Houlihan's turns their restaurant operations around with a new intranet

With over 100 restaurants (in three different restaurant concepts) spread across the United States, Houlihan’s is a complex workplace to connect. They needed to connect the restaurants to head office, and to make their head office more effective at coordinating and helping their many restaurants.

In 2013, they replaced their intranet with the Jostle^® platform and achieved astonishing results. Their accomplishments include: 

• Rising sales
• Improved customer satisfaction scores
• Declining employee turnover
• Aligned channels of communication with greater accountability

Challenges

To say internal communications at Houlihan’s is complicated is an understatement. Communication must be targeted by restaurant concept, ownership (company owned or franchised), region—and sometimes even to the unit level. Here are some of their other key challenges:

Restaurant managers hard to reach. Managers need to be actively working the floor (away from their computer), which makes reaching them difficult. In addition, only higher-level managers are assigned a company email address; the rest have shared in-boxes.

A broken communication system. Houlihan’s had an intranet, but it was so basic that people began skirting the system—sending direct emails—to communicate more creatively. This meant communication wasn’t vetted for effectiveness or accuracy, and prioritizing these many pieces of communication became a challenge for store managers.

Lack of clear information. No clear chain of command meant store managers might contact one another directly to ask questions that arose. Historical information was very difficult to find. There was often valid cause for confusion, which made it difficult to hold people accountable.

Sharing detailed instructions via shared inboxes. Houlihan’s needed to provide detailed coordination from head office to restaurant operators, and seasonal menus required tight coordination. As restaurant managers shared the same inbox and worked different shifts, this was extremely challenging.

Goals

Houlihan’s top priority was to resolve the company’s lack of communications infrastructure. It was seriously harming their culture, employee retention, and guest satisfaction. After putting a new leadership team in place, the CEO challenged them to address the problems in the operation.
Part of their solution to improve communication was to get a better intranet that had:

• A simple and reliable search feature
• Image and video capabilities for dynamic and clear instruction
• Ability to integrate cultural content that would enhance (not distract) communications
• Social features that would allow the posting of comments and questions—thereby clearing up any confusion quickly and publicly
• A master company calendar to display key event dates and deadlines for all departments

Solution

In 2013, Houlihan’s found and rolled out the Jostle intranet. The company’s key communicators have been re-trained to disseminate all company news and initiatives only on their Jostle intranet.

Results

After a few years of new leadership and their new communications infrastructure, the Houlihan’s corporate culture has seen quite a turnaround. The results are remarkable.

• Everyone is informed. Everyone is informed. All information shared goes through the Jostle platform so everyone has the tools and details at their fingertips 24/7. Restaurant operators are able to hold their teams accountable if they don’t know key information.
  
  
• Culture is grown. The head office and restaurants are sharing more stories and values through the Jostle platform, making it easier to work together as a team. All employees appreciate the feeling of knowing what the company’s working on, of having a platform to communicate with colleagues, and to feel their work is valued.
  
  
• Business is improved. Not surprisingly, improved communication and accountability has positively impacted virtually every aspect of their business. Crew members are happier and turnover is declining. Recipes are more consistent and all teams follow uniform systems in every restaurant. Both guest satisfaction and same-store-sales saw steady improvement over the past few years. And the positive energy, sense of teamwork, and company pride is palpable.

Conclusion

Houlihan’s’ turnaround is impressive. It was the vision, leadership, and sweat equity of many people at Houlihan’s that resulted in such a positive change to the company’s culture. We’re proud of the central role that the Jostle platform is playing in supporting their communication, culture, and business efforts.