This “offseason employment/recruiting cycle” has continued to be strenuous. In order to mitigate employee turnover, we must create a culture of Equipping, Engagement and Excellence. In my previous article, I addressed the topic of recruitment: how to Build a Brand of Being an “Employer Who Equips” and how to Become a Gardener to Grow Your Own Talent. In this issue, I’d like to talk about the other side of things: Retention.
Make Your Team “Poach-Proof”
- Benchmark your facility with every other operation within a 15 mile radius of your facility when it comes to compensation. If you are paying “below market” for the same role, and/or have the same expectations and don’t offer other “employee development aspects” that other clubs do, your talent is imminently “poachable.” Especially if they can stay in their current living situation and the costs of fuel and time for their commute to work are relatively the same. Here’s a sample of a recent comp report I built for Assistant Professionals in the “I-5 Corridor of Oregon and SW WA”. It is important to note that, in general, the fact that a facility is private, public or resort is not of consequence when it comes to assistants these days, so this report basically applies to every facility looking for an assistant in this particular region.
- Keep your promises. Fact, we all keep score. If you say (or even infer) you’re going to give someone a wage increase when they accomplish something specific, measurable and tangible, you have to deliver on that promise. Fail in that, and they will no longer trust you…and they will likely lose their motivation to stay.
- Offer and deliver on Work/Life Balance. It’s true that we have a business with long, late light days from May – Sept or so, and we have events where our teams have to work hard for 3-4 days at a time for the member-invite, or some other highly intensive events. The issue is not these bursts of hard work and long days, it is the fact that we’ve tended to promise a balancing out of the investment made by the employee, often in the form of “comp time” or a 4-day work week in the offseason or similar. Promises matter here too, so keep them.
Get Clever: Your Team They Have Value
- Gas cards: With the cost of fuel rising and more, just think how much a $50 gas card could do to help an employee feel like they matter. When you think about it, giving each of your four departments one $50 card per week (to be given as a “thank you” to an employee in each department), this approximately $900 expense spend per month will go much farther in terms of morale than a single raise for one employee (and you save on the payroll tax too.)
- Visa-style gift cards: With the weight of inflation hitting every part of our economy, these “buy anything” cards could be used for fuel, groceries or for a gift, special dinner, etc. Retention is a game of morale, and 5-8 of these given out for a “job well done” could be huge in the “final score of the game” when their morale is under stress, the “dog days” are real and
Give More Benefits to Differentiate Yourself
- Instead of cutting out benefits, add them. From 2008 or so, the trend was to cut out benefits of all types. Certainly, these benefits like health insurance, a health savings account (HSA) and similar are costly, but when you think of the cost replacing an employee (referenced earlier in this article), spending 15-20% more on an employee and keeping them is still cheaper than the cost of recruiting, training and the opportunity cost of replacing them. Offering key “assistant managers” some offsetting benefits that can lower their costs (e.g. cell phone stipend, a clothing allowance, fuel cards or even a housing allowance) to work for you and be expensed as part of your operation could be a great way to stand out from the other facilities looking to poach your key staff (or help you be the poacher in some cases.)
What other ideas or solutions have you seen or would like to see that might apply in the narrative above? I would love to hear from you. Thank you for reading this during this issue of the Foreword Press. Looking forward to seeing many of you at Section tournaments and Chapter pro-ams.
Monte Koch, PGA Certified Professional, CEIP
PGA Career Consultant | PGA of America Career Services
mkoch@pgahq.com
206.335.5260
PGA of America
Business, Operations & Career Coach in the Pacific NW and Rocky Mountain PGA Sections
Lea Hill, WA