Workology Podcast 449: Effective Employee Communication With Zenzap

Jessica Miller Merrill: Welcome to the Workology Podcast, a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller Merrill, founder of workology.com as she sits down and gets to the bottom of trends, tools and case studies for the business leader, HR and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now here's Jessica with this episode of Workology. Welcome to the Workology Podcast sponsored by ace, the HR Exam and Workology Micro Courses. These are some of the resources and courses that we offer for certification, prep and recertification and continuous learning for HR and people leaders. You can learn more about these courses over@workology.com in today's episode, we're talking about one of the most overlooked drivers of employee engagement, retention and workplace culture. It's communication. And not just sending more emails or adding another slack channel, but creating clear, intentional communication that helps employees feel informed, connected and valued. Whether your workforce is remote, frontline, hybrid or spread across multiple locations, the way leaders communicate can directly impact trust, productivity and even turnover. We're going to explore effective employee communication and what that looks like in practice, common mistakes that organizations make, and how HR leaders can build stronger connections and employees at every level. So because when communication breaks down, culture usually follows and when you're dealing with multi location and high volume hiring situations like restaurant retail hospitality, it is so important. When communication works, employees are going to feel more engaged. They're going to help lead with confidence. Their managers do too and organizations are better equipped to navigate all the changes and in the hourly market that is happening all the time and it's so critical. So let's get into it. Before I introduce our guest for today's episode, I do want to hear from you. Please comment podcast on our pinned Instagram post over at Workology Blog. You can slide in my DMs, leave comments or make suggestions for future guests. Want to hear from you. Guy Weiss is the CEO and Founder of zenzap, a secure communication platform designed specifically for Frontline and Mobile first workforces. With the background in cybersecurity and entrepreneurship, Guy has built his career around solving complex technology and security challenges for businesses. After successfully exiting his previous company, he recognized a growing problem impacting organizations across industries. And those are employees relying on personal messaging apps for communication. It's happening a lot and creating significant risks around compliance, privacy and operational efficiency. Driven by the belief that Frontline employees deserve communication tools built for the realities of the hourly and shift based workforce, Guide launched zenzap to help organizations create safer, more organized and more effective communication practices. Under his leadership, zenzap has focused on combining enterprise level security with simplicity and ease of use. Helping companies streamline collaboration while protecting employee boundaries and sensitive company information. Guy is passionate about improving workplace communication, reducing burnout and helping leaders create healthier, more connected work environments for their teams. Guy, welcome to the Workology podcast.

Guy Weiss: Oh my God. You did it better than me.

Jessica Miller Merrill: That's why it's my day job.

Guy Weiss: Wow. Uh, that's a good, it's a good one. Well, how are you?

Jessica Miller Merrill: I'm great. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited. Thank you.

Guy Weiss: Happy to be here.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you be on. Uh, you have said that companies are still relying on personal messaging apps for workforce communication, things like WhatsApp, um, and others. Uh, can you talk to us about the risks that organizations are maybe overlooking when they use tools like WhatsApp or standard text messages for employee communication?

Guy Weiss: Yeah, for sure. Um, so I think that the problem when you look at a workplace, I mean you can think about uh, hotels, restaurants, um, manufacturing businesses, law firms, hospitals, home cares, any type of business where you have lots of employees, lots of day to day operation, lots of communication. The need to have instant communication is just there. Um, uh, the lack of tools built for uh, these scenarios, um, brings people to use the available tools they have. If you don't have the right hammer, you will use the simple hammer. Um, so people use, you know, they use the default, it's iMessage, it's WhatsApp, it's even Snapchat and the Gen Z's, uh, businesses. It's all sort of personal messaging apps as an attribute to run operations. So when you want to help people understand and kind of think about it from a risk and um, and business perspective, you should think about, imagine a world where any workplace you would go to, you would use your personal Gmail for any work. Communication doesn't make sense that you live with the data. So when you go on working for a company they will shut your email once you leave for security purposes, information purposes, uh, making sure uh, you have separated the uh, inbox for your work and for your private life. Um, so you don't get mixed up, um, cybersecurity, um, productivity, ah, you can react fast on this specific email. So this thing does not exist when it comes to instant messaging. So the risks are employee burnout, huge, huge risk for their businesses, um, sexual harassments for having personal details shared, personal numbers shared inappropriately. Because we're in the same group chat, we get tons of complaints, people saying hey, we want to switch to Professional tool because we have a group, um, chat and we got um, complaints for sexual harassment from some of the girls hitting by a guy, taking her phone number from the group chat because it's there. Uh, so privacy, huge, huge issue. Onboarding and offboarding employees, just managing who is in and who's out. Think about companies with turnover, huge turnovers, 30 to 40% a year. It's removing hundreds of people from group chats and adding them to those group chats. And so when you go to multi location, multi departments, it's a nightmare. So something you can't handle. Information and secrets getting lost. Think about, uh, all of your, uh, I don't know, you run a restaurant and all of your recipes are in there and group chats. And then someone leaves one of the chefs or one of the cooks. He basically has everything he needs to run a competitor, uh, or suppliers and pricing. Um, so we get. So it depends on the vertical. So many data points that are the business secrets that are. You give them away and they're available for your employees even when they leave the company. Updates running a simple update from top management down to the bottom. It just can't be done. Um, you have no structured place to run a message from the CEO to the last employee. Um, costly mistakes, compliance, um, 24, seven notifications when you're off shift, uh, when you're at home and then the group chat continues to work you always, constantly during dinner, open the WhatsApp or text messaging app and you see messages. Uh, again it's work. So all of those things makes it so, um, so inappropriate to use those personal tools for the overload of uh, work messaging. Update just doesn't make sense. So that's just in high level.

Jessica Miller Merrill: What was the moment or experience that made you realize Frontline hourly workers needed a completely different communication Solution other than WhatsApp, Slack or Microsoft Teams?

Guy Weiss: Yeah, it's a great question. So um, I think the question is a little bit bigger. So let me rephrase maybe the question then answer broadly. Um, so it's worth mentioning, Zenzap is backed by top VCs from the US best of LightSpeed. And the question is why have decided years ago to back Zenzap? And I think the answer is, um, when you look at the market and that's what the opportunity we're looking at. Um, you have Slack. You mentioned Slack. It's a vertical tool. Eventually it's used by um, developers, tech companies, 40 to 50 million users. Um, and that's very small compared to any other industry. Um, because the fast food industry in the US, 25, 28 million people, uh, for US users, potential users, uh, hospitality is just huge. So you're talking about billions of users across the world that don't have a similar tool. And the question is why, uh, why don't they use those available tools? And the answer is simple. They're not simple enough. They're not mobile first whenever intend to be used by those type of users where the lowest common denominator is super low. It's just being a basic text app that can be expanded to lots of use cases. Ah, and pricing point, which is super important. Uh, I know not every organization is rich as the tech organizations. So those two answers very broadly brought us to the idea where you had to have something like WhatsApp, uh, for work or imessage for teams, uh, built from the ground up with the security metrics and all the compliance and garbage. You would need layering also productivity integrations, connectivity, but enable it to other markets. And within those markets there's this huge opportunity and huge need for 24. Seven businesses. Right. They're always texting, they're always on the go, it's always mobile first. It's a variety of people with different backgrounds, different tech skills. Um, they're always, you know, they want to get things done quickly and feel connected. Um, um, those 247 businesses are super intense with the volume of communication and when it happens in group chats, it creates chaos and scaling chaos is an issue. Uh, so frontline employees, mobile first as we want to call them, or deskless employees are just a sweet spot. Um, um, um, as a target audience to serve them and serve them super well. And that's what we do. So that's how we came across. So it started while having customers going to the platform and you see adoption and you see, I don't know, in less than few months you see the 10 largest food chains in America onboarding to Zanzap, McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bells, you name it, we have them. Uh, Target, Walmart, um, whatever it is. So you would see shift businesses and then hotel chains, hospitals, daycares, home cares, um, and just suddenly it makes sense. So it clicked. The problem is even stronger when it's a 247 business where you want to opt in and opt out as an employee.

Jessica Miller Merrill: In industries. Some of that you mentioned, like retail, healthcare and food service, burnout and turnover are already high. How do you feel like poor communication contributes to employee stress and disengagement in those industries?

Guy Weiss: I can Give you ah, just some numbers. Um, we had a customer, I listened to lots of um, um, demos with customers. I love it, it's my passion, um, being close to customers. And um, one of them said that um, they run a restaurant with 200 employees, five locations. And um, they claim during the conversation that you know, it's like an exploration conversation. Uh, during the call they claim that um, employees left the company and they told them for the reason for resigning is the constant flow of notifications flooding their uh then it was a ah, um, um Snapchat. That's what they use for the group chats with the Gen Zs. It's crazy because they couldn't tell which notification is work related and which is personal. And the over flooded over capacity overload of notifications for somebody who works for you three times a week or four times a week and then he has another half of the week off was too much. And they said just fuck it. This was direct cost of um, a few tens of thousands of dollars to replace those employees with new employees just for the sake of being burned out from this constant flow of messages 24, 7. Think about a restaurant opens at I don't know, 11 in the morning, goes up at 12 at night. It's crazy. And then management and staff and so there's a real cost, there's like a dollar cost you can put on it and what's the cost? You can just move anyone to you know the team to uh, a tool bid for that it would cost you a fraction of the price and then you gain employees for much longer time. So um, that's a huge cost.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Absolutely. One other area that I wanted to chat about is legal and compliance issues and I know that you've worked with who have faced legal and compliance issues because of work related texting on personal devices. Can you maybe share some examples of what can go wrong when businesses don't have clear communication boundaries in those areas?

Guy Weiss: Yes, yes. I um, wouldn't have mentioned names um, but I can give you examples. So first example and we talked about it um a few minutes ago is sexual harassments, um, something that is not publicly known or not spoken outspoken. But uh, HR deals with harassments during to shared of privacy data and private information and that happens all the time. You would be shocked that I would tell you that every business goes through these ideas through this. You know it's a mess once a month depends on the number of employees. But if tens of employees or hundreds of employees once a month that somebody would come and say hey, is Texting me after working hours and etc. Etc. Why should he be texting me on my personal name? I'm afraid I'm um, this and that. And that's all because he would use WhatsApp for communicating with your team. So that's one side of things. The other side is ex employee leaving the company having all the historical data on his phone. Right. So everything everyone said to him and then uh, you would get complaints and even legal actions for things that got written in the chat in the past and now could be uh, used um, against the company in a different context. So think about words or certain words that could be just thrown away in the air in a group chat which might be um, offensive when reading it in a different context. This data shouldn't be stored on employees phones when they leave the company. X employees shouldn't have access to, to historical data of real live operations. And the fact using personal data, ah, you need to subpoena, you need to actually subpoena devices uh, to investigate those stuff. So this happens a lot. Uh, we have a very large um, nail salon, few hundreds of locations that started uh, using Zenzaps because they got sued by ex employees few times tens of thousands of dollars each. And um, that's just a shame. Um, so you have many of those examples going through and these are hr, proper HR issues that could be solved in a second off board. These are just you know, tip of the iceberg.

Jessica Miller Merrill: And I feel like having worked in retail and hospitality myself as an HR professional. Every HR person that has been in those spaces right now shaking their head like they can think of six or seven situations off the top of their head. Um, in like recent, probably less than 24 months. Uh, from things that you're like you're describing.

Guy Weiss: Yeah, for sure. Um, you know just think about as an HR onboarding and welcoming new employees, offboarding them when talking about larger companies. More than 150 employees. Let's even talk to the thousands of employees not being connected to any hr ah platform. I don't know what you use workday, you use uh Bob, use whatever it is. You use a uh, I don't know payroll system as a directory of who is your employee and who is ex employee. That's almost stupidity. You can use those technologies to empower day to day communications and sync those things together. So it's not just compliance of communication, it's also sending them, I don't know, have a great holiday from the CEO from an HR perspective, empower them or even connect the payroll to a message saying, hey, paycheck has arrived. Great. It's a happy notification. So, you know, we didn't even talk about, um, the mess and the chaos around shift management and how that happens over group chats, so.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Well, yeah, talk. Talk to us about shifts changes and schedule changes because I have a teenager and she has her first summer job as a lifeguard in, in, uh, a nearby city. And there is, I mean, there's probably 300 lifeguards, right, that are seasonal there. So you can IM and the messages that are flying. So talk to us about shift changes and kind of the complexities and what Zinzap does to make that simpler.

Guy Weiss: Yeah, for sure. So, um, think about 300 people messaging all day long in, uh, sorry, a fucking group chat about who can come tomorrow and who can switch with me because I need to go to this party. Yes or no? That's for every message. It's 300 disturbing messages. Maybe 299 beside the one who's sending for other people when they're doing something. Doesn't make sense. And that's just for one message. You're talking about thousands of messages for every shift being changed or switched. Uh, that could be solved super easily once you have a purpose to build group chat for that or an agent that is connected to the calendars and knows the shifts. And you can speak with him like a human, uh, shift manager. And you can tell him, hey, I can't come tomorrow. He can look and see and say, hey, you know what? Uh, uh, I'll DM Jessica because I know her schedule is pretty loose this week. Hey, Jessica, can you please switch with the guy? He can't come. Yeah, Boom. Saved thousands of notifications, made it so easy to switch shifts. Um, but you can't do it without the governed controlled connected tool. Right? Doesn't matter if you use, I don't know, seven shift or whatever it is to run your shift. Ah, your shifts. So that's huge pain. And that's hr. So shift management is a nightmare today.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Absolutely. And I will say, like at the pool for my daughter, HR isn't super involved. It's the managers, uh, for the pool that are navigating all these shift schedule changes, the communication around it. And those people are, uh, really critical to the success of the summer. And so we want to make sure that managers have a way to effectively communicate and then be able to have their own downtime and disconnect.

Guy Weiss: You want to hear a crazy story? Of course, more than mayor, we had a manager, um, telling Us at the very early days, super early days that he used to text people on WhatsApp. And one day nobody showed to the shift. All right, um, five people, team. Nobody showed. Can't open his business. It was a restaurant, barbecue restaurant in, um, San Diego. Um, by the way, great place. Um, one of our guys went to visit, um, and I was shocked. I was like, what? Something? Never. Like, the message didn't go through. He said, no, no, it did go through, but it was after a holiday or whatever it is, and people didn't read the message because they all claim that they saw it after the shift. And I couldn't blame them because it's a private tool. Well, uh, he missed the message. Under hundreds of messages he gets on a daily basis from his mother, his father, his friends, groups, whatever it is. So who can I blame when I'll have a purposely built tool used only for work? The excuse of I didn't see it is much harder to, uh, ah, use. So that's a loss of a business. One day out of, I don't know, 25 days a week he works. That's 5% loss on his volume in this month. For what? One message that didn't go through. So managers are suffering the most. And by the way, they have the biggest burnout managing shifts. Biggest burnout for managers. Biggest. These are the guys who would churn first, and these are the guys who is most hard to hire and hard to trust as a business owner. So. So burnout with managers is an even bigger pain point.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Absolutely. Let's take a reset. This is Jessica Miller Merrill, and you're listening to the Workology podcast, powered by Ace, the HR exam, and our work micro courses. Today I'm talking with Guy Weiss, CEO of zenzap, about effective employee communication. So bigger picture. So for anyone, not just, uh, those who are interested in zenzap, although I hope everybody will, you know, schedule a demo and, and learn more about you and what you do. But what communication best practices can managers do right now, even if they don't have your tool? To help make things more streamlined and just, um, less stressful, I recommend to

Guy Weiss: hire a tool built for work. Doesn't matter if it's Zenzap or Slack or Teams, because I don't see separation. You know, when you're, uh, you know, when you go to a party or with friends or dinner and you're kind of bored, everyone checks their emails, right? So you check your work inbox and then you move to maybe I got something from Amazon. Maybe I don't know it is or person. So people need to opt in and uh, opt out quickly. You can't do it with um, personal messaging apps. You just can't. You're always online, always on the go, always connected. I would recommend we start by exploring this market. Try to figure out which tool works best for you. And I think, um, I would put the attention on what tool can we adopt with zero learning curve, so anyone would use it immediately, the day after. And start by just moving those communications from personal to professional. Once you do the separation, 50% of the issues get away. Then you can boost with agents, with agentic, with search, with todos, with lots of features. These or other us or other alternatives will uh, obviously, um, provide. But the first step is to understand that you have a problem. Second step is to find a way to solve it. Third step is to adopt. And I think this is what I would suggest. I would suggest try to find a tool that fits your needs and you have special needs. Um, everyone has their own special needs. Every industry, every business, every business owner, how he sees structure. I would try to just go out and start learning and exploring and talking to people, talking to our employees, ask them, what if, what if we would have uh, uh, a tool for that? What if you wouldn't get those messages? What if I would save you tons of gigabytes on your phone from pictures being sent or private pictures being stored on your phone? So what if? So I would start with acknowledging the problem, searching for the alternative or for the solution. You have few alternatives. And try to adopt.

Jessica Miller Merrill: This is great. And I will say, like the number of random photos I have on my, my phone from WhatsApp, because it automatically downloads those. And I'm like, I have no idea who this dude is, but I'm in some WhatsApp group for professionals or friends or whatever. It's a real thing. Um, where can people go to learn more about you guy and what you're doing over at Zenzap?

Guy Weiss: Um, first of all, whoever wants to speak with me can connect. Just write me an email or LinkedIn. I try to respond to almost all of the messages going through and we get a lot. So, um, it's either me or one of the team. And then we escalate. So whoever wants to speak, we're open. Um, zenzap is easy. Just log into Search, zenzap, uh, work chat or Zenzap, um, on, um, you know, ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, uh, and you can find out you have lots of content on YouTube, uh, explanatory content. And, um, try to learn about team communication, less about zenzap, more about team communication. Then you choose your alternative. But as someone who works in this industry, I would. It's good for the industry. So anyone uses some sort of a tool and not use those private messaging apps.

Jessica Miller Merrill: Well, we'll link to your LinkedIn and then the Zenzap website in the show notes, as well as some other helpful resources for employee communication. But I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today about effective employee communication.

Guy Weiss: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica.

Jessica Miller Merrill: That is a wrap on, uh, today's conversation about employee communication burnout, workplace boundaries and the growing risks that come with relying on personal messaging apps to manage frontline teams. A big thank you to Guy Weiss for joining us and sharing practical insights and how organizations can create better, safer, clear and more intentional communication practices, specifically for your hourly and mobile first workforce. One thing that I was fascinated about because I don't use Snapchat is how prevalent Snapchat communication is for your hourly workforce. And yes, many managers and leaders are communicating with teams over Snapchat. You might not even know about that. As a note, I'll include, uh, some research around Snapchat and employees from Gen Z are finding that Snapchat is their preference as a digital native. So 40% of those surveyed from this research from Emerald are using Snapchat to build a relationship online with workplace leaders, so with their peers and also their leadership teams, including that in the show notes for this podcast and maybe talk to some of your leaders to see our employees creating groups, they probably are on Snapchat to talk and communicate and what kind of stuff is going down. Another takeaway from the episode is this. If communication is about sending effective messages, right, intentional messages, it's not about sending more messages. It's about building trust, protecting employees time and privacy, and creating a system that allows for operational efficiency and employee well being. Because those employees, especially our hourly workforce, doing out, doing the job out there in the field, they are incredibly important to the success of our business. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a colleague and leave us a review on wherever you listen to podcasts and for more resources, HR insights and conversations designed to help you lead smarter, visit workology.com thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Next time. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with another HR leader. Thank you for listening and joining the Workology podcast sponsored by ace, the HR Exam and our workology micro courses. Workology has a learning platform for HR certification, recertification and manager training. You can also check out our new Marketplace over at marketplace.workology.com this podcast is for the disruptive workplace leader who's tired of the status quo. I'm Jessica Miller Merrill. Until Next listen to workology.com and visit us to listen to all the episodes and catch up on the Workology Podcast.