Andrada Paraschiv was the Executive Director of Communications and Strategy when the company consulted Beekeeper to help overcome significant internal communications challenges after a major reorganization. Parent company FRHI, a global hospitality management company, wanted to centralize internal communications for their three hotel brands, Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissôtel. A primary initial challenge was to find an internal communications solution to bring the nearly 50,000 frontline employees working together as one dispersed, yet united, team.
Beekeeper Employee App Solves Internal Communication and Employee Connection Challenges
In 2013, FRHI had recently undergone reorganization as part of the reorganization process. As Paraschiv recalls, Beekeeper’s team communication tools proved the natural choice to create, “a feeling of one company, one FRHI. We were trying to bring our three hotel brands under this one umbrella. We thought that Beekeeper presented an opportunity to have one place where our team members could showcase their news, achievements, and ideas.”
Prior to adopting the Beekeeper digital workforce app, Paraschiv and FRHI’s leadership and frontline employees were accustomed to communicating exclusively with their company’s teams using traditional internal communication methods such as emails, newsletters, and phone calls. The reorganization brought these cross-property employee engagement and internal communication challenges to the forefront.
Paraschiv saw the potential of Beekeeper as an employee-focused app committed not only to unified internal communications and employee connection, but to mobile collaboration. With the flexibility of Beekeeper’s employee app, around-the-clock accessibility was possible, ensuring that FRHI’s many frontline employees and teams could remain connected in 35 countries, and speaking 22 languages, across time zones, shift calendars, and locations.
The Employee Engagement Benefits and Highly Visual Elements of Beekeeper That Won Her Over
Another key benefit of Beekeeper that appealed to Paraschiv was the highly visual nature of the employee app, essential for FRHI’s international mobile workforce. Through FRHI Talk, chefs could capture culinary offerings as they were made and post photos, menus, and relevant dining information for the entire on-site team—or for teams at other FRHI properties to enjoy and be inspired by.
Best of all, since Beekeeper works across mobile and desktop devices, FRHI leadership, management, and frontline employee teams can communicate, contribute, and engage on-site, on-the-go, and wherever their busy work days take them. Live streams on digital signage in break rooms and other frontline employee gathering spaces provides yet another internal communication layer for the entire FRHI team.
From Beekeeper Customer to Beekeeper Executive Team Member
The increased employee engagement and internal communication numbers after implementing FRHI Talk speak for themselves: about a year into deployment of their employee app, workforce adoption of FRHI Talk soared to 98%. In fact, FRHI was the 2015 recipient of Ragan’s Employee Communications Award for Best Employee Engagement using Beekeeper.
After witnessing first-hand from the customer perspective the transformative effect of Beekeeper’s employee app on both internal communication and employee connection at FRHI, Paraschiv later joined Beekeeper in October 2017 in a newly created role as Head of Hospitality.
In this new role, Paraschiv leads the Beekeeper Hospitality Division to support the increasing demand for better internal communication and employee connection for dispersed workforces. Paraschiv recently led a hospitality expert panel at the National HR in Hospitality Conference and Expo (HRIH) with the Beekeeper team in March 2018, in Las Vegas, NV that broke attendance records for the morning session of the conference.
