Aarhus-based scaleup offers a solution to the industry-wide worker shortage in restaurants, hotels, and bars
Barma, a booming EdTech company based in Aarhus, are launching a new collaboration with BFA under the headline “safe-to-work”.
After the pandemic, the hospitality industry is facing record-high worker shortages. The startup believes, that creating a better and safer work environment will help the industry attract and retain employees.
Psychological, chemical and ergonomic work environment
Safe-to-work is a three-parted online, on-demand course with the headline ’work environment’.
“It is a helping hand to an industry with seminal challenges when it comes to attracting and retaining employees. They are competing for the same group of employees with other industries, and in some cases, they have better work environments, and so they become the more attractive choice” explains Simon Gad Andresen, who co-founded Barma in 2017 together with CEO, Lasse Nørremark Kristensen.
The new course gives employees at bars, hotels, and restaurants knowledge and tools to create a better work environment. The three parts of the course are divided into 1) the psychological environment, where they are trained to understand and stop harassment and bullying, 2) the chemical environment, and 3) the ergonomic environment including how to work with the least possible strain on the body.
Simon explains, “a good work environment will slow the need for continuous and constant employment interviews, simply because if you have an attractive and safe work environment your good employees will stay for longer.”
Drawing on their own experiences
In a study from the Danish Institute for Human Rights, three out of four apprentices say, that during their education, they’ve never been taught about prevention of-, or how to handle sexual harassment. This is one of the topics, Barma’s new course is targeted.
“I can easily recognize, that it can be a rough environment to work in. If you are exposed to intoxicated people in the middle of the night, they can be really tough to be around. And if you do so every day for years, you can start to believe, that this is normal – and it is not normal, and it should not be normal,” explains co-founder, Simon, who worked in the industry himself.
Barma’s ambition
When businesses in the hospitality industry previously invested in the training of their employees, the best option was physical courses. For the past two years, HORESTA provided courses to about 200 restaurants, bars, hotels, etc. Barma delivers their courses digitally, and therefore, their goal together with HORESTA and the rest of BFA is to up that number to 1.000 over the next two years – an increase of 400%.
The future of the EdTach-startup is bright. With a strong team behind them, the two founders are expecting to grow Barma into an international success within the next year.
“Our next goal is to move Barma from being a successful national business to being a successful global business. We believe that we create unique value for this industry and everyone in it and that we contribute to creating a better place to work. We don’t see any reason to stop providing value when we hit the borders around us,” ends Simon.
And with new investments from Vækstfonden plus a syndicate of experienced investors and a nomination to EY’s Entrepreneur of The Year 2021 in the category Start-up/Scaleup, they are experiencing tremendous support on the journey towards that goal.
