathers before they go about their tasks, syncing all of their to-dos on the Beekeeper app before dispersing. As tasks are completed throughout the day, employees can access real-time data on their progress. In addition to tasks, we also store information about our daily arrivals, VIP guests, events, occupancy numbers, and any other pertinent information teams need to get their jobs done.

2. Beekeeper for Communication During Crisis

We’ve also used Beekeeper for communication during a crisis. When our property in South Beach experienced Hurricane Irma, we used Beekeeper to reach out to team members and confirm they were safe. Beekeeper was our go-to platform to communicate with everyone during the time the property was closed. We were able to send out alerts to them on relief progress and timelines of when they could return to work.

3. Beekeeper Surveys

Another fantastic Beekeeper feature we utilize after our company-wide Town Hall meetings is the survey feature. We use surveys in the Beekeeper app to get feedback from our team about the meeting, asking them to evaluate how effective and thorough it was, and to see if they need clarification on any of the content that was covered.

Since our adoption of Beekeeper, our employees at 1 Hotels have been able to unify and share crucial information throughout their work day, regardless of whether they clock in at 9 AM or midnight. Bringing everyone in the company together in a streamlined, mobile app gives our employees and our leadership teams the peace of mind they need. Now, our team can focus on performing at their peak while also taking the time to cultivate empathy, compassion, and motivation every day with their team members.

Looking for an employee communication platform for your hotel? Download our Beekeeper onboarding packet for hotels to see what a Beekeeper rollout looks like.