Radical Hospitality: Right People, Right Place, Right Time

I mean, let's be honest, you know, it's the mountains, it's the terrain that brings our guests to the mountain, but then when it comes to the experience that's delivered every single day, you know, it's our people that do that. And so as we think about, you know, what workforce management is trying to solve, it's really trying to solve the variability. It's trying to solve against some of the challenges that we face every single day to ensure that, you know, our people are in the right place at the right time, you know, in the moments that matter for our guests. (upbeat music) Welcome back to Epic by Nature. I'm Rob Katz, CEO of Valorzords. When people think about what makes a great day on the mountain, they tend to focus on the moments they can see and feel, the snow conditions, the terrain, the energy in the lifeline, the meal at the lodge. A few weeks ago, we shared our vision for Epic Experience, a company-wide commitment to delivering the most exceptional and differentiated experience and skiing and riding. At its core, Epic Experience is about using the strength of our integrated model and leveraging our scale and technology to make every part of the mountain journey more seamless, personalized, and memorable. But exceptional experiences don't happen on their own that created by people. Behind each of those moments are dedicated team members who make them all possible. At our core, our business has always been about people and we have been very clear that people are foundational to Epic Experience, and that raises an important question. How do we create a consistently exceptional experience for guests? How do we translate our size and scale and our willingness to lean into change to transform our frontline talent and the impact that they can make on the guest experience? Today's conversation is about the answer to that question, creating the conditions for our people to be successful, ensuring they have the support, flexibility, tools, and opportunities they need to deliver their best work when guests need them most. Over the past several years, we've been on a journey to fundamentally rethink how we bring that experience to life, how we schedule, support, and empower our teams to meet the real rhythm of demand across the mountain and how we use technology to do all this better. We call that workforce management. Now while that might sound like a technical term or corporate speak, it's actually something that touches almost every part of the employee and guest experience. It's an enabler. It's about putting the right people in the right place at the right time. It's about getting people more hours in jobs they want and ensuring we are putting our resources in the most impactful place possible. And just as importantly, it's about creating more opportunity for our employees, more visibility into their work, more flexibility, and clearer pathways to grow. Because when employees are more empowered and more engaged, they're not just filling shifts, they're building skills, developing careers, and delivering better experiences for our guests. This past year, with the worst conditions out there at our biggest resorts and the company dealing with revenue declines, we used workforce management to navigate the season with record guest satisfaction, record frontline employee return rates, and engagement, and declines in worker injuries per labor hour, and workforce management was a big part of that success. How? Well, to help us answer that question and help us bring it all down, I'm joined today by Tim Baker, senior vice president and COO of our regional resorts. Tim has spent years leading teams across our mountains and thinking deeply about how we develop talent and deliver great guest experience at scale. Tim, it's great to have you here. Let's start with the basics. When we say workforce management, what exactly are we talking about? And maybe more importantly, what problem are we trying to solve? Yeah, thanks Rob, good to be here, and excited to talk about workforce management, because I do think it's something that we hear a lot about, and it's become an important aspect of our operation, but whenever I really think about workforce management, I go back to what we've shared about our people, and I think about how important they are to delivering the experience every day, and if I was to boil down what workforce management means to me, is I think about how do we put those amazing people in the best position to maximize the impact that they make on our guest experience every single day? Because look, I mean, let's be honest, it's the mountains, it's the terrain that brings our guests to the mountain, but then when it comes to the experience that's delivered every single day, it's our people that do that. And so as we think about what workforce management is trying to solve, it's really trying to solve the variability. It's trying to solve against some of the challenges that we face every single day, to ensure that our people are in the right place at the right time in the moments that matter for our guests. - Yeah, thanks, I think that's really helpful. And I do think one of the things that I've always thought about here, the way we used to schedule, and the whole industry schedule for decades, was just every manager a little bit on the run, right with a piece of paper and a patent or a spreadsheet. You know, you think about our company with 42 resorts. Every group, you know, in that every manager, every day throughout the season, everybody just trying, it's not that we're winging it, 'cause of course there was a lot of insight in it, but everybody kind of, kind of trying to do it just literally for maybe what somebody else told them. And I'm curious like when you first got involved with workforce management, you know, how did you see that? Like the opportunity and maybe some of the challenges with that too. - You know, around 2019 was really when the hypothesis of workforce management began with our company. You know, we realized that, and we've got such insights, you know, all across the organization that if we can get our folks talking, if we can gather some of the best ways to operate the resorts, you know, we have the ability to anticipate the needs of our guests in ways that the industry, you know, really hasn't, you know, in the past. Prior to that, you know, we started the process of integrating our network, meaning our resorts were communicating with one another more and sharing best practices, you know, but we really weren't doing that at scale. And so as we've been going through this journey, you know, it's been a process of gathering those insights, using tools, technologies, decades of data to try to put insights into the hands of our managers so that we can improve their judgment. Because, you know, I think about a Saturday morning, like every Saturday during January, February, March, and we're in peak season, I think about what's happening. And our managers are making hundreds of decisions, you know, in the moment from time to time, and workforce management has been trying to gather insights to help them make the best decisions in those moments, to take our amazing people, put them in the position to anticipate the guest needs where the moments that matter the most so that we can deliver that experience. And it's created a lot of tension because, you know, our folks are very passionate, you know, about what they do. You know, there's ways that we have done things at different mountains for a long time. And when we all of a sudden start introducing best practices, you know, it takes some time, you know, to prove out some of these best ways to operate. But at the end of the day, you know, our managers need to make great decisions every single day to put our people in the right position to deliver on that guest experience. - Workforce management obviously is not something that our company invented. It's been out there for a long, long time in a lot of other industries. And I think, you know, sometimes we feel a lot of our resorts individually or we feel like, well, the ski industry is so unique. It may not, you know, apply to some of the use cases for workforce management and other places. I wonder how you feel about this. Like I actually think like our use case is one of the most complex challenges, right? Where because we're only operating four or five months out of the year, because we have a lot of turnover, right? Year after year in seasonal employees, because the weather conditions are so variable that actually like trying to staff efficiently, right? Not just for the company from a cost perspective, but getting the most hours possible for employees is I want to, we have one of the hardest jobs out there in traveling and leisure and trying to make that happen because everything is so different, right? Every day, every season. And so it almost, yeah, it feels like if there was any industry, you know, where workforce management approaches could work, it would be here. - Yeah, I mean, you're definitely highlighting, like it's the intensity of this business. You know, every single day conditions can be, you know, very different at different mountains. But the one thing that we've really learned through our workforce management journey is that when it comes to execution mountain by mountain, not everything is different. And so if we can identify, you know, some of the tasks that are more administrative, you know, some of the things that we ask our managers to do that, you know, don't really have a significant impact on the guest experience, you know, if we can scale and simplify some of those tasks that our managers are doing, what they then get to do is focus on where we are. different mountain by mountain. And where we are different tends to be where the guest experience happens. That tends to be where, you know, a given guest, you know, sees the uniqueness of a given mountain, why they've chosen the mountain. And so if we could remove some of those administrative tasks so they can focus there, they're able to spend more time on guest experience, more time on leading their teams and walking beside. And then we're also able to focus on safety. And so, you know, those are three things that we want to prioritize. And you know, and if our mountains just all kind of operate on their own, we found that there's a lot of inefficiency. And so that's, it's real tension because it is very different across our mountains. But sometimes we fall into the trap of believing that everything is different. And if we can optimize where we're not, we can really focus on the areas where we should be different. No, that makes sense. Tell me a little bit. I mean, I think people assume when we talk about efficiency, right, that we're talking about, you know, reducing costs, reducing hours. But tell me a little bit about how workforce management actually gets more hours to our employees. Yeah, love this question. I think there's a there's a misnomer out there that that if we just put more out there, we're going to deliver a better experience. And what workforce management really means for us is trying to put our employees in the position to make the biggest impact. That's one piece of it. The other piece of it is that as we can use tools and technologies, you know, we can create visibility for our employees, visibility into all the shifts that they may have, you know, options for work within the department that they're most comfortable. But what we've also done over the last couple of years is we've opened up the opportunity for our employees to work in other departments. And so we focused on cross-training. So our employee, you know, we may have, you know, someone who starts the day off in parking. And then once the rush of parking, you know, wraps up around 930 or 10, we'll move them into the rental shop. And then we may have some rental text that will start to move up onto the mountain and run lifts whenever we're trying to move guests around the mountain efficiently. And so, you know, that's a unique opportunity that we have mountain by mountain to use technology so that our folks can can can get diversity and experience. The other piece of it is that, you know, if if there's, you know, a day that they have off and they see a shift that they want to sign up and work for some additional hours, there tends to always be opportunity for that. You know, maybe that means that, you know, an employee can look at their schedules and be a little bit more flexible so that they can deal with the things that happen in their real life at home. And so our investment and tools and technology are intended to create that visibility. You know, so our employees actually have more control, right? You know, I think sometimes, you know, there's there's comments that I'll get of like, well, you're just putting workforce management in place because the company's going to tell me everything I need to do at any given moment. And I think what surprised me is that the it's actually been the opposite. You know, our employees actually have more control, more flexibility to be able to spend their time in in the areas of the operation that they're most passionate about. And so it's a win-win for the business, for the experience of the guest and for the the lifestyle that they choose to, you know, be a part of every single day. Yeah, I love this because I think, you know, especially young kids today, this is what they expect is what they see from other big companies that there's like a marketplace for hours. You know, people can work more or less to your point. They're not transitioning to other jobs. You know, and I think that's a it's a big one. I mean, I'm curious that you've mentioned a couple along the way, but like, what are the other critiques and push facts that you've heard, you know, as we've been implementing workforce management? Yeah, I mean, no question that, you know, the change curve as we like to say is a real thing. And, you know, at any time we're introducing, you know, new technologies, there's always going to be bumps in the road and the time to get comfortable, you know, with technology. That's a piece of it. You know, I think the other tension that I highlighted is, yeah, you know, folks are passionate about what they do. We have a lot of folks that have been a part of this industry for decades and have ultimately informed, you know, the way that we operate every single day. And when you put a technology in place that starts to, you know, give them recommendations of, you know, how they can operate. If it's different than the way that they've done it in the past, like that's just going to naturally create tension. You know, because anyone who's worked in this industry for 20 years has a tremendous amount of passion, just because of the complexity that, you know, that that you highlighted. And so, you know, that's something that, you know, folks are still getting used to. You know, I think as it relates to technology, for those first few days where you don't know where the buttons are, you want to accomplish a task that you were able to do very simply in a previous, you know, technology platform. You get really frustrated really fast. And I've experienced this that there's there's a natural, almost like a psychological pull to what's familiar. Well, what's familiar, things that we've done in the past, even though like our employees, even myself, we may intellectually understand very clearly that, you know, what we're trying to do is, you know, is the best thing for the future. Man, that that emotional pull to what's familiar and comfortable is strong. And so, we've got to be patient. And that's where, you know, leadership really, really shines and shows up in our company to walk alongside our teams, you know, to help communicate effectively of why we are doing things. And then ultimately, ensure that there's accountability in the midst of it, we're still trying to deliver the best experience that we can for our guests. And we feel confident that we'll be able to do that, but change is hard. And so that change curve is real in the moment. Yeah, I agree. I think we've seen that through any of the changes that our company has put forward over a long period of time. I think one interesting thing also about a workforce manager, that the people don't always realize is when we say, hey, you know, we're going to get more hours for our employees by using this tool. That means we have to hire less employees, but each employee is going to make more money. It also means, right, we need less housing. And I think that's one of the other pieces I think we've seen over the last few years is, you know, of course, affordable housing is still an issue. We'll always be an issue in our communities, but the pressure has gone down as we have become more efficient in right hiring less employees, having them make more money individually and taking the pressure off of so many of these other, you know, components. I'm curious, like this year, I know we started realizing right away this past season that, you know, the snow is from the Rockies is not what we expected. Snow and Tahoe, not what we expected. And we're worried about getting hours to employees, right, that's always one of the big issues when we can't open up terrain. I'm curious like how workforce management helped this year on that. Yeah, there's actually a really, really interesting data point that I'm really proud of is, you know, in those moments where, you know, we've got, you know, conditions that are changing and we need to, you know, make adjustments to, you know, what our shifts are every single day. Number one, you know, our technology platform gives us a way to do that, you know, instead of our managers having to just pick up the phone and and call people, they can make updates in real time. So our employees know what's going on. I think the other piece that, you know, I love to talk about is kind of what we call the shift marketplace. You know, Rob, you highlighted a little bit of the way that, you know, our employees can can look and sign up for, you know, different, different opportunities for working in different departments. Over the last year, we had 50,000 shifts that were picked up on the shift marketplace for employees who are working in departments that are not their day-to-day department. And if you think about the impact of that, historically, those 50,000 shifts would have either gone unfilled. So we wouldn't have gotten to make the impact that we needed those shifts to make. They would have been absorbed, you know, by the teams in that department. And so, you know, now that we have a platform that we can fill that out, that's where the employees have the opportunity to work more hours. You know, it's not just in their one department. They can look at departments all across the operation. Obviously, ensuring they get the proper training, but the system gives the ability to track the training that's necessary to be qualified for different shifts. But, you know, once they get the qualifications, they can get right on our technology platform, look and see what shifts are open based upon their qualifications. And then sign up for what interests them most, which gives them the opportunity to work a lot more than just in their home department that they signed up for to be in with. Yeah, I think that's huge. And I think, yeah, something I was super impressed with with all of our teams was we took an approach this year saying, hey, obviously, you know, hours are going to be down in total because the mountains are you know, 25% open in the early season, but making sure that we spread them, right? So that, you know, we're giving people, it's not just like, oh, well, we're going to give the hours to kind of, you know, a couple of people who, you know, maybe have been here a while, whatever, we're trying to figure out how do we keep, right? You know, as many employees engaged throughout the season, I think you put that together with, right, record, you know, guest engagement, record, seasonal return rate this year, record guest satisfaction scores all in an otherwise tough year. From a conditions perspective, it's hard not to, yeah, I'll say the talent was a big driver. One of the things I've been really clear about is, right, that are staffing scores this year really is what drove our guests overall guest satisfaction scores up. And of course, you'd think this was a year where, you know, we didn't have great skiing for people who wanted to get out there and probably not as many hours as they'd like. And I don't know. I'm kind of curious when you look back on that piece like, yeah, I seem you and the team take pride in that. Yeah. We do take pride in that. And I do think that the high guest experience scores that we saw over last year represents the progress that we've made, you know, that doesn't happen by accident. And so, you know, as our managers are making better decisions to put, you know, their best talent in the position to make an impact, you know, we see the outcomes. I think the other piece that's interesting of how and why we've been successful doing that is, as everyone knows, this is an incredibly seasonal business. And we have a massive percentage of our 55,000 employees around the world who are seasonal. And you know, a stat that we're really proud of is approximately 70% of those seasonal employees return year after year. But what does that mean? Well, that means that we've got more people that we don't have to start over with training. We have more people who have consciously chosen to do what we do every single day. And then the third piece is that as we have more returners, we have less new hires. And when we have less new hires, we get to be very choosy with, you know, who we recruit and who we hire to ensure that who we bring in are the types of people that are trying to deliver the experience, you know, that we want to, you know, every single day. And so, you know, that would be very difficult if we were trying, you know, if our return rate was only 20%, that's a lot of new hires that we would need to need to recruit every single year and having a low number means that, yeah, we can be, we can be discerning with who we hire. And you know, in the way that we do that, you know, we launched an assessment a couple of years ago, you know, that each of our new employees will take as they're going through the application process. And, you know, and we've learned over the years that, you know, based upon the outcome of that assessment, we can really determine, you know, who has the mindset for this business, who has a service orientation, you know, who is able to deal with the volatility of the way that our business operates. And so, you know, that assessment has really been a game changer for us, you know, to ensure that we get the right people that do what we do every single day. So I think all of those things, you know, really play into, you know, what you shared about, you know, our guest experience score some last year, you know, we don't believe at all that that was a one year thing. You know, we truly believe that our investments in talent, the wages that we've invested in over the last few years, the overall employee experience, you know, being discerning with who we hire as, you know, our seasonal workforce, you know, we've started the flywheel and it ties exactly with why we felt so confident to share publicly about our intent to deliver epic experiences that this is just the beginning and our seasonal workforce is what ultimately drives that. You know, I had a story of a family member who said they wanted to get a job working at one of our mountains and I just said, this is early on, you know, I just come back as CEO and I said, oh, well, just go online and apply, you'll get a job because I was kind of stuck in the old mindset of, yeah, if you want a job at Eski Resort, you know, show up and, you know, people, especially for our seasonal, you know, first year openings. And yeah, they got rejected because they didn't score high enough on this assessment and it was a little embarrassing for me because I didn't really understand the level of selectivity and I'm curious, like, it sounds like we're taking this selectivity and the assessment thing pretty seriously. Yes, that happens and I'm proud of you for holding the line, you know, on our assessment. You know, it's something that we really believe in and, you know, and work force management is all about, you know, trying to reduce the number of employees that we need to recruit every season and as we've done that, yeah, we take very serious the criteria, you know, against which we make decisions for, you know, who to hire in this industry. And, you know, our guests expect that and we have a certain, you know, service-oriented mentality and supporting one another that shows up every single day and all of our hiring managers take very serious what, you know, a given applicant is telling us in that assessment. And if they're not showing alignment with what we stand for as a company and our commitment to the guest experience, yeah, we're going to pass because we, you know, have learned over the years that we have plenty of people out there who are, who share the same passion that you and I do, you know, for this industry, you know, who want to be out there every single day. And so, yeah, we're going to continue to be choosy with who we recruit every year. Yeah, I think that's really helpful. I think the, you know, in some respects, right, obviously the company made a very significant $175 million investment in, you know, its frontline staff, you know, back in 2022. And so, you know, the investment is there. And I think, obviously, we've seen full staffing and all of that from them. But I think, yeah, I really appreciate what you've been sharing about that, how we can then get that around it, how we get more hours per employee, how we get employees, more experiences in different places throughout the company, how we can use technology to make sure they get the training, how we can use technology to make sure they have visibility into what's out there, how we can make sure that we're hiring less employees, giving all of them more hours that helps housing has happier employees, as you said, brings employees back the next year. So, we have to hire less employees. We can be more selective. Sometimes people, as you say, there's a, there's a natural tension about any change and a natural tension about using technology. But in many cases, like this can actually help, like individual folks, but, but as you say, yeah, that doesn't mean that we don't want to use it to save money where we can and, and make sure we're taking that money and putting it into more wages or more people where we need it. So, I do. I think it's, it really is like an overall unique program, kind of curious, we're sitting two years from now and looking back. What would you want to be talking about having been accomplished, you know, with our workforce management effort? Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I think as I fast-forward, I do have a strong hypothesis and point of view that, you know, that, you know, there will be, you know, significant enhancements in AI and, and the way that that AI can, can analyze data, you know, I mean, we've, we've been collecting data for decades. And, and I think as we're able to tap into that, that will inform and help us anticipate what our operations, you know, may need on, on any given day, you know, I fully anticipate that, you know, that will be further out in front of the guest experience every single day. I think about the, the journey of the guests, you know, throughout a given day. So what we envision is if we can use technology to move employees out in front of that pace of the guest movement around the mountain, then we will be where they need us to be in advance. You know, a, a guest will show up at Vale Mountain. So let's say we've got, you know, four or five lift operators at Gondola One, or, or the Lionshead Gondola in the morning as we have the massive upload. Once we really get the guest moving, we'll probably take some of those employees, send them to Gain Creek lift, when the, when the, you know, crowds are there. And then from there, we'll move into chair five. And then from there, we'll start to move them into food and beverage outlets when the guests are starting to move into dining. And so what I envision in the future is the ability for us to anticipate the guest needs, not just season by season, but actually hour by hour, you know, that's what I'm really excited about. And then our managers can use technology to effectively move our folks. And then our employees can see what to anticipate. They'll be able to communicate with their managers, you know, quickly and efficiently, to move throughout the resort on any given day. And that's what I'm really excited about, you know, for what the future holds. Thanks Tim for that. You know, I think one of the things that, uh, that's kind of incredible about the work, uh, that, that the coal company's been doing and, uh, around seasonal talent is that obviously back in 2021, 2022, we had some real struggles, right? Didn't have full staffing, didn't have the right people, didn't have agility and flexibility. And, uh, it, uh, it impacted the guest's experience. One of the things, cause I get the fact that people don't want to change or learn new, new approaches. But I think the flip side to that is, you know, I think, you know, if we hadn't done some of this, I think we'd still be struggling and the truth is, you know, a lot of other ski resorts and a lot of other leisure companies are struggling, uh, to, to hire, um, to get fully staffed, uh, to have their staff show up, uh, in the way that they need them to. And I think when you look at our track record, in a time of, you know, candidly, a pretty challenging time in the industry the last couple of years, but on seasonal talent, really having gone from this being, uh, you know, a big problem and a challenge for us to being a real strength, uh, I think, you know, speaks to, I think the success that you've had and some of the others have had with, uh, workforce management, all the other, you know, pieces of ethics service that we have leaned into, uh, to try and make this, uh, be different. Yeah. No, it's a, I mean, I think if I look back over this last season in particular, uh, yeah, the most challenging, if not the most challenging, seasons. you know, in the history of the industry in Colorado and Utah and Tahoe and other areas and you know, even in the face of the challenging conditions that we saw, we're proud of our results. We're very proud of our results. And we talk about how, you know, the company has been built, you know, for years like this, to be able to be agile, to be able to, you know, put our resources where they'll make the biggest impact and pull them out of where they're not. And over the last season, that's a big part of how we are able to deliver the results that we have. And so, you know, I look forward to, you know, hopefully this season coming up with great conditions where we'll be able to allocate resources, you know, where we're going to maximize the impact, you know, across the mountain. And so, WFM is just one part, one piece of, of this ecosystem of our, of our network that's intended to deliver an experience for our guests at scale across every single one of our mountains that we truly want to be differentiated. We expect for any guest who comes to one of our mountains to feel confident that they're going to get the experience that they're looking for, no matter what epic mountain that they're going to. And WFM is a big part of that. Well, I appreciate that. And I think maybe what it highlights through all of this is that, yeah, that we're using technology and new systems, new approaches to let the employee and guest experience be the most magical it can be in the moment. And to your earlier point about, yeah, we want to take all of the other stuff that doesn't add to that connection, that moment of connection, and do it faster, smarter, more efficiently, all of that. I really appreciate you taking the time, Tim, to spend, you know, come on the podcast and share all this. I know it's something that probably to the guests, they don't, you know, fully have a sense of, but I know every single person and team member at Valor Zoritz is really well aware of this and is in the middle of this process. So I know it goes a long way to hear from you and hear your thoughts and insights and obviously the journey is ongoing and far from over. Yeah, thanks, Rob. And I mean, we're excited about this and, you know, and it's a change, you know, and I think our employees are, you know, responding with excitement, but in the moment, it's tempered. You know, we're going through the change of a new technology, but I think there's a strong belief that, you know, our guests are going to see the difference. We don't want the guests to see the technology or the tools or anything like that. We want the experience to, we want the guests to feel the experience and we firmly believe that WFM will enable us to do that work consistently into the future. So thanks, Rob. If there's one thing I hope comes through in today's conversation, it's that workforce management isn't really about scheduling. It's about people. It's about how we create an environment where our employees can do meaningful work, feel empowered in their roles, and see a path for themselves on this mountain and beyond. Because when we get that right, when people are supported, engaged, and in the right place at the right time, it shows up in every part of the guest's experience. Now, that doesn't mean this journey is easy. As we talked about today, this transition comes with real challenges. There's a learning curve. There are new systems and new ways of working. We know our teams are putting in that effort every day to adapt and make all of this better. But this is also the kind of change that, over time, fundamentally improves how we operate. It gives our managers better tools and better visibility. It gives our employees more flexibility and more opportunity. And ultimately, it helps us deliver the kind of seamless, high-quality experience our guests expect from us. When we look back on this moment, you're from now. I think we'll see it as an important step forward. Not just in how we run the business, but in how we develop talent and support the people who make this company what it is. Tim, thanks again for the conversation and thank you all for listening. I'll see you all out on the hill. [Music]