The story behind rikta

Written by
Bruce Mackenzie - Founder of rikta
Published on
August 9, 2024

It's been a while since I was named Australia's best boss and invited onto A Current Affair with Ray Martin. Of course we took time to compare our fabulous lids, but we also discussed what it takes to be a great boss and create a place where employees love to work.  

This photo was taken around the same time, and since then, I've built and sold two businesses, POSPro and Humanforce, both within the Frontline Workforce sphere. It's always bugged me that while I was focusing on those businesses, no one had figured out a way to help Frontline Workforces to improve their Employer Branding and win their employees and candidates hearts, en masse.

Experience taught me, that when I looked after my teams, they gave more to the business than I could ever have imagined; their loyalty and passion was incredible, and they helped me firsthand to grow my businesses by introducing me to amazing candidates within their network that fitted the company culture and aligned to our values. In short, my enthusiasm for their wellbeing resulted in my businesses reaping the rewards.  

I've spent years reading, breathing and bearing witness to how a great Employer Experience (EX) playbook can equate to a great Customer Experience (CX), but I knew it was a one dimensional way to look at the world. Once I stepped away from Humanforce I started to craft my next business idea.  Then I got familiar with Employer Branding. For the last 6 months, I've been working out a way to codify Employer Branding for the Australian Frontline Workforce so they can be more successful in their field. It starts with finding the 'right' people for your business but it's so much more than that. It's a complicated strategy, made even more complicated when you're trying to design it for a workforce as diverse as people working in hospo, retail and other frontline workforces.

Today I'm introducing you to rikta.

We're at the very beginning of our journey but my small and incredibly passionate team have been building an experience for the Frontline Workforce that helps businesses attract and retain awesome team members, who go above and beyond their call of duty to deliver great customer experiences. In return, frontline employees have wonderful career opportunities and put simply, love coming to work every day.  

Rikta starts with culture-led hiring and is complimented by better communication tools to help businesses to build a vibrant workplace where teams stand out from the competition.

The problem is real  

We're spurred on by an endemic that is real across the hospitality industry for example; time and time again we have heard hiring managers say they experience a 30% churn rate of new starters in the first 60 days of onboarding. What a waste of time, resources and hard costs to suffer those results every time you hire, let alone the impact that those bad hiring decisions have on the broader team who are left to lift the load.

We're here to help.

You can read more about what we're up to on our website or get in touch if you'd like to know more.

We're also open to a chat if you want to be part of our journey as early users of the product, we've got some incredible businesses on board already who are helping us shape the experiences we're delivering to solve the challenges these frontline workforces are facing day-to-day.

We're so pumped about our mission and we can't wait to hear how we can help you.  

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Join us on our mission to ensure a great working experience for all.