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The New Club Human Resource Department: Keys to Enhancing the Member Experience

 “We can design, create and build the most beautiful and wonderful places in the world, but it takes people to make the dreams a reality.” ~Walt Disney

 Having the best Pete Dye golf course, the most modern Har Tru tennis courts, the biggest slide at the pool, the latest in fitness equipment, the prettiest dining rooms, great lounges and luxurious locker rooms might mean your club members have the nicest toys in the neighborhood to play with, but are they having the best member experience and most fun of all the private clubs in your area?

What Walt Disney understood early on was, the happiest and most memorable experiences customers cherish are created by people, not things. New and modern things create excitement and fascination; human connections touch our hearts and our souls. Every club success and failure is directly connected to the degree its service team delivers a consistent and reliable experience, establishing a unique human connection between the service provider and service recipient while they’re engaged with their club activity.

Given this preamble, there should be little debate proclaiming that private clubs are primarily social fraternal communities surrounded by high-end sports, recreational and dining amenities with calendars full of programs and activities. The main focus as general managers of private clubs should then be spent assembling and developing high performing service teams who are able to connect with club members, becoming part of their member’s club experience.

So now the questions are: How do club leaders best accomplish the most important primary mission of building a team of service personnel who are happy, professionally trained and motivated to focus on consistently creating and delivering unique experiences members cannot receive anywhere else? What tools are available to managers that will best assist in ensuring consistent and successful outcomes?

Human Resources Is a Department

Unfortunately for many clubs, human resources is relegated to a desk in the back office of the accounting department where accounts payable, payroll and the paperwork from new hires is processed. At these clubs today, the club managers exclaim:

·         Finding and hiring frontline staff is near impossible and a constant struggle!

·         Good employees are nowhere to be found!

·         Very few new hires have relevant experience!

·         Frontline staff are very transient!

·         The lack of loyalty to the club and job are signs of a bygone era!

·         Staff today seem self-absorbed; they don’t really care about the club!

Many managers blame the quality of new hires and difficulty in attracting them as a consequence of the modern labor market—due to the attributes and characteristics of the millennial and the youngest Z generations—rather than the results of a lack of understanding of the importance of establishing a dynamic human resource department that functions as the club’s heart, pumping life, energy and strategy into every area of the club. A club’s human resource department and its director are integral strategic partners in the overall management of the club and are critical to ensuring the club’s mission and vision are successfully achieved.

Today’s mindset of many general managers sees the tasks of locating and hiring, orienting, onboarding, continuously training, mentoring, giving feedback and reviewing, disciplining and terminating their club’s dynamic service team, as the job of each department head and their respective supervisors within the club. The department heads were all hired because of their accomplishments, expertise and aptitude in their respective areas. Understanding what motivates and drives their employees is an expertise necessary to ensure they are provided with the attention, feedback and resources required to best enable them to perform at a high level.          

All clubs, regardless of size, should have a department head level director of human resources, who reports to and is a strategic partner with the general manager. Certainly, for small budget clubs, this position may also perform other duties. But, their HR functions must always remain first priority and sacrosanct.

The Mission of the Human Resource Department

1.    Acquire: Establish a systemized hiring process that ensures new employees have both the right aptitude and attitude to be successful and fit into the club’s culture.

2.    Align: Ensure the workforce is focused on the club’s mission and vision and has the right education, training and resources to be successful, both at the club and personally.

3.    Partner: Participate as a wing of executive management, partnering in achieving the club’s strategic goals, mission and vision, influencing the member experience which ultimately drives new member recruitment and most important, member retention.

4.      Protect: Position the management structure and operations of the club so it comports within all State and Federal hiring and employment laws, protecting it from EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) violations and discrimination lawsuits.

Employees will want to work at the club for many of the same reasons prospective members will want to join the club. Employees and members will share the same core values that are at the foundation of the club’s existence: It’s a preferred club in the community to join while also being a preferred place to work in the community.

Members and employees must:

·         Feel welcome

·         Fit the club’s culture

·         Understand how they each contribute to the success of the club

·         Be recognized as individuals

·         Be acknowledged for their achievements

·         Feel they have value

“Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.” ~ J. Willard Marriott

So why doesn’t every private club have a Department of Human Resources?

Some think they are too small, others believe it’s the department heads’ job, and yet others think they can’t afford it. Smart operators in the private club industry have discovered that human resource departments, like preventative maintenance, will not only enhance the club’s operations and member experience, it will pay for itself many times over.

A certified analytics professional study found the average cost to replace an employee is 16 percent of their annual salary for high-turnover, low-paying jobs. As an example, those earning under $30,000 per year, the cost to replace a $10/hour retail employee is $3,328. What’s the turnover rate of your club’s front-line and seasonal employees? Reducing employee turnover rate by half due to enhanced human resource policies and procedures over time, will pay almost half of the salary of an HR director. 

Is your club investing enough in training your employees?

Many times, clubs think they cannot afford to spend precious budget dollars on employee training.  

Henry Ford said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave, is to not train them and have them stay.”

Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines says, “Train your people well enough so they can work anywhere, treat them well enough so they don’t want to leave.”

The Association for Talent Development’s 2016 State of the Industry Report shows businesses with less than 500 workers spend $2,112 per employee per year in training. That tabulates to the average private club with total revenues of $6M and 70 employees should be spending more than $147,000 on training per year. This may be high for the private club industry; however, private clubs should minimally be investing between 1 to 1.5 percent of their gross revenue on training, association education, certification and professional development.

Workforce Success 

To be truly successful in today’s contracting and competitive marketplace, a club’s organizational chart should include a department head director of human resources as a strategic partner to the general manager and board, to assist them with the following:

·         Ensuring the club is recognized as a preferred business in the community where employees seek to work. Change the mindset of managers from thinking there are few good employees available, to becoming a company where employees seek to be hired because of the club’s professional development policies, mentoring and employee-focused culture.  

·         Creating well-developed job descriptions for club positions that also articulate role requirements and then training and mentoring employees continuously for the job they need to fulfill.   

·         Safeguarding the philosophy that clubs are a home-away-from-home for members—as well as the employees’ home-away-from-home.

·         Making sure employees feel they are important and understand how their position is important to the success of the club.

·         Ensuring employees feel valued and part of the club’s success.

·         Giving employees regular feedback on their day-to-day performance and recognizing them for being successful each day they work.

·         Establishing systems where employees can recognize when they’ve been successful without management needing to tell them so.

·         Providing employees with the opportunity for professional growth and advancement within the company. The club should have a visible policy of hiring from within when possible.

·         Paying employees well. The best clubs pay their employees the most they can provide, not the least they can get away with.

·         Listening to employees and ensuring employee opinions and contributions are valued.

·         Establishing a relationship between employees and their supervisors who respect them and show they are interested in their well being and advancement.

·         Including employees in all nonconfidential club communications that members receive.

Member retention is enhanced at clubs that work to enhance employee retention. The more positive and familial relationships members have with their employees directly affects the degree to which members are satisfied with the club and remain members. A club cannot consistently implement and achieve these systemized goals and processes without a dedicated human resource staff strategically working with the general manager and the board of directors. Without a dedicated person driving these policies, procedures and programs, the law of best intentions takes over resulting in poor outcomes. Nor can a club succeed without a consistent, systemized process for new employee orientation, onboarding and employee performance feedback.

Walt Disney, Henry Ford, J. Willard Marriott and Richard Branson were all right: Empower, respect, mentor, train and professionally develop your employees, and they will ensure your club’s success.

Editor’s note: The spring 2018 issue of Club Trends will focus on HR and workforce trends.

 

Club Trends Fall 2017

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