ODEON Cinemas Group is Europe's largest cinema operator and is part of AMC, the biggest movie exhibition company in the world.
ODEON has been a global customer of Quinyx since 2018; our software is used by the company in Norway, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and in the Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
In the UK and Ireland, ODEON has 116 cinemas and employs more than 3500 people. Rachel Horman-Brown, Head of Customer Engagement & Experience and Jason Neild, Cinema Support Advisor explain how Quinyx continues to make a difference to ODEON’s workforce and wider business.
Blockbuster releases and surprise hits – managing the industry’s peaks and troughs
We’ll normally schedule shifts on a Monday and Tuesday for our ‘week start’, which for us is Friday, so there’s a short window between planning and the week getting underway.
Quinyx has really helped us to be agile in our scheduling; we’re able to respond to customer demand, and the peaks and troughs of our industry. We might be expecting a quiet week, and then there’ll be a film that really takes off and exceeds expectation. The teams in the cinemas can add shifts at last minute; they’ll use Qmail to update colleagues, letting them know they should log into the app if they’re keen to take extra hours. And if we know there’s a big blockbuster coming up, we’re able to plan accordingly.
Quinyx gives us the flexibility we need and provides us with group-wide visibility of how we're allocating resource, which helps ensure efficiency.
Work-life balance and easy communication
Our colleagues in the cinemas really enjoy using the app. They can easily access their schedules for the week and can quickly swap shifts if they need to, which benefits their work-life balance. In the UK, more than 95% of colleagues use the app on the day of their shift; 99% use it either on the day, or within seven days before a shift – and the numbers in Ireland are very similar. There is the option for our team members to access their schedules on a desktop, but most of them log into the app because it is so easy to use.
Qmail is also a great tool for our teams to communicate with colleagues. While we’re conscious of not sharing masses of information outside of working hours, we use Qmail to send out our bi-weekly newsletter, for example, which aims to keep everyone up-to-date with what’s happening in the business and helps with engagement and then we use it for updates regarding shifts and schedules.
A long-standing relationship
We’ve always had a good working relationship with the Quinyx team. As we’ve used the system for so long now, it generally runs very smoothly, and any issues that might crop up are easily resolved. They’re always very friendly and quick to get back to us, as and when we need them.