First Watch Restaurants Inc. is a breakfast, brunch and lunch concept offering freshly prepared dishes inspired by the position of the sun. Keep reading to learn more about First Watch’s culture and how the company has worked with ADP to enable the planning and activation of many of its cultural values.

We determined that over 70 percent of our employees were looking at the ADP mobile app on a regular basis, and so we've used this to stay in contact with them, to put out information that's meaningful to them and make sure that we've got that solid connection.

Laura Sorensen, Chief People Officer
First Watch Restaurants Inc.

Challenges

  • Staying in touch with employees during COVID-19
  • Employees being able to quickly access their pay information and get paid promptly during COVID-19
  • Driving great, consistent work by keeping employees engaged
  • Making strategic, informed decisions about diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)

How ADP helped

  • Providing the ADP mobile app to support consistent contact with and distribution of important updates to employees
  • Providing the ADP mobile app and Wisely pay cards for quick access to personal pay data and prompt payment, sometimes up to two days before pay day
  • Providing StandOut, an innovative tool that empowers organizations to measure and boost engagement to support extraordinary performance
  • Providing DE&I analytics through ADP DataCloud, a powerful people analytics solution that helps organizations make more-informed business decisions

 

Interviewees:

Laura Sorensen, Chief People Officer
Koya Ray, Manager of Operational Excellence
Christopher Tomasso, President and CEO

The ingredients of a ‘you first’ organizational culture

Laura: We describe our culture in two words — “you first” — which can seem simple, but there's so much meaning behind those two words. We put our employees first, so they can, in turn, put the customers first.

Enabling ‘you first’ with ADP during the COVID-19 pandemic

Laura: Over the last two years, ADP has really played an important role in our strategy, in enabling that culture, in allowing us to provide an amazing employee experience. We use their ADP Vantage HCM platform. We use their unemployment platform, their ACA platform. I'm sure I'm forgetting something else.

Putting employees first with easy pay access during COVID-19

Koya: One of the features that I love about the Wisely pay card is I have the option to get paid two days earlier. You never know what could happen. Life happens, and life doesn't care about your pay date.

Enhancing ‘you first’ with ADP’s employee engagement tools

Laura: We know StandOut is a great tool that helps with engagement and retention, and it just lets our employees be themselves and know what their strengths are so that they can be a better version of themselves.

Fortifying ‘you first’ with ADP’s DE&I analytics

Laura: ADP's products have played an instrumental role in helping to inform some of our decisions around diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). Their reporting allows us to really focus on what's most important and get a sense of where we have strengths within DE&I and where we have opportunities.

To read the full story, click the link below.