J D Wetherspoon · Employee app
A digital hub for employees of a major UK hospitality brand
myJDW is an employee experience platform (EXP) built for J D Wetherspoon, which brings together communications, scheduling visibility, training materials, wellbeing resources and operational tools in one place.
8+
Years, ongoing partnership
40,000+
Employees served by the application
2,000+
Policies and documents in the platform
435,000
Monthly messages via employee chat
Overview
J D Wetherspoon is one of the UK’s largest pub chains, with a major digital presence spanning its pub, hotel, investor, franchising and recruitment sites. Filter has worked with J D Wetherspoon for more than 8 years and has been its embedded engineering partner for the past 2, working on key platform and custom development projects.
Built, maintained and continuously enhanced by Filter, myJDW is the central digital hub for all 40,000+ J D Wetherspoon employees, giving them the information they need to do their jobs. Available as both a native mobile app and a progressive web app (PWA), it holds staff rotas, lets employees clock in and out of shifts, and provides audit results, training and operational materials. It also offers wellbeing support, discounts and benefits, and an instant messaging tool for staff communication.
To make the platform as useful as possible, Filter built Daisy, a chatbot inside myJDW that helps staff quickly find information, documents and policies through a conversational interface. myJDW also connects through APIs to other systems Filter has built for JDW: mySchedule, the labour forecasting and rota management system used across the chain; myIntegration, which imports employee records into JDW’s systems; and myAuth, the single sign-on (SSO) system that controls access to myJDW.
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One source of truth for operations
The platform holds 800+ standard operating procedures (SOPs) for staff in every J D Wetherspoon pub, so each one follows the same operational standard.
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Optimised for every screen and device
The app is fully responsive, so staff can use it on the go instead of being tied to a desk.
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Notifications and alerts
Managers can use the app to send push notifications to employees to notify them of schedule changes, available shifts, operational updates and general communications.
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Shift Clock
Shift Clock is a companion Android app built by Filter for the tablets used in pubs. It integrates with mySchedule so employees can clock in and out against their rota, and shift data then flows into mySchedule and on to payroll and HR systems. It’s ideal for employees who don’t have a smartphone or prefer not to use a personal device at work.
Built on a modern, reliable stack
myJDW is built on solid and trusted platforms and frameworks and operated from a single codebase for efficient code changes.
Laravel powers the app across iOS and Android on a single codebase.
Next.js delivers the app as a PWA for users who don’t want the mobile version.
AWS hosts the service, with monitoring and disaster recovery built in.
A WordPress backend that supports pub-level and company-wide changes, updates and communications..
Results
Over the years myJDW has become a business-critical application, replacing outdated intranets, spreadsheets, paper forms and printed materials with a single hub that employees access from their own devices. More than 40,000 J D Wetherspoon staff use myJDW every day to check rotas, swap shifts, clock in and out, view audit scores and bonus letters, access training and book holidays. They can also view payslips and message field-based and head office colleagues, all in one place. Filter and JDW continue to enhance the platform, most recently adding WhatsApp-style messaging for one-to-one and group conversations with staff.