The Montreal company Lightspeed is preparing to open a restaurant next month on the ground floor of its headquarters in the Viger station. It will be exclusively reserved for employees, who will not have to pay a cent to eat meals there.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“It will not be a cafeteria. But a restaurant. We want the atmosphere to be that of a restaurant. We want to create an environment with a real professional chef’s kitchen,” says JP Chauvet, CEO of Lightspeed.
It’s an unusual initiative here, but in the technology sector – in California in particular – it is common, according to the big boss of the supplier of technological solutions for businesses.
His wife also works in the technology sector, and she was the one who gave him this idea. “She was returning from a trip to California and told me what she had seen,” says JP Chauvet.
As soon as there are difficulties in hiring employees, exceptional conditions must be found. To get there, you have to pay the price.
JP Chauvet, CEO of Lightspeed
JP Chauvet explains that most hires at Lightspeed are made through employees telling their friends about Lightspeed. “The number one obsession is therefore that our employees are happy so that they talk about it”, says the CEO.
There are hundreds of open positions at Lightspeed this summer. “We need to hire people, and the only way to do that is to provide unique experiences. Food is a key element,” maintains JP Chauvet.
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, THE PRESS
The restaurant is still under construction at Lightspeed’s Montreal headquarters. Its opening is scheduled for next month.
He explains that when a company has a workforce of several thousand employees — there are 3,500 at Lightspeed, of which about 40% are in Montreal —, attrition can cause the loss of hundreds of employees a year.
The cost of hiring and training a new employee is enormous, he says.
Management is betting that investing in working conditions will reduce attrition, that employees will encourage more people to join the company and that it will therefore cost less to hire new employees.
“I am convinced that a large portion of the costs is offset by the reduction in attrition. »
He therefore relies on food, the quality of workspaces, a career plan and other advantages such as the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world for two months a year.
“The more people see diverse environments, the more successful they become. We really encourage them to work abroad two months a year,” says JP Chauvet.
An employee can also take as many holidays as they want with Lightspeed. “You take as many vacations as you want, as long as you do your job,” says JP Chauvet.
Focus on incentives
In addition to serving hot meals, management intends to use the restaurant to organize themed evening events for employees.
At Lightspeed, employees have already been able to eat three meals a day for free, in addition to unlimited snacks. Meal boxes are notably offered in fridges on the different floors of the head office. There are also pantries with several brands of cereals, croissants, bread, etc.
A smoothie bar and a coffee counter with a barista have also recently been added to the services offered to staff working at head office. The restaurant will add to the benefits of working face-to-face at Lightspeed. A shop adjacent to the restaurant is also set up where products from Lightspeed customers will be offered to employees.
We don’t want to force people to give up telecommuting to come back to work in the office. However, we want to offer them enough incentives to make them want to come back.
JP Chauvet, CEO of Lightspeed
If Lightspeed took advantage of the pandemic to renovate and now occupy the six floors of the Viger station, the company could choose to expand its headquarters at the back of the building. “We expect to achieve business growth of at least 40% per year for the next three years. It will require a lot of resources, ”he says.
“We renovated our offices, because we were certain that there would be a need to reconnect with colleagues in the real world,” says the man who took over from founder Dax Dasilva at the head of the company this winter.
Because of the flexibility offered to employees, management says it has difficulty in quantifying the attendance rate of employees at the head office today. However, executives argue that the “vast majority” of employees are back on a “regular” basis.
“The moral of the story is that the office needs to be a destination for people to increasingly come back to the physical world,” says the Lightspeed boss.