Lift Ops is great in terms of management and my work day, and meadows is great in terms of showing appreciation to it's employees and providing a fun, safe place to work. There are however several places that need improvement:
I come from two other resorts. My second one was Deer Valley in Utah. They had an interesting system where they had designated "guest space." Employees in uniform were not allowed in areas where guests hung out, such as restaurants and lounge areas. Meadows has a super cramped lodge and with the amount of growth we're seeing I doubt the new lodge will be able to hold people comfortably. One way to improve this would be to get all the employees out of the way. I'm certain, with the amount of hungry, pissed off employees walking around restaurants just trying to get food and eat, the guest experience is being hindered from it's full potential.
At Deer Valley there were multiple employee cafeterias (1-2 per base area). The sick thing was all mountain departments were connected to them (ski patrol, lift ops, maintenance etc.), and when we came in during the morning we had our Lift Ops morning meeting in the cafeteria. The mountain provided complimentary bagels and bulk cereal (mini wheats, corn flakes, fruit loops etc.) for whatever early morning employees showed. This incentivized the hell out of employees to show up on time or early, otherwise all the good bagels would be gone. This is not that much of an expense, and would change lift ops performance by a lot. We don't like being hungry, and there's no place open to get food on the dark side. Once the employees that worked the cafeteria came in, they started prepping for whatever was being made for lunch that day. It was something to celebrate if they were making something superrrr fresh. There was also A La Carte items like cheeseburgers and chicken fingers. They had a system where we scanned our pass and it took it out of our paycheck. And it was super affordable. Like $3.50 for a cheeseburger and fries. It was also cool because it provided a unique opportunity to get to know your co-workers at lunch. Here's the kicker: If you ordered your lunch before 9:30ish, your supervisors would bring your ordered lunch in a bag around lunch time, so you could eat your lunch at your lift and ride for your full hour (which, come on, is why we're all really here). Obviously that's super rad, and maybe not possible at meadows - just know it's been done and has been proven to be efficient and indeed, super rad.
On the note of efficiency, Lift Ops needs a fricken bigger space asap. The morning meetings are a bit of a joke because it gets so utterly crammed in there you can't even hear yourself think. It doesn't take an economic major to realize if the infrastructure can't support it's employees, efficiency will suffer. Half of the crew literally can't see or hear who's talking. It's more like a quick bonding time with our coworkers before we wing it for the day. (Winging it referring to working different lifts everyday with different people. Difficult to form a routine, let alone take pride consistently in your work. Also, what the hell, can we start warning the lifties that will be working early loads before they come in the day of? Maybe that would just make too much sense... Sometimes it seems we struggle with that here. Don't get me started on the current training program, [there is none!] but fortunately we are working on one now.)
Give us some space so we can hear ourselves think and actually learn about what's being presented. Also it takes me like ten extra minutes to get going after the meeting because I have to wait for everyone to filter out to find all my stuff. Like I said, inefficient.
I'd also really like to see more benefits for full time employees. I feel meadows can't hook up their employees with stuff they deserve because there's an infinite amount of one, two, and three day employees that work just to ride, and don't really care too much about the well-being of the resort. (whack) There's also a group of people that come in 5, 6, 7 days a week and literally put their blood, sweat, and tears into this place, to see really not a lot of benefits at all. And our best benefit, at 50% off, is the freaking not that good food at schuss, which literally makes us sick later. I'm trying to see more than 20% in the retail shop. Rentals for us should be free and next to nothing for friends. We are showing our friends meadows, spreading the sport, and they will come back. We should get some real vouchers. At DV my first year I got 5 free vouchers for friends and family.
Uniforms-
Park City provided beanies and facemasks. I still have my PC facemask because it has a fresh design and keeps me warm. It's also uniform. Deer Valley provided all that as well as vests for warm weather, shirts (long and short sleeve), and hoodies. I think it would be super cool if meadows designed a hood that was logoed and we could wear it while we work. The Helly Hansen hood grabs my helmet and goggles and tosses them all around. Doesn't work. Literally can't see the lift. When it's dumping snow or if it's cold and windy. I have to wear a hood to cover the back of my neck from getting wet and cold. It's black and discrete, but it's technically out of uniform - and I'm not really willing to budge on that. I'm not cool with being freezing especially if there's an easy solution to it. If we had hoods we could help eliminate the ever-festering hoodie problem.
A descent pro deal for a snowboard boots would be nice, considering we work in them (such as Vans, 32, Burton). I feel like we could reach out to these companies and form a partnership and maybe they'd support us. I also know close to nothing on the subject, so who knows. Speaking of pro deals, we need more of them. Expertvoice is ok but it's pretty minimal in terms of knocking the price down. Dakine and Helly Hansen are our biggest discounts, and they're not that great of companies. (HH is ok but we all know Dakine is trash.)
Idk, I'm really complaining here, but what I want you to extract from this is that we need to hook up our full time employees more. It would behoove the resort to have more full time employees and less part times, because the part times typically just give less of a shit, call out more, do less when they're here. Incentivize working full time!
Bigger nametages. Our velcro is freakin massive. And most name tags can't be read without a eyeglass up to it. Size 12 font? Get out of here. Our current nametags have been a waste of money.
Also I want honey mustard for my fries, and I don't want attitude when I ask for it.
Bill
Thanks for the ideas. I don't think I would be in favor of keeping team members out of guests areas like you are describing at Deer Valley but I agree we need more lodge space for guests and team members. I do think Sahale will help quite a bit and will also give us the opportunity to remodel exiting lodges to provide more team member only space.
-Jeremy Riss
It would be great to find a seating arrangement that would be suitable to accommodate everyone during the morning meeting.
The Lift Ops break room space has always been a little tight but this year it has seemed even more cramped. We have tried many variations of the table and chair layout but it still seems cramped. Honestly, we just need a larger space for our team. We are actively looking into the logistics of removing the Supervisor office and expanding the break room area.
One way or another, it is a problem we are aware of and actively working on dealing with.
Marshal Ellison
Lift Ops Assistant Manager
Bring back Safeway saturday
I love my job. I like my managers. I like my supervisors. I like my coworkers. I like the employees in other departments. Meadows is a great place to work. However, sometimes it can be frustrating when other employees make my job more difficult. In this circumstance I am taking about ski school. I usually do not have problems with instructors, but when I do they can be major. We are all on the same team. I want to help them be successful, but I also need to hold up my responsibilities as a lifty. It can be frustrating when the same instructors have bad passes over and over again. I think to solve this issue we should have LOTS of cross training. I feel that if they knew how much difficulty these issues can add to my job, they would be more willing to help us out. More snow please!
I am loving my job this season. People are being held accountable for their actions and it is nice to see. Our management team is strong and I really enjoy what we have going on over here. We would really benefit from getting more speakers for the lifts.
We need a dedicated snowmobile mechanic. Lift Maintenance does a great job trying to keep the sleds running. They do not have the time to maintain the fleet and perform their primary function. We rely on snowmobiles to open the mountain efficiently during storms and to access terrain not accessible by chairlift. Having these tools operational is crucial to our safety and ability to perform our jobs.
One more coat rack in the CLC would be super helpful to give more room for outerwear. Report cards and feedback to parents is a huge challenge when you have lots of students...there's gotta be a better method to provide feedback to parents and talk about next steps and options for their kids. Jessie Eaton is a savior!! He had the insight to help me and my class when I didn't know I needed it and helped IMMENSELY!! He's a rock star in my book!!
The coat rack in the CLC is not intended to be a locker. I've noticed coats hanging there from people who were not scheduled on that day. Yes, another rack might be helpful and we can look into this option.
We have been looking at revising the CLC progress cards as they are quite long. What I have done in the past with my 7+ year olds is have them complete the progress cards with me at the end of the lesson. We sit down and go over the items on their ability level and they color in the green circle, blue square or black diamond - and we do it together as a class -this is something to keep them engaged until the parents arrive. I also start these progress cards when I am filling out the class cards at the START of the lesson - this way I have their cards partially completed with their names, etc. I also use the cards in the morning to help me determine what I might want to do with the kids on that day. Maybe try some of these approaches and see if it's any easier.
Agree that Jesse Eaton is amazing! We all think the world of him! - Tyler Barnes, Learning Center Operations & Training Manager
They need to get smaller rolls of paper for the Vera phones the ones they have are way too long and I end up having to waist a lot of paper
As awesome as are night crew is right now, we could really use some extra staffing as well as some incentive to bring people over from day crew to nights. Since the night shift is roughly an hour shorter I think it would be beneficial to give the night crew a slight pay raise to balance out any financial discrepancies between an employee working full time during the day compared to an employee working full time for nights. Also an employee only shuttle on either side would be hugely beneficial, and if all buses were able to be outfitted for winter conditions [i.e. snow tires, improved heaters, & new seals to keep the windshield from fogging up on the inside] that would be a huge quality of life improvement.
You are absolutely right in us needing to draw more people to nights. The issue with establishing a higher base wage for one shift is that it creates wage differential that goes against the wage matrix as established for Lift Ops. It is important that wage transparency is maintained and that any pay increases are available to all employees after demonstrating a newly acquired skill.
With that being said, finding some other sort of incentive to encourage employees to come to nights would definitely be beneficial. We have recently hired several employees who will be working the night shift but we could definitely be doing more to lure people to the evening shift.
If you have any ideas about incentives, please reach out to me at my email, marshal.ellison@skihood.com or at my phone number (503) 758-9234 ext. 1302.
Marshal Ellison
Lift Ops Assistant Manager
So let me get this straight. Now that guests are taking the employee shuttle, you're making hardworking employees stand on the bus ride down after a 12 hour shift? Or what about the employees that are denied a spot on the shuttle to accommodate more guests? It's a little ridiculous to be getting emails asking to cover someones dishwashing shift because they weren't allowed to get a spot on the shuttle. And those who have the ability to drive up are being turned away from parking in our lots. I understand wanting to accommodate for a larger clientele, but when you are denying your employees their scheduled hours because you want to fit more guests on the shuttle, I can only think about how this is going against all of our core values of Integrity and wellness. Whats your priority? Having an understaffed and under-supported team cater to more and more guests does not look good.
Also WIBJ? Where is Ben Jackson? I'm tired of having guests tell me that they call 10-20 times a day and get no answer from our communications team. Or if they do get through they are on hold for over 30 minutes.