"Opus offers the opportunity for our managers to feel empowered."
Alex Chavez is the Training and Recruiting Manager at Just Salad. Just Salad is a chain of fast-casual restaurants, serving up salads, wraps, smoothies, soups, grain bowls, market plates, and more.
Previous systems lacked robust features
Just Salad, like many other fast-casual restaurants, was using hands-on training at the store level. Alex and his team trained incoming employees on policies and procedures, dish components, and customer service. The content creation for in-store training and workshops sometimes took two to three days. All content was made in-house – from the videography to the construction of the training material. Just Salad, however, was not new to digital training. Being a millennial, Alex naturally found it necessary to integrate technology into Just Salad’s training system.
“I found myself intrigued by watching a video on how something was done. There’s a simplicity of being able to learn things through videos.”
Prior to Opus, Just Salad used a digital learning management system platform where they built content and then sent it out to the managers. The managers will then log in and have the team trained based on the module that was created. The issue with this system was that there was no way to track who was watching the training. Reporting was not a feature, so Alex had issues gauging who was actually learning and getting the most out of the training material. The content formatting was also an issue. “It was a list of content. You had to scroll down and read everything. We saw that people weren’t really paying attention to the videos we provided. They were skipping it to get to the bottom.”
How Opus increased employee engagement
“Our workers were more engaged. They kept expressing how awesome Opus and video content is.”
Just Salad turned to Opus when they weren't able to see the progress they desired. The results were nearly immediate. Alex’s frontline workers, like many fast-casual establishments, are of the younger generations who use technology in all aspects of their life. Their people use video-based platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Because of this, Alex implemented videos as training material, in conjunction with written material.
Uses cases that work: translating, tracking & more
“If you're doubting yourself about Opus, just sign up. It's awesome.”
In addition to the multimedia capabilities, training had to be accessible to all people. Many of Alex’s frontline workers were Spanish, French, and Mandarin speakers. Translating material was instantaneous. All Alex had to do was add the content in English, click a button and just like that, training was delivered in languages that his people needed. The frontline teams are also able to translate it themselves at their discretion. The best parts of Opus, Alex states are “how accessible it is and how easy creating and distributing content is.” Gone were the days of 2-3 days of content creation. With Opus, Alex was able to build content within 10 minutes. Most importantly, Opus kept his trainees engaged. “Even if there is no video, I’ve noticed that if you put a picture of GIF, they’re amazed. They’re more likely to read the content thoroughly.”
Opus provides structure to Just Salad’s training system. Not does Just Salad use Opus for menu changes, but it’s used for keeping the company’s culture. For new hire training, it’s important for new employees to know the company’s history. Previously, new hire workshops lasted two days, for 6 hours each. The new employees we unable to retain the overload of information. Now, new hires are given the essential information which is now easily understood.
“The trainees were able to capture everything in detail. It's just very simple for them. Being able to certify them our training department, the Vice President and Director of Operations the opportunity to just to step away”
Alex no longer had to spend days training new hires. Opus gave back his managers their time. Managers are now able to focus on other pressing moments, especially out on the field. Putting training in the hands of the frontline empowers them, says Alex. It also helps “keep people accountable.” With tracking, Alex can see which employees are falling behind on training and help those in need. It’s also used as a tool to keep people accountable.
Just Salad does not only focus on training our new team members. They use the same content to retrain their current team members. Alex goes on to say “there might be something that they fully didn't understand, but now because of the content we’ve created through Opus they can. They'll have it with them all the time.” Shift supervisors can now go back and retrain their whole staff to have company-wide alignment.
Another use case especially important to Just Salad is skill verification. Many times, people were unable to move forward with their training without verification. “In previous platforms, we were not able to verify if people understood the content. We asked people what they learned.” Now, Alex can see it for himself. This blended approach also allows room for questions. People feel more confident when training now with Opus. They no longer feel the need to skip through the content, because they’re engaged.
“It's revolutionary. It's extraordinary. It's a game changer.”
