WiFi Marketing

Guide To Attracting Employees Who Work From Anywhere 

Before Covid-19, walk into just about any coffee shop or tea bar and you’re bound to see laptops and Mac Books open and people heads down with fingers flying. While some of those individuals may be working on personal hustles, there’s a chance that a 45-32% of your patrons are technology knowledge workers privileged to work from anywhere.

With Twitter, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other technology companies granting employees to work from anywhere for the foreseeable future, we expect neighborhood coffee shops, tea bars, taprooms and fast casual restaurants across the country and the world, become productive gathering places.

Here are the steps to prepare your business for this wave of opportunity.

Advocate safety and health first policies.

With the work from anywhere perks, technology companies are placing their employees’ health and safety first. Attracting these workers to your business means that your safety and sanitation practices should be above board with county, State and CDC guidelines.  These many include:

1. Check temperatures at the door. The more steps a business takes, the more you’ll attract knowledge workers who are likely be evidenced based and driven when it comes to choosing a place to work outside of their homes.
2. Sanitize before entry. Requiring your employees to wear a face covering and sanitize before entry will score points with knowledge workers. Suggesting that your guests do the same, when they are not eating, enforces your policy for everyone and makes it better for the community. 
3. Reduced seating capacity. Most counties and States are allowing businesses with public gathering spaces to reopen with limited capacity. This means, tables and seating that are 6 ft apart. 
4. Disinfection of each table before the next guest occupies it. This means an interval of 8-10 minutes per guest to give your staff the time to disinfect the table, chairs and any common items such as cream and sugar or condiments. 
5. Use of disposable plates, spoons and cups. This may not sound cool for the environmentalist, but the health of people are at stake. Dine-in or take-out disposable food vessels is a safe way to go.
6. Deep cleaning of common areas. The bathroom comes to mind and other shared spaces like the entry way.
7. Communicate your new safety and health standards. Create a Covid-19 health and safety standard page. This makes it official for your employees and your guests. Here’s an example. 

Optimize your usable guest space for productivity and creativity. 

Attracting the work from anywhere knowledge workers with budget to spend, means re-designing your storefront for creativity and productivity. Here are some ideas.

1. Design your space for the work from anywhere audience. Many independent small business owners would balk at the idea of turning their space into a working zone. Businesses with larger usable guest space are offering two separate experiences: a traditional cafe experience with the same amenities and a productivity and creativity zone with additional amenities like tables outfitted with power outlets.
2. Get business WiFi service. Outfit your storefront with a reliable way to manage your Internet bandwidth with business WiFi service. This means that Internet can be better distributed across your hotspots, including your guest WiFi. You can also gain full control of your guest WiFi.
3. Minimum purchase before guest WiFi use. With the mandatory shelter-in-place, businesses had to close for weeks and in some cities the orders lasted for months. Asking your patrons for a minimum purchase every hour or two is an appropriate policy, given that you’re business capacity is reduced by 30-50% and the costs of maintaining a highly sanitized and health first space is high.
4. Limit the use of guest WiFi. Should you be adversed to a work from anywhere design and flow for your storefront, an option is to limit your guest WiFi schedule plus requiring a minimum purchase. This means, peak hours your guest WiFi service is completely off allowing patrons to fully focus on breakfast, lunch or dinner. 
5. Outfit your tables with built-in power outlets and chargers. For businesses who want to design their space into a work from anywhere hub, outfitting your tables with power outlets and chargers gives you flexibility to reconfigure your space without worrying about power supply for your guests.

Restore your business and your brand.

Businesses and brands who built their email lists before Covid-19, had the ability to shift their efforts online, remained connected to their customers and were able to respond to change swiftly. Here are some tips to help you prepare.

1. Ask for permission to connect with your customers. A great way to get to know your audience is by asking for some information that allows you to reach them. There are multiple ways to do this: a business WiFi service with a branded captive portal, your POS and third-party applications. 
2. Let your customers know what you are up to. Don’t be shy about letting them know about what is new, your specials and win-back offers. When you have a better understanding about your customers, sending valuable email content to their inbox is good for your business and brand. 
3. A scalable and flexible home on the Internet. When shelter-in-place orders were issued to control the spread of Covid-19, many local businesses and brands saw revenue dry up from their storefront in a matter of days. However, businesses and brands with a scalable and flexible web presence and online store, continued to sell coffee subscriptions and take online orders including family style dinners and drink kits. 

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