Just a reminder to everyone. We have all had a long and sometimes stressful season. Sometimes patience can wear thin this time of year. Be nice to people, smile, offer help where it is needed. But also, hold all of your team members and yourself to just as high a standard as you did when the season began. We are almost through, hold your focus, and set the bar high!!
Thanks for the great reminder.
-Jeremy Riss
Would like to know when there will be a design “Charette” for the new nordic center operations, for the new facility.
We need more space for guests and employees.
I'm sorry that I do not know at this time when this will happen but when it does we will try to get input from the Nordic Team.
-Jeremy Riss
Integrity is a core value at meadows. When we sold sahalie passes we promised early loads at mt hood at 830. Please show some integrity and follow through on that. There are real safety concerns for opening star at 8 am.
It sounds like Mel has been discussing this with the Lift Ops team. From my perspective there are a lot of advantages do doing Stadium to Star instead of Mt. Hood Express. Mainly we do not have a bunch of guests starting to wait in line while Sahale passholders are cutting in front of them and making laps. I know we are open to feedback on this though and hopefully the conversations with Mel and the Lift Ops Leadership team have been productive.
-Jeremy Riss
I would like to remind the executive team that we promised sahalie pass holders early loads at Mt hood express at 830, not star and stadium at 8. Your blog post is still up which states exactly this. I have brought to light several issues with opening star at 8 am and have yet to get any sort of response. Please put the team first when you make these decisions. Gold loads at star does not put the team first.
A larger budget that would enable us to get the tools we need. We definitely need more tools to do our basic maintenance. Park crew needs a re-up or rotation of new equipment. Things are good right now but new tools would change
Thanks for the feedback, hopefully you have been giving the feedback on the specific tools you need to your Manager so they can consider the input when making purchases.
-Jeremy Riss
I love the people I have the opportunities to work with!
Awesome to hear, thank you for sharing!
-Jeremy Riss
We enjoy riding. Recent events remind us how serious we take our jobs and our riding. The constant vigilance is there, behind a smile. Well done.
Agreed, thank you for the reminder.
-Jeremy Riss
Regarding the recent outbreak, I see that you guys are encouraging people to stay home. However, half of Meadows employees can't do that because of the near minimum wage pay and hardly any sick time acquire. I've been there, and came in to work sick many times until I ended up in the clinic. Why? Because I had bills and rent to pay and ran out of sick time farely quickly. Seasonal employees see the hardest hit when it comes to collecting sick time, because flu season hits right around the time they get hired. 1 hour of PTO for every 30 hours worked? In that case, the average lift operator would have to work roughly 4-6 weeks to receive just ONE paid sick day. Lift ops, being paid near minimum wage, lines up perfectly with flu season, 3 operators get sick, touch around the controls, and spread the liftie plague. "Stay home? Got bills to pay man" is the usual response.
I do have a potential solution I would like to throw out.
1: pay everyone a livable wage ($14 starting?)
2: reduce the amount of hours needed to work for PTO.
2A) 1 hour of PTO for every 8 hours worked until 5 days of PTO saved up (easy and set and done).
3: Offer "Emergency sick time" to each employee. Keep the standard PTO, but have a secondary set just in case it is urgently needed. Say, 10-14 days worth per season? And will only be available after getting checked out at the clinic and handled case by case. For example, Employee is sick, used all their 3 days of sick time, still sick but has rent due and needs to work. Employee goes to clinic, gets tested for the flu, receives a letter from the clinic authorizing emergency sick pay for x amount of days. Employee goes to manager with letter and goes home.
If you guys want to reduce the spread of viruses, look into why so many are coming into work sick. I guarantee you, not a single one of us want to work sick, but have no choice. Either short staffed and are under immense pressure to show up, or just can't afford to miss multiple days of work without pay.
Wellness is a core value, but that is hard to believe when so many are still showing up sick.
We do expect the Meadows base wage to move up again next season as it did last year to get closer to the $14 you are looking for unless of course there is a change to Oregon's minimum wage plans due to the Covid-19 outbreak. You can see a response on sick time from Matt Troskey in another similar comment.
-Jeremy Riss
I made some great sales this week; 4 ski boots one day, 2 pairs of demos that lead to purchases of the flat skis the next & my managers are great at acknowledging and giving the "Good Job" in the moment, but some sort of formal recognition or incentive would be great & a possible motivator for the entire team.
With the coronavirus being taken as seriously as management claims, perhaps instead of just saying “stay home if your sick” we could actually give employees sick time to use. One hour earned for every 30? That’s ridiculous, it takes almost two months for a lot of our employees to get a single day of sick time. Wellness is a core value in this company, and we claim to put employees first, so let’s do that by showing them that we care about their wellness. Because if I have to choose between going to work sick, or not having enough money to pay my bills, I’m gonna be coming in to work sick and getting others sick. That’s simply the reality of the world we live in, we cannot afford to not work. Incase some of you upper management guys forgot, it’s really really expensive for most of us regular employees to even work up here.
Thanks for this. A couple comments air this concern, and this person left their name; it was great to be able to follow up in person and hear even more ideas. We discussed this unique moment and how we are trying to focus as a company right now in the daily changes and demands from the COVID-19 pandemic. We also talked in general about how to weigh all the options/suggestions for improving the workplace - transit, perks, team events, housing, wages, overtime, wellness, sick leave, tools, training, mustard in the break room, etc. As a leadership team we assess the array of ambitions that we have in order to decide what comes next to move us forward. We cannot do everything at once, yet I hope the increments are adding up. Even if it is slower progress than desired, I appreciate someone who wants to engage in that progress. - Matt Troskey, VP People & Learning