Starbucks clocks up 98% usage of Quinyx app, as partners (employees) praise its interactivity and efficiency
“Scheduling used to take four hours, now it takes 30 minutes. Quinyx is a great complementary addition to our existing engagement tools.”
The first Starbucks opened in 1971, in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. Today, with more than 32,000 stores in 80 countries, Starbucks is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. Its mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.
Starbucks uses Quinyx in its 360 equity (company-owned) stores, the majority of which are in the UK. Wayne Byrne, Operations Manager UK for Starbucks, outlines the positive impact of Quinyx on the organization since its implementation a year ago:
As a business we always put the partner experience first – that’s at the forefront of everything we do, which is why we chose to partner with Quinyx. The app has great functionality, it’s super user friendly and allows us to easily pull partner data should we need it for HR purposes, like reviewing holidays.
Our partners love using Quinyx. They use it to ‘punch in’ for the day, they can message one another to swap shifts and they get paid through it. We’ve had fantastic uptake of the app – peaking at around 98.4%, which is almost 5,500 team members – so we’re really happy with that.
Flexibility is really important to Starbucks, and the Quinyx app facilitates that flexibility. Our partners include lots of different people with varying needs, such as parents who only work during school hours and students who work around their studies. Quinyx allows partners to help with shift planning and have ownership of their schedules. Whenever I’m in stores, I always get brilliant feedback about it.
Slow and steady wins the race
I was brought in to lead on the implementation so I worked closely with the Quinyx team to really understand what the platform could do and how we could feed our global labor standards into it. I really wanted to understand how the algorithms produced a schedule and to have confidence from the outset that we were a good fit. And several colleagues on the Quinyx team were fantastic answering my questions.
We deliberately took a slow, considered approach. It was a big change – we’d previously used Excel for scheduling - and change can be a barrier in any organization. For six weeks before introducing it to our first stores, I dug deep into the system, getting loads of data from it, obtaining feedback from our senior team and liaising closely with Quinyx to resolve any queries and really get an understanding of how it works.
We launched it in three stores initially, then increased to 15, then 40 - testing across different store types, High Street operations, drive-thrus, shopping centers, etc., and getting feedback from store managers - before a full roll-out. The response from managers was really positive and the numbers showed how much time it was saving us – partners were spending half an hour producing a schedule, when it used to take three or four hours. I was very confident then of launching it across all equity stores.
While the Excel we’d previously used was an intelligent system, it relied on manual input from partners, hence the big time savings we’re seeing now. Quinyx is linked to payroll as well, so it’s really useful having all partner data in one place. We know we don’t have to worry, that we have data to hand whenever it’s needed.
A great blend
Communication is key in relationships like this, and we really enjoy working with Quinyx. We meet regularly and they’re very easy to work with. We’ve challenged them – they’re currently integrating some of our reporting systems that I believe will cement their position as ‘best in class’. If there’s ever an issue, we know they’ll come back as soon as possible; they’re always on point.
Using the Quinyx app is fun and super simple. Partners can easily request time off - for a holiday, a medical appointment, family time, and so on – and they can use it to message the team and say when they’re available. They like that they can add their own avatars to it and can set it to different languages, which is really useful for our diverse team. It complements other communication tools we have in place at Starbucks, that all help to boost engagement and retention. It’s a really positive addition.