Beekeeper Q&A

by Cam Patterson

BEEKEEPER: IMPROVING FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS

We first became aware of Beekeeper at Meat Business Pro when we did a Q&A with Dennis Brewster from HyLife Foods some months ago. At the time, he discussed how implementing Beekeeper’s employee focused mobile communication platform changed the game for how HyLife was able to work with their employees to ensure workplace safety practices during the pandemic.

Since that time, the world is now fighting against COVID-19. The meat processing industry, like all manufacturing and processing industries, is still working against the odds, but outbreaks are still happening in some plants regardless of PPE, sanitizing, and safe distancing measures.

We reached out to Daniel Sztutwojner, Chief Customer Officer and co-founder of Beekeeper, based in Switzerland, for a more in-depth discussion about how Beekeeper’s communication solution software for frontline workers caught the attention of the meat processing industry around the world during the time of COVID-19.

MBP: PLEASE GIVE OUR READERS SOME BACKGROUND ON YOURSELF AND BEEKEEPER.

DS: I'm one of the co-founders of Beekeeper and we started the company based on our experience in the hospitality sector, working with hotels in Switzerland. We realized that a major challenge in the industry was frontline employees not having access to corporatewide collaboration tools. When you have frontline staff distributed across multiple properties, it’s virtually impossible to share information with any kind of effectiveness. A communication tool that could unify everyone in the organization in real-time, across multiple disciplines and dialects, is something that we identified as not only beneficial for the hospitality industry, but for any industry that typically has a high number of frontline workers.

MBP: HOW DID BEEKEEPER GET THE ATTENTION OF THE MEAT PROCESSING INDUSTRY?

DS: We had been working with Smithfield for some time when an article from the CDC created a lot of awareness on the work we were doing with them. Now we're working with four of the major meat producers in the world.

Our platform is particularly advantageous to meat processors. Many of their frontline employees are not working on a computer so they were needing a realtime connectivity solution that would digitally enable their employees.

It really comes down to increasing productivity efficiency and employee safety to ensure the highest product standards to the consumers. So, essentially, Beekeeper makes sure that everyone in the organization is digitally enabled to support these key areas of the business. This is particularly true for the meat processing industry.

MBP: HOW CAN BEEKEEPER IMPROVE MACHINE MAINTENANCE AND PROCESSING WORKFLOWS WITHIN THE MEAT PROCESSING INDUSTRY?

DS: For us, it's really how we can support the communication between the machines and the people that are operating the machines, so they can quickly identify when something is not working as planned. With Beekeeper they will get corresponding alerts so they can act in advance if a machine is not working up to speed. Where our program comes in is with the machine translated alert that is sent to an employee’s Beekeeper app on their phone. Because of the diversity in culture and languages so typical of the food processing industry, we are able to translate machine generated messages into their language in real time so they can respond more efficiently and avoid disruptions in the in the production line.

We definitely see that in the food and beverage industries there is a lot of automation. But where we see the big advantage is on automating the workers by making their flows much more efficient within the production workflow. So by digitally enabling all the employees with a digital identity, we can track processes and facilitate processing automation at a very high level. So, it’s not actually automation of the machine, but really automation on the employee side.

MBP: WITH A REAL-TIME, TRANSLATABLE COMMUNICATION TOOL, THIS WOULD ALSO MEAN BEEKEEPER COULD REALLY IMPROVE FRONTLINE UPGRADING AND TRAINING OF EMPLOYEES WITH MULTIPLE DIALECTS.

DS: We see a big opportunity for training frontline employees. The risk in any processing or manufacturing production line is employees being replaced with rapidly advancing automation technologies. So we definitely saw the need with Beekeeper in upgrading and training new and current employees with new skills in order to take advantage of new opportunities within the business. The goal with our technology for frontline workers was to always create a digital platform that will not only support workers, regardless of any language or location barriers, but also provide update “learning” access to develop new skills within the industry or company, so they can always stay relevant.

MBP: CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE?

DS: Let’s say, for example, a new machine has been purchased that none of the frontline workers have used before. So now the company is faced with a massive upgrade and training program to get their employees up to speed. Down time costs money not only for the company but for frontline staff as well. But with Beekeeper, our platform provides the channel for management to roll out new training plans simultaneously to frontline workers, translated to their language. This all happens through the Beekeeper app.

MBP: ARE YOU ALSO WORKING DIRECTLY WITH PROCESSING EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS AS WELL?

DS: That is something we're looking into. We have built partnerships with a variety of vendors in the meat production industry. For example, we have partnerships with Kronos, which is a tool that is being used a lot in food production. We coordinate with the IT teams of our vendors to implement communication between their machine and the Beekeeper app. So if the machine spits out an error, in theory, our program is going to interpret that machine’s alert and translate it if necessary, so that the right person gets a real time directive from the machine.

MBP: LET’S SHIFT OVER TO COVID-19 AND THE IMPACT BEEKEEPER HAD ON FRONTLINE EMPLOYEES WORKING IN THE PROCESSING PLANTS.

DS: This year we had increased growth because meat producers had such a high infection rates of COVID-19. And this was not only our Canadian and U.S. customers, but our customers in Europe that were equally affected. What they realized is they needed an immediate channel to connect the employees that was beyond the bulletin board and the hope that their staff will read it. Things were changing so quickly. With food security being crucial, meat production had to keep going. Most processing plants had significant inefficiencies to communicate effectively. Individual text messages and emails were not the answer because there is no way to track whether employees received the message or provided feedback. But once your entire workforce is connected with a digital identity, now you can send them high-priority alerts and up-to-date training. We can digitize paper processes, and we all know there are a lot of paper processes in food production.

Plus you cover the language barrier because the meat processing industry is a diverse, migrant based workforce. The ability to have real-time translation on a platform that can manage a collaborative, real time learning environment between staff, plus automated communication between machine, became hugely more important when the pandemic hit.

The meat processing industry needed to update a lot of standard procedures with new safety measures and a new way of working. And if you don't have an effective way of rolling out new procedures to ensure the safety of the employees working on the farm, or in the barn, or on the processing floor, then this process is very lengthy and challenging.

And let’s not forget that with new social distancing measures, you couldn’t have employees congregating around the bulletin boards. So by giving them the information digitally on their phones with Beekeeper, they didn't have to risk being too close together. They could work on their own and still be informed and connected, and aligned with last minute updates and company polices. Those are just some examples that Beekeeper was able to provide to improve frontline safety during COVID-19.

MBP: HAS BEEKEEPER CREATED ANY SPECIFIC MODULES FOR THE APP THAT THAT ARE SPECIFIC TO HANDLING COVID-19?

DS: We have specific templates - based on user cases from our customers - they can deploy throughout their organization. For example, forms, health and safety checkpoints that employees need to complete, ensuring they don't have any symptoms before they can start their shift.

Business agility has been crucial during the pandemic. Making sure that every employee is connected and reachable, so companies can adjust quickly to ensure safety during production has been crucial. So, thankfully, this business agility was something that could be enabled through a platform like Beekeeper.

Daniel Sztutwojner, Chief Customer Officer, Beekeeper