For restaurant managers, employee problems have a way of happening at the worst possible time.
An employee might arrive 10 minutes late on a busy Friday night, when the restaurant is packed and a manager has little time to stop and fill out paperwork. By the end of the shift, a manager might document the tardiness — or decide the employee worked hard enough afterward to let it slide.
At another location, a different manager might write up the same infraction and cite the company handbook.
It’s the kind of inconsistency experts say can create headaches for businesses, particularly if an employee later challenges a disciplinary action or termination.
Two Connecticut employment lawyers believe technology can help address the problem.
Ryan O’Donnell and Eliot Gersten, attorneys with Hartford law firm Pullman & Comley, have teamed with restaurant operators to launch COMP, a Farmington-based startup developing an app that uses artificial intelligence to help restaurant managers document employee incidents and apply workplace policies more consistently.
The app’s AI assistant, called Kat, allows managers to describe an incident by voice or text. It uses the restaurant company’s policies, along with applicable state and federal rules, to help categorize and document the incident. The system can also track positive employee performance.
O’Donnell said the idea grew in part out of his labor and employment law practice, where employers facing lawsuits sometimes insisted they...
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