<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=395330474421690&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
otc-bg

Our best offer of the year is back!

Up to 8 months free on Payroll & All-in-One plan
claim offer

How this Five Guys franchise group reduced turnover from 150% to 42%

Brian Charyn is Executive Director of Operations at Sheridan Investments, a Five Guys franchisee group with 18 locations across New Jersey and Florida. Sheridan Investments adopted Workstream in November 2020. When the company acquired seven new stores in the St. Pete and Clearwater area in early 2026, Workstream was the first platform deployed.

“Workstream plus creating a great culture, our franchise was recognized for how low our New Jersey turnover was. We got it down into the 40s.”

Brian Charyn

Executive Director of Operations, Sheridan Investments
The problem

A week to fill a role, turnover over 150%, and paper onboarding

About Five Guys

Five Guys is a well-known American fast-food chain famous for its made-to-order burgers, fresh-cut fries, and no-frills, ingredient-first approach. Founded in 1986, it has grown into a major player in the fast-casual burger space, with locations across the United States and internationally.

Locations: ~1,500
Industry: Restaurants

Before Workstream, Sheridan Investments relied on Talent Reef and Indeed. Talent Reef was tied into the Five Guys website application flow but, as Brian put it, “wasn’t keeping up with the times.” Job postings were duplicating without anyone cleaning them up, and communication went through the platform rather than direct text or email, which meant reaching a candidate required waiting for a callback.

Filling an open position took “about a week,” and turnover was at industry standard — over 100 percent, often closer to 140 to 150 percent. Without visibility into how many applications each store was receiving or whether GMs were reviewing them, Brian had no easy way to hold managers accountable. The result was that managers hired whoever walked through the door because they felt they had no other choice.

Onboarding was paper-based and inconsistent across locations.

What we've solved

Faster first contact, more applicants, and consistent onboarding

Sheridan Investments replaced Talent Reef with Workstream across all 18 locations, gaining real-time candidate messaging, a bigger applicant pool, direct manager accountability, and standardized electronic onboarding.

icon - 2024-01-19T141509.496

Real-time messaging

“The real-time texting and emailing was probably the most exciting part about it,” Brian says. A candidate who just applied could get a text before leaving a competing interview. Speed of first contact changed which candidates Sheridan Investments could win.

icon - 2023-12-05T172204.171-2

Application volume and manager accountability

Workstream generated significantly more applicants than the prior setup. “When you have a lot of applications, you feel as if you could say no to someone,” Brian says. “That’s pretty powerful.” It also gave Brian direct visibility into GM behavior: “All it takes is logging in and within 10 seconds I could see a store has 50 applications they haven’t looked at. GMs knowing that we know how many they’re getting is powerful also.”

applicant experience icon

Electronic onboarding

I-9s, W-2s, and the employee handbook with digital signatures are all handled through Workstream, standardizing the process across every location. “I know I can fly to Florida tomorrow and see an orientation in Naples and know it’s going to look the same as the one in New Jersey,” Brian says.

icon (20)

Fast acquisition onboarding

When Sheridan took over seven stores in the Clearwater market — locations that had operated without standardized hiring processes for 18 years — they were on Workstream within a week.

72%

reduction in turnover, from 150% to 42%

43%

reduction in time to hire, from 1 week to 4 days

THE RESULTS

Time-to-hire cut to four days, turnover down to 42.5%

  • Time-to-hire: from roughly one week to about four days. Some hires happen the same day, when managers text a candidate immediately after they apply.
  • Turnover: from 140–150% down to 42.5%. Brian calculated it from his own termination data — 17 employees per store across 18 locations is 306 staff; five terminations every two weeks is 130 a year. “That’s 42 and a half percent turnover,” he says. Five Guys recognized Sheridan Investments for the improvement in New Jersey.
  • Consistent onboarding across all 18 locations, including newly acquired markets.
  • Clearwater market fully onboarded in one week — seven stores that had run without standardized hiring processes for 18 years.
  • Better applicant selectivity through volume: managers moved from hiring out of desperation to hiring out of choice.

See how Workstream can help you manage and pay your hourly workforce

Book a demo

Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information

Before we discuss the right to limit and the right to opt-out, we must first define personal information and how it relates to sensitive personal information.

Personal information is any data that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked to you or your household. A few examples of personal information include:

  • Name or nickname
  • Email address
  • Purchase history
  • Browsing history
  • Location data
  • Employment data
  • IP address
  • Profiles businesses create about you, including pseudonymous profiles (“user1234”)
  • Sensitive personal information

Sensitive personal information or “SPI” is a subset of personal information, defined as:

  • Identifying information (e.g. social security number, driver’s license)
  • Financial data (e.g. debit or credit card numbers)
  • Precise geolocation (within a radius of 1,850 feet)
  • Demographic or protected-class information (e.g. race/ethnicity, religion, union membership)
  • Biometric and genetic data (e.g. fingerprints, palm scans, facial recognition)
  • Communications and content (e.g. mail, email, text messages)
  • Health and sexual orientation (e.g. vaccine records, health history)

Right to Opt-Out

Californians have the right to opt-out of the sale and sharing of their personal information. That means you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties (e.g. data brokers, advertisers). You also have the right to opt-out of the sharing of your personal information to prevent the targeting of ads across different businesses, websites, apps, or services.

CCPA-covered businesses must provide a link to allow you to exercise this right. It is usually found at the bottom of a webpage and will say “do not sell or share my personal information” or “your privacy choices.” Sometimes businesses offer privacy choices through a pop-up window or form

To opt-out of the sale and sharing of your personal information, click on the link or use the toggle provided by the business and follow the directions. Doing this on every website you visit can feel burdensome, but to ease the burden you can automatically select your privacy preferences for every website by using an opt-out preference signal, or OOPS for short.

An OOPS is a user-friendly and straightforward way for consumers to automatically exercise their right to opt-out of the sale and sharing of their personal information with the businesses they interact with online. An OOPS, such as the Global Privacy Control. It can either be a setting on your internet browser or a browser extension. With an OOPS, consumers do not have to submit individual requests to opt-out of sale or sharing with each business.

Right to Limit

Californians also have the right to direct businesses to limit the use and disclosure of their sensitive personal information.

Businesses covered under the CCPA must provide a link on their website that allows you to request the limiting of your SPI, if they plan on using it in certain ways. That link will also typically be at the bottom of a webpage and will say: “limit the use of my sensitive personal information” or “your privacy choices.” Once you send this request, the business must stop using your SPI for anything other than to:

  • Provide requested goods or services
  • Ensure security and integrity
  • Prevent fraud
  • Maintain system functionality
  • Comply with legal obligations

Bringing it Together

In summary, the CCPA gives you the right to opt-out of the sale and sharing of your personal information and gives you additional rights to further limit the use and disclosure of your sensitive personal information.

When you exercise these rights together, you exert greater control in protecting your personal data which is important for your identity, safety, and financial health.

If you are on a business’s website and you can’t find the links to exercise your rights, remember to check their privacy policy. The privacy policy should tell you how you can exercise your rights under the law.

If you find your rights being violated, you can submit a complaint to CalPrivacy.

Next in the LOCKED series, we will explore the right to correct and right to know. Follow us on social media to get live updates or check back in one week for the next post.

Essential

Required to enable basic website functionality. You may not disable essential cookies.

Targeted Advertising

Used to deliver advertising that is more relevant to you and your interests. May also be used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Advertising networks usually place them with the website operator’s permission.

Personalization

Allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your username, language, or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For example, a website may provide you with local weather reports or traffic news by storing data about your general location.

Analytics

Help the website operator understand how its website performs, how visitors interact with the site, and whether there may be technical issues.

Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information

You also have the right to limit how we use sensitive personal information (such as precise geolocation, financial data, etc.).

Your preference has been saved. We will not sell or share your personal information.