Case studies:

The client

Founded in Sydney, Australia in 1932, Breville has become an iconic global brand that enhances people’s lives through thoughtful design and brilliant innovation, delivering kitchen products to more than 70 countries around the globe. 

Breville New Zealand uses product demonstrators in New Zealand as a key part of their Sales and Marketing approach to build awareness and drive sales of their products. These demonstrations are run at a range of Retail outlets including Noel Leeming and Harvey Norman, and typically are run on high foot-traffic days such as the weekend or leading into key trading periods. 

The challenges

Lack of control

Given demonstrator hours are only part time and weekly hours fluctuate trying to manage staff on direct contracts is not seen as viable given the high admin overhead and challenges around managing minimum hours in contracts.Traditionally, Breville had utilised specialist Demonstrator Agencies to provide temporary promotional staff but found this didn’t deliver the level of cost effectiveness and control they were looking for.

Breville Marketing & Channel Manager Umberto Lissignoli explains the struggles they had with traditional agencies;

“With traditional demonstrator agencies it felt like we still had to do a lot of the work around recruitment, rostering and training ourselves anyway but we were charged very high hourly rates and admin fees from the agencies as the middleman. We also often had to commit to minimum hour contracts which reduced our ability to be agile and impacted ROI. Control was also a challenge as we often didn't know which staff we were going to be getting, or if they even had turned up, and at times having too many people involved also felt key messaging was lost in translation.”

High turnover

To deliver powerful brand experiences and high sales conversion Breville are committed to a strong Brand Ambassador training program, so having high turnover of their casual Demonstrator team would come with a lot of overhead and reduce the quality of their staff. So whilst they wanted to engage workers on a casual basis, tapping into a workforce that has an element of consistency over time is a real challenge.

“In the past we lost great workers that we invested a lot of time training purely because we went through a patch of having not enough shifts to keep them busy and they had to find work elsewhere.” 

The solution

Self serve recruitment tool‍

Utilising the ‘Opportunities’ -feature, which is focused on finding ongoing or longer-term staff, Breville has full transparency and control over their hiring decisions. Applicants show up on the Opportunity along with details of their work history, ratings and reviews left by other businesses on Sidekicker, making it really easy to pick and choose the best workers. Where necessary, Breville can also get in touch with the workers directly by accessing their contact details on the platform to conduct an interview and assess their fit.

Sidekicker works in the background to ensure the Opportunity is attracting the required applicant levels both from the pre-qualified Sidekicks in the Marketplace, as well as external candidates through targeted SEEK ads. Breville will simply accept or pass the workers via the Opportunity, and Sidekicker will ensure the workers will have their profile set up with the required pre-employment checks. Once onboarded, Breville will assign them to the staff training program.

End-to-end rostering and payroll tool

Breville uses Sidekicker to manage their casual workforce all the way from recruitment to rostering and payroll. Onboarded Sidekicks are added into Breville’s private Talent Pools. Roster is posted onto the platform and sent out to Breville's private Talent Pools, separated by whether or not the Sidekicks have completed their training. 

Once the Sidekicks have completed their shifts, they submit timesheets via the Sidekicker App immediately notifying the Breville team, who will review and approve them on a weekly basis. 

Breville can increase worker pay rates beyond legal minimums by offering premium pay to experienced Product Demonstrators and providing bonuses for work-related expenses, all managed through one single platform.

The results

Breville New Zealand first started using the Sidekicker platform in August 2020, and over time has built a network of Brand Ambassadors across Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch, with over 20 Sidekicks working Breville New Zealand Brand Ambassador shifts in the lead up to Christmas 2023. 

The Sidekicker platform has not only allowed Breville to recruit high quality Brand Ambassadors into their program, but also retain them, with multiple current Sidekicks having worked for over 2 years for Breville and over 100 individual shifts each. The ability for Sidekicks to pick up other “non Breville” casual work shifts from the Sidekicker marketplace in between working with Breville has allowed them to keep an engaged workforce even through times when there may be few Breville shifts offered. 

“We absolutely love the Sidekicker platform and casual worker pool, and not having to go through a middleman gives us full control of our program and greatly reduces costs compared to traditional agencies we have worked with in the past. It allows us to recruit and manage our own product demonstrator casual workforce with a high retention rate, and get more demos out of our budget by reducing the cost soaked up by administration and high rates.”