Category: Featured News

Accelerating the Great Upgrade: Springshot’s Role in the New Tech-Enabled Workforce

Here’s what we know:

It hasn’t been easy to recover. 

The two-year global pandemic has altered so many facets of human life: How we work, what we do for a living, how and when we socialize, even what we eat and where we eat it.

In the workplace, a significant “brain drain” fundamentally shifted the workforce. Thanks to attractive early retirement packages, many older people left their jobs sooner than expected. Younger workers, who make up nearly half of the workforce, began finding new positions — often higher-paying — that more closely-align with their core values, such as support for mental and physical wellbeing and high ethical standards.

No industry has been immune to these changes, and a record number of Americans — 50 million — quit their jobs in the fall of 2021. At Springshot, we watched as this rollercoaster played out in our primary industry, commercial aviation, where airlines were forced to cancel and delay an unprecedented number of flights due to staffing shortages over the 2021 holiday season. By early 2022, the highly contagious Covid-19 Omicron variant stalled what had been the beginning of a labor recovery. 

Here’s where we’re going:

A turn is in the works. 

As virus case counts began declining in February and the world started to re-open in March, a renewed hope for economic recovery came into focus. The US government forecasts steady employment growth over the next 10 years. Despite high inflation, consumer spending is strong and travel is picking back up, too. Showing their resiliency, businesses added record numbers of employees in January.

Recovery is happening, and it’s reaching all industries. Airlines, restaurants, hotels, and big corporations are hiring by the thousands. Hourly employees are receiving signing bonuses for the first time in their careers as the market for talent is more competitive than ever for labor-intensive roles. 

Another striking facet of the recovery has emerged: Companies are becoming smarter and seek to better motivate and support their mobile workers. Through enabling new technologies, business leaders are actively setting up employees for success, which is improving output and reducing employee turnover.

We’re helping businesses get there:

In a world where people are more than ready to begin working together in person, learning in schools, eating out at restaurants, and flying across the globe, Springshot has emerged as a powerful tool to support the workers who form the backbone of these industries. 

Thanks to Springshot, we have been able to better communicate with our teams, which drives engagement, while ensuring the right work is being completed at the right time and right place. Springshot has not only empowered our teams to optimize their time, but they have enabled us to align internally and with our airline customers on a closed loop auditing platform, resulting in system leadership in quality.
Roman, CEO of a cleaning company

Springshot’s very first mission was to support a team who cleaned a plane. The components of a successful “aircraft turn” are similar to what’s needed to clean and maintain a restaurant, hotel, school, office, or, frankly, any space where human needs for cleanliness and safety must be met. At its simplest definition, this is janitorial work, and this commercial sector is ready for its dynamic upgrade. 

Janitorial is just one aspect of Springshot’s expertise within integrated facilities management. We connect remote workforces in meaningful ways, all the while collecting data to improve the future of work. Businesses benefit from our advanced tools to streamline facilities management and improve the integration of human and technical systems, including enhanced employee engagement. Teams using Springshot motivate each other to be productive by easily tracking the work that needs to get done and by seamlessly signing off on completed tasks.

“This is Springshot’s breakout moment because we are poised to revolutionize cleaning in any setting. We’ve unified our product offerings, ramped up our data collection processes, and escalated our branding,” said Springshot Founder and CEO Doug Kreuzkamp. “We’re excited about what’s ahead, including automatic mission assignments and our growth into the janitorial and facilities management sectors.”

Springshot provides us with everything we need to manage and oversee our facilities and janitorial teams in one place. Its incredibly easy-to-use interface masks the complex data model and robust engine that lay underneath. From knowing which of my hard assets need to be fixed, what areas need to be cleaned and the current location of my entire team, Springshot connects everything and keeps everyone on the same page.
John Bagnas, Delta Air Lines

With Springshot, just imagine:

  • What if you could ensure restroom trash cans were never overflowing and the soap and paper dispensers were consistently provisioned?
  • What if paper cleaning logs on the back of restroom doors were a thing of the past?
  • Imagine that instead of cleaning the same office three times a day due to an arbitrary schedule, your janitorial team partnered with a digital assistant that directed them to the right place at the right time to clean throughout the day?
  • What if your workers had meaningful and friendly competition that actually made their work more efficient, productive, and fun?
  • Imagine that you have real time insight into every work task that is performed during a mission, and you can use this data to make your whole crew more competent in performing their work, translating into reduced turnover and money saved.

Springshot’s support for workers and businesses is, well, endless, and our platform is ready to assist in any environment that requires high quality facilities management: We’re here to help your company lift off.

Read the second part in this blog series for a more in depth look at how Springshot supports integrated facilities management in office buildings.

When Intrinsic Motivation Meets Environmental Sustainability: How Springshot is Inspiring Airport Workers to Create a Greener Future

What are airports without their operations teams? What are these teams without motivation? What happens to airlines when their team members feel disconnected and uninspired?

At Springshot, we have long pondered these questions. It’s embedded in our DNA to solve these challenges. In turn, our platform removes the ambiguity around collecting data, inspires and connects remote teams and enhances workers’ sense of autonomy. As a result, Springshot users are better-connected, better-engaged and better-collect data points that drive operational benefits.

But how do we “bridge this gap between the analog human being and the data-driven world of where we want to be?” Doug Kreuzkamp, Founder and CEO of Springshot, asked in a recent #rebootaviation webinar. Specifically, “How do we get our airport operations colleagues to collect and use this data in a way that drives big change?” 

One of the easiest ways is to emphasize and operationalize concepts that workers care about most. Let’s take climate change, an existential threat we will face for decades to come. Taking into account that more than half of today’s airport workers are from the Millennial and Gen Z generations—generations who care deeply about the environment—one of the easiest ways to activate digital-thinking is to tangibly show how individual actions and decisions have a measurable and positive impact on the environment, said Kreuzkamp.

70% of Millennials are more likely to work for a company that has a strong environment agenda.
Fast Company Millennial Survey, 2019

The path connecting airlines and the environment hasn’t always been clear. For the aviation community, reducing its carbon footprint has been an ongoing goal. The industry hopes to reach net-zero carbon emissions by the year 2060. 

For a long time, frontline staff working at the airport didn’t know where to start. “The carbon emissions problem was so big that as an airport worker it was difficult to measurably tie one’s actions to any tangible environmental goals,” Kreuzkamp said. 

We now have a place to begin. Through the wealth of individual data points that Springshot collects, we can count how many bags of recycling are collected from an airplane or measure how quickly workers connect ground power units to aircraft to reduce fuel emissions. When airline workers see the linkage between their individual actions and how they impact broader macro sustainability goals, they feel connected, confident and want to work harder. The result is higher user engagement within the Springshot platform, which equates to better data, analytics, efficiency and predictability for the aviation community.

How do we get there?

When Kreuzkamp—a self-described data nerd—realized the vast amount of data points that can be collected and associated with individual team members in airport operations, he knew he had to find a way to motivate team members to collect and use that data. Self-Determination Theory, a leading psychological theory on human motivation, became the core framework upon which his team built the Springshot platform. 

The key takeaways of the theory, first developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, are the positive impacts of intrinsic motivation (versus extrinsic motivation) and the common ingredients that produce this desired state. When we are intrinsically motivated, “our health, our resilience and our outlook are far better,” Kreuzkamp said. “By intrinsic motivation, I’m referring to those actions that we take because we innately enjoy them and through which we find personal satisfaction, like walking our dog or coaching our kid’s sports team.”

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, refers to actions taken in order to gain an external reward like money or fame. 

The science couldn’t be clearer on this. To start the positive flywheel moving, to keep it going perpetually, we want to create environments where people are driven intrinsically to act.
Doug Kreuzkamp, Founder and CEO of Springshot

Based on Self Determination Theory, three conditions must be present to make intrinsic motivation flow: Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence. 

“When we have Autonomy, we feel that we take actions because we choose to take them. When we have Relatedness, we feel that we belong to a community that we value and in return that community values us,” Kreuzkamp explained. “Finally, when we feel Competent, we have an understanding of what’s expected of us and receive feedback that confirms we’ve mastered those expectations.”

The big challenge for airlines comes from the last component: Competence. This is especially true when seeking to intrinsically motivate people to consistently take actions that promote environmental sustainability. How can airlines help workers take individual actions to meet sustainability goals when they don’t even know what the individual actions are?

In Comes the Data: Springshot’s Core Service

Here’s the main idea: By setting clear expectations, such as how long it should take to clean the main cabin of an aircraft, workers are motivated to accomplish individual goals. They receive instructions via “Missions” sent to the Springshot platform directly on their phone. Once completed, Missions are transformed into data.

 “Given the number of objects that need to be cleaned on an aircraft and the number of individual cleaning requirements for each object and the common data points that identify who did the cleaning where and when, a single 30-minute cabin cleaning mission alone, literally generates 10,000 unique data points,” he said. “Even your most basic turn of a narrow body aircraft can involve over 10 teams performing more than 100 discrete tasks over a 45-minute period.”

 This data then helps Springshot craft S.M.A.R.T. goals—“specific,” “measurable,” “actionable,” “realistic,” and “timely”—for each client. Four phases of the S.M.A.R.T. objectives move clients toward meeting these goals: templatize, distribute, collaborate and reflect.

First, “In advance, operational data is used to build templates that serve as tactical game plans to meet operational needs. For example, based on the aircraft type and the passenger load,” said Kreuzkamp. As a result, “a choreographed template will be built for all airport ops team members to execute the aircraft turn.”

Then, via Springshot’s intuitive and design-friendly interface, the S.M.A.R.T. objectives are distributed to individual crew members in the form of Missions. Each Mission includes clear and specific expectations as to what actions each crew member should take.

The crew next collaborates via the platform to communicate with one another. Here’s where the data comes in: “The platform will discreetly and unobtrusively collect data that confirms the S.M.A.R.T. goals have been achieved. In parallel, data being generated by sensors will also be fed into the system to confirm individual expectations have been met,” said Kreuzkamp.

Finally, as a means of reflection, feedback is provided to each crew member real-time on how they performed their tasks. Springshot can “use nudging strategies to help team members course correct when they fall short of their goals,” Kreuzkamp said.

Results with Meaning

Linking back to the positive impact on sustainability, the best way is to tie a few collected data points to the bigger picture goals, according to Kreuzkamp. For example, did the pushback driver push the aircraft on time? Did the ramp lead hook up the ground power unit within two minutes after the aircraft blocked? Did the lav driver properly use a bucket to prevent a hazardous spill on the ramp? And how many bags of recycling did the cabin cleaning team remove from the aircraft?

“All of these actions help remove or help reduce our carbon footprint. By providing the ability to capture this data and share feedback on these micro actions, we can positively impact the environment,” Kreuzkamp concluded. “You will effectively close the loop on Self-Determination Theory to drive sustainability forward, your team will be acting autonomously, they will feel connected and related to a broader community that they value. They will have tangible proof that they are individual contributors to solving this existential threat that we all face as human beings.”

We’d love to help make your company and workers thrive via data. Contact us today!

Springshot Optimizes People Moving at Super Bowl LV

As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers showed their prowess over the Kansas City Chiefs at Super Bowl LV so did Springshot’s newly revamped online platform that proved crucial in getting fans to and from their seats quickly and efficiently before and after the championship game. 

Springshot, which partnered with SP+ Gameday, a guest logistics vendor, to disperse and track the electric golf carts and wheelchairs used by remote workforces to move guests and event staff, unveiled a new custom interface built for SP+ emphasizing structured data capture, intuitive design and ease of use. SP+ members created 198 Springshot accounts among frontline members, dispatchers, coordinators, leaders, supervisors and administrators. 

We delivered on our No. 1 priority to deliver seamless guest logistics by having electric golf cart drivers capture their hourly guest data via our mobile platform to ensure efficiency and proper delivery and placement of golf carts and wheelchairs throughout the event. We also helped dramatically improve communication and workflow between SP+ members scattered throughout the stadium by allowing for direct phone calls between cart drivers, dispatchers, and guests, enhancing the overall experience for partners and users.

This completely renewed platform resulted in accurate people counts, with golf cart drivers and wheelchair associates moving over 700 fans into the stadium before the game, and transporting over 580 people out during and after the last two quarters. In total, golf cart drivers traveled 52 miles before, during and after the game by accepting over 500 missions via the Springshot mobile app.

The vibe was really good. The fans were very happy to be there. Knowing that our operation can support an elite event like this, as something as complex like the Super Bowl, it is so cool. Our application is helping SP+ better serve guests.
Mark Pantilon, Springshot’s General Manager of North America, who attended the event

Necessary Covid-19-related protocols resulted in caution among SP+ staff and Super Bowl fans with only about one-third of the usual fanbase allowed inside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. About 25,000 fans, including 7,500 vaccinated front-line workers, and 30,000 cardboard cutouts watched as Quarterback Tom Brady’s Buccaneers defeated the Chiefs, 31 to 9. 

Due to Covid-19, SP+ staff committed to sanitizing carts and golf carts between usage, cleaning 488 golf carts and 197 wheelchairs. In addition, masks, health assessments and physical distancing were required, while staff completed our Springshot training remotely via video, rather than in the stadium, as in years past. 

Mission Super Bowl LV

Since the last Super Bowl in 2020, we moved quickly to re-imagine our interface for passenger counts in order to address the data capture needs of SP+, and make the experience even better for partners and users. Not only is it imperative to easily collect and analyze data on golf cart and wheelchair usage by where people are picked up and dropped off, but it also must be collected safely. 

Over the year between the championship football games, we committed to testing the best interface to capture passenger data. We began by exploring passive data capture using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and IoT sensors. But given the dimensions and layout of golf carts, with low ceilings that couldn’t support ceiling-mounted cameras to detect bodies on seats, we discovered that seat-based sensors would not work to count ridership due to the thickness of cart cushions. 

As a result of this research, we updated with a new interface that is simple for anyone to use for data tracking with “minimal clicks”; it efficiently collects the data critical to understanding how and when people using electric golf carts move in and out of the stadium with a phone mounted to the dash of the golf cart itself. Our app is easy for golf cart drivers to tally when a person climbs aboard and provides an interactive tactile response of a light vibration and a color change when data is entered. This helps create a gamification of the app which encourages users to collaborate and share data, and it eases communication with dispatchers and coordinators.

“This year was an enhancement from last year. We can count passengers by the hour. We saw a lot more cart service mission interactions, meaning ingress versus egress. You could see the carts move into the stadium. It was really, really cool,” said Pantilon.

One golf cart driver likened Springshot to a ride-share app given the ease of use for data capture capabilities: “Someone sends me a mission, I go and pick up the people, and then I confirm it on my phone,” he explained.

The new interface also includes improvements in collaboration and communication via direct phone calling, one-on-one instant messaging, and the use of customized channels for mobile teams. As a result, SP+ staff no longer needed to communicate using two-way radios, whose signals can cut out when underneath the stadium. They directly spoke with individual teammates, cart drivers and/or agents escorting VIPs. The main dispatch — and team coordinators for the first time this year — assign missions on Springshot, too. 

“With team members who don’t work together on a regular basis and on this scale, it’s amazing to be able to do that across an entire operation. We can still get our work done together thanks to Springshot,” Pantilon said. 

We once again worked as a time saver for the SP+ event staff by creating a “Crew Members Staging” report at halftime, correlated via the drop off locations from prior guests. This helped staff place enough golf carts at appropriate gates in the third and fourth quarters and ready to move guests to parking lots as they left the game. 

Another exciting improvement featured on-demand requests for carts by fans. Using a QR Code scanned directly from their phones, fans connected to a hotline to request a cart or wheelchair from anywhere; dispatch created a mission for a SP+ member to serve the requestor. 

“Seeing everyone allocated and ready to go, that’s a nice feeling. If we can make the guest experience a lot better and help the service providers perform their job a lot better through the Springshot platform, I’m up for it. At the end of the day, we did our job there,” said Pantilon. 

More efficiencies ahead

Our Springshot app is applicable to many other industries, such as aviation, healthcare, and food service. Customizable platforms empower these workforces and track complex data sets specific to their industry goals. And, importantly, all the data collected by Springshot becomes part of a bigger data dashboard that companies can access at any point. 

Springshot’s excellence is scalable for all the operations behind the scenes running and organizing large events, and our work is not done when it comes to the large sporting events. We plan to enhance our platform for the big game in Greater Los Angeles, California in February 2022. 

In addition to managing the workflow of remote electric golf cart and wheelchair associates, the game-related opportunities the platform can help with via data collection are endless — from cleaning concessions, restrooms, and seating areas to security, janitorial, equipment setup and catering. Stay tuned, and contact us for more information about how your business data can be collected and optimized!

A Brave New (and Clean) World

Necessitated by COVID-19, three technology trends are digitally transforming cleaning operations. Through specialized sensors/IoT, enterprise-grade collaboration platforms for physical tasks and open networks that encourage platform integration, janitorial operations are moving away from static and isolated workflows to dynamic and collaborative ecosystems. Operators are beginning to reap the financial, health and productivity benefits as a result.

Introducing Springshot 2.0

A Planetary Brand for a Global Platform

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong exited the Apollo 11 spacecraft and became the first man to set foot on the moon.

While Armstrong was celebrated for taking those pioneering first steps, he did so because hundreds worked to land him safely. The names of these people have been forgotten by the history books. Yet, each individual performed a critical role in the mission and the smallest misstep would have had dire consequences. Thanks to these unsung heroes, NASA accomplished things that few people thought possible.

Just like that mission, millions of individuals work tirelessly each day to make airports, hotels, and other operations run smoothly. From transporting people in wheelchairs to cleaning restrooms, their efforts tangibly impact our daily lives. Rarely seen or celebrated, they form the backbone of our travel, hospitality and service industries. They are the reason that complex operations thrive. They should be recognized and rewarded for their actions.

When we created Springshot in 2011, we had a mission to equip these workers to do their best. We hoped to inspire them and showcase their strengths. We chose space as the theme for our brand. Going to (and surviving in!) space takes courage and requires teams to be connected and collaborative. In addition, even when asked to perform mundane tasks, each person must feel engaged and empowered to make decisions. To honor our users, we chose an ascending rocket as our logo.

Like any organization, we have evolved. Through the privilege of supporting people across millions of missions over the last nine years, we have realized that Springshot is less about a rocket being propelled into space and more about connecting people to form cohesive teams. Bound together by our Mission Control, workers operate within the orbit of communication, creating efficient, knowledgeable teams that can tackle even the most difficult of missions. These discoveries have led us to replace our beloved rocket with a unique design that embodies the Springshot community tightly orbiting a shared planet.

While our brand is evolving, our commitment to our original mission remains steadfast. We remain a people-first company. We appreciate that in a world of artificial intelligence, the most important intelligence remains uniquely human. We recognize that machines and technology cannot function without the expertise of the people who use them. We seek to elevate people, connect distributed teams and motivate each person to be their best every single day.

Today, we are proud to unveil our new branding and website. Staying true to our original space theme, with every word, color, and design, we hope to inspire crew members, teams and companies to celebrate their collective achievements. We are incredibly proud of each person who has worked to bring our vision to life and are grateful to have had the opportunity to serve teams across six continents.

Thank you for being a part of the Springshot family. We sincerely hope you enjoy.

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