Mobile onboarding in gastronomy
Customer stories | Marché International
At Marché International, a Swiss gastronomy leader, success boils down to one key ingredient: top-tier knowledge and training for every team member, whether they work in the restaurant, kitchen, or office. Jana Northe, a specialist in personnel development and training, delves into Marché’s digital onboarding strategy and the associated eLearning Academy, unveiling how it imparts vital knowledge about company values, concepts, and gastronomic regulations.
Facts:
Region: Germany
Workforce: 2.500 employees
Industry: Gastronomy
About Marché INT
Marché International, with a presence in over 140 outlets across six European and Asian nations and a dedicated team of around 2,500, stands as a pioneer in innovative gastronomy solutions. Brands like Marché Mövenpick represent diverse foodservice solutions for high-traffic venues such as zoos, airports, highways, and city centers.
The challenge
In 2021, Marché International launched an eLearning program with a clear goal: to establish an accessible digital onboarding solution that not only imparts knowledge efficiently but also fosters a warm welcome and genuine connection with the company. This digital offering, including welcome courses and informative sessions, seamlessly integrates with in-person activities like welcome days and mentorship programs. It sets the stage for new hires to feel at home, excel, and pursue growth opportunities.
One unique challenge emerged—the hospitality industry often lacks regular computer access. Thus, a straightforward and flexibly accessible solution was imperative to introduce essential topics such as hygiene, safety, and a heartfelt welcome.
More facts:
Product chosen: LMS
Customer since: 2021
Target group: All employees, both in restaurants and offices
Area of applications: Onboarding, corporate training, hygiene, safety, and data protection training.
The solution
Marché International turned to Fellow Digitals’ Learning Management System (LMS), a user-friendly platform that offers tremendous value to administrators and participants alike. With its responsive design and clear layout, the platform is accessible via browsers on computers, tablets, or smartphones. It intuitively guides participants through essential courses and engaging content, especially benefiting restaurant staff who can now access digital training opportunities.
Key Advantages:
Efficiency: Compact, 10-minute courses accessible on the go.
Automation: Processes such as invitations, reminders, and certificate generation are automated, ensuring a standardized workflow..
Continuity: Annual repetition of mandatory courses promotes continuous awareness of key topics.
Interconnection: Seamless integration with the company’s communication platform minimizes administrative overhead.
The result
The outcome is a robust corporate academy featuring diverse courses—welcomes, gastronomy concepts, hygiene, safety, and more—all in one accessible location. Employees gain insights into the global reach and various concepts of Marché International, with the well-known Mövenpick brand being just one example.
A three-part onboarding process unfolds:
In-person introduction: supported by a “Götti” (Swiss term for mentor).
Digital welcome: Comprehensive eLearning courses on hygiene, safety, and company values, completed within the first days of induction.
Regional welcome days: Fostering deeper corporate culture understanding and cross-location connections.
Optimal cost-benefit ratio
Marché’s digital approach brings significant time and cost savings compared to traditional face-to-face training. A single employee manages all courses, with department collaboration on specialized topics.
Another reason for the low administrative effort is the interface to the Beekeeper communication platform, to which new employees are immediately invited for chats, meetings and exchanges. Users created in Beekeeper automatically appear in Fellow Digital’s LMS no later than four hours later. This saves the HR department a lot of time and effort. Users also benefit, as they can seamlessly move from one system to the other via single sign-on (without having to log in again). This means that courses – whether for onboarding or refreshing knowledge – are never more than a click away.
Mobile offers for frontline employees
For frontline employees who interact directly with guests in the restaurants, solid training and regular knowledge checks are crucial. They not only ensure consistent service quality, but also communicate the company’s values to guests. By implementing the digital, mobile learning offering, they are given the opportunity to access knowledge on the spot, even without computer access or a company email address. Many even use their commute to work, for example time on the streetcar, to access the onboarding courses or other interesting information. This flexibility is at the heart of the training strategy, which seamlessly integrates all employees – in the restaurant, kitchen or office – into the corporate culture and ensures a profound understanding of gastronomy standards.
A Forward-Looking Approach
Jana Northe, from the HR Development and Training department, reports overwhelming success. Not only the compulsory courses, but also the other optional courses, have been well received, which can be seen from the fact that they are always mentioned positively in conversations. Important topics such as hygiene, occupational safety and data protection can be easily evaluated and verified, for example through automatic certificates and reports. These not only provide a good overview at the locations, but also for the inspecting authorities such as the health department. Even if further capacities are desired and planned for the future, it is already clear that the company is on course for success.
“It’s going wonderfully! It took a while to set up the platform, but it was still straightforward because the system is so easy to use. The usability is really very good!”
“I was surprised that the employees accepted mobile learning on their smartphones so easily", says Jana. They simply embraced it and used the opportunity to regularly acquire knowledge. This makes learning easier, faster and simply fun for employees. For the future, we need capacity to expand the platform and content even further. However, we are on the right track! I believe that our learning platform is helping us to move forward and take our teams with us.”
Retrieve the Marché case as PDF
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