During the early part of the pandemic, many companies downsized, unwilling to keep employees on their payrolls during lockdown. The move caused an unprecedented number of workers to file for unemployment. And it left economists thinking that workers were going to be scrambling to find work.
Oh, how the tables have turned. According to a report by the US Department of Labor in October of 2021, almost 7% of workers in the hospitality and food industry quit their jobs in August, more than twice the average rate of the rest of the economy. There have been a variety of reasons cited:
- Compassion fatigue – In some sectors, like hospitality, workers are worn out dealing with customers’ heightened anxieties caused by the pandemic.
- Job burnout –The pandemic changed workers’ jobs. That caused stress that was now coupled with the anxiety mentioned above. All of that fueled an increase in worker exhaustion.
- Employer Inflexibility – Many companies did not adjust well to the new reality, further alienating the worker.
- Lack of employee appreciation – Employee recognition is a perennial issue for many companies in good times. In the scramble to adjust to the pandemic, many organizations let employee appreciation slip even more.
Whatever the reasons, it’s a new reality and organizations have to adjust how they do business to accommodate it. There is a real cost to this. According to a Cornell study, employee turnover costs an organization an average of $5,864 per employee. And when you look at the Q3 report from Joblist and see that a staggering 58% of all hospitality workers say they are considering quitting, this can be a substantial hit to a club.
So, let’s take a look at some steps we can use to mitigate this trend.
Club management solutions that help them work the way they want to
Your Millennial and Gen Z workers are digital natives. Giving them the technology in their jobs helps your organization feel like a natural fit in their lives.
Giving them access to information
These are generations that grew up with information at their fingertips. It can seem archaic for them to work in an environment where information is siloed and not readily accessible.
A club can improve the retention of high-performing team members by giving them access to the information that helps them do their job better. For example, giving staff a view into a member’s profile and preferences, whether that’s knowing that a member’s wife can’t eat gluten or knowing that a member always orders coffee the same way.
This allows your staff to create a personal connection with the member. That can lead to new levels of delight among members and heightened job satisfaction with your team.
Empowering your staff to act as ambassadors
There’s an opportunity to have your staff act as ambassadors and teachers. If a member asks for a service, have the staff fulfill the request for them on their app and then offer to demonstrate how they may like to use the app for future requests.
This does a few things. It lets your staff know that they have an important role as evangelists of the club app. It gives the staff a heightened sense of value by empowering him or her to share knowledge. And it allows the staff to once again build deeper connections with the members. All of these things help the staff feel like they are part of an organization that values their role.
Building better communication within your team
Top performers have a natural desire to do their job well. They know that communication within the organization is vital. And they know that technology is the key.
For example, deploying tableside POS allows your wait staff to instantaneously communicate with the kitchen staff without running back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen. This makes your wait staff’s work more rewarding as they are now able to spend more time serving members. And it reduces errors, rush orders, and other annoyances that can affect the job satisfaction of your kitchen staff.
Another example is reservations. Getting a desired tee time always causes stress, not only for the member trying to reserve it but also the employee who has to break the news that somebody else beat him to it. Through the club app or website, you can give the member the ability to view tee times, make a reservation, and even invite other club members. Members appreciate the convenience. Just as important, your staff members will appreciate how the functionality can reduce the instances of them having to deal with irate members.
Addressing challenges before they lead to a staff exodus
Data analytics can be a powerful tool in retaining employees. Smart club management software gives you the ability to identify top performers. It could be the server with top sales in the dining room. The spa staff member with the most up sells. Or the banquet coordinator who continues to beat historic sales numbers. The data analytics can help you identify these stars and ensure you’re doing everything to retain them.
Additionally, the analytics could help you identify areas where performance is lagging and then look at the root cause – before this becomes a big problem. It could be as simple as coaching a manager that may not be handling his reports optimally. Or it could be a systematic issue that shows that current processes are not scaling.
This kind of proactive approach can help you identify those often-hidden factors that, if left unaddressed, can become major contributors to employee turnover.
Staying ahead of The Great Resignation
There is a lot involved with ensuring that your staff members feel like the work that they are doing is valuable and that they are appreciated. Deploying smart technology can go a long way to helping you accomplish this. Especially with the digitally native Millennial and Gen Z generations.
Nobody knows how long The Great Resignation will last or what the repercussions will be in the months ahead. But taking steps now to improve your technology can up your game, helping you continue to retain and build a quality team.
When the people who run the clubs start leaving
The Great Resignation did not spare the club industry. Leisure and hospitality recorded the highest employee exit rates of any sector in the United States, with nearly 3 million people leaving their roles between January and April 2024 alone. A figure running 204% above the national average quit rate as per the report of HR Dive. For clubs, this is not just a staffing problem, it is an event operations problem.
The experienced coordinators, F&B managers, and front-of-house staff who once knew instinctively how to consolidate event logistics, coordinate moving parts, and communicate with members have, in many cases, simply walked out the door. Annual staff turnover in hospitality now sits at an estimated 70–75% and replacing each departing employee costs businesses an average of $4,700 in recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity according to Hybrid Payroll. A cost that compounds rapidly when events are understaffed, poorly communicated, or cancelled altogether.
How the right software keeps the clubs running
The real lesson the Great Resignation has forced clubs to confront is; when people leave, they take their knowledge with them, unless that knowledge lives in the system. Clubs that had invested in integrated club management software before the staffing crisis hit found themselves significantly more resilient; new hires could step into workflows, access member preferences, pull up event histories, and send automated reminders without needing months of institutional knowledge to do it effectively.
GSI Executive Search, which focuses specifically on club and hospitality talent, has noted that today’s recruitment landscape is the most challenging in the industry’s history — making it more critical than ever that clubs reduce their operational dependence on any single individual as per GSI Executive Search.
A platform like Northstar addresses this directly by embedding the Consolidate, Coordinate, and Communicate functions into one system. Clubs are now no longer relying on one event coordinator’s spreadsheet or one F&B manager’s memory to pull off a seamless Christmas dinner. The software holds the process, the people deliver the experience and that distinction, in a world of ongoing staff turnover, is what separates clubs that consistently deliver great experiences from those that are always starting over.
Northstar Technologies can help you address the challenges of The Great Resignation. Built on one database, the complete club management platform delivers improved access to information, communication, and all the tools that help staff members feel their work is worthwhile and appreciated. Get a feel for it yourself – request a demo, today.
