An action plan for our riders

We regularly send a pulse check survey to all employees (obviously including our rider crew) and would like to say a heartfelt Thank You for their contribution to identifying 5 areas that should be improved!

Here, we outline concrete actions we have taken and initiatives we are about to implement in order to affect immediate and long-term improvements. Have no doubt: we take the feedback very seriously. ❤️

First off, let’s have a quick look at how riders experience Gorillas as a workplace: In our recent rider survey, asking riders how likely they are to recommend working with Gorillas to friends or family on a scale from 0-10:

• 90% answered 7 or higher.
• 59% even answered 9 or 10. Main reasons for them were culture, environment and people.
• 10% are not satisfied and have voiced concerns, mainly regarding these 5 topics:
  1. rider support
  2. scheduling of shifts
  3. bag weight
  4. payroll & tips
  5. communication of warnings

Multiple work streams are ongoing to improve these areas and Gorillas as a workplace.

Here’s how:

We’re streamlining as many daily interactions as possible by introducing two new apps.

A big change for the better will be brought about by Quinyx, a new shift tool, which is already in use in Germany and will soon be rolled out globally. With this app, riders are reminded to punch in and out for 100% accurate timekeeping, enter absence requests and swap shifts. Also, shift preferences are a feature of the app and during the first weeks, 78% of indicated preferences and wishes were accommodated in shift planning.

We are also about to roll out a new rider app, which the rider crew can use to contact the rider support team directly via chat function and easily split orders and tips among each other, see timeline above.

Here’s what we’ll do about each of the 5 areas of improvement:

We want to be there for riders if they have any questions, problems or requests. To catch up with the amount of daily requests, we have staffed up our rider support team & are continuously working on solving tickets faster and decreasing response time to requests (we’ve currently reached less than 12 hours… and counting). Shift swaps and absence requests will be much easier and there will be an additional new chat support function in the new rider app.

On top of the aforementioned new functions (shift preferences, absence requests and shift-swapping), we have recently started hiring City Rider Ops Supervisors, who are directly responsible for coordinating rider schedules. We will involve regional teams more in scheduling, so that all riders know who their immediate go-to person is.

Some orders are substantial—and we are well aware that it’s riders who shift these heavy loads. To address the issue of orders that are heavy, we have started trying out smaller backpacks and added weight indicator dashboards to the warehouses. If the load is too heavy for a rider, there is of course no question that they can refuse to carry the order alone. As a solution, the option to split large orders will soon be implemented in the tech, including the rider app, picker app and warehouse dashboard. Warehouse is staff trained accordingly. By the end of the year, orders (and online tips) can be easily split between riders.

Regarding pay and tips, this is a top priority! Riders now receive immediate access to their payslips upon payout. Also, there is complete control over timekeeping accuracy by punching in and out via app. Within the Gorillas app, it will be made possible for customers to tip higher amounts by August and they will also be able to add a tip post-order in September. A tip-splitting option for split orders will follow later this year.

To lift communication issues especially regarding missed shifts, we are standardizing the no-show warning process with riders. It’s super easy to log an absence request via app. If this hasn’t happened, an email with a notice is sent to the absent rider. We are working on a clear and universal Code of Conduct for all Gorillas employees across the board, which will be out in July.

Once again, we’d like to say Thank You to everyone who contributed their incredibly important concerns to this survey! True to our value to always be bold, you can expect real and tangible progress from us!

Stay tuned!