6 minute read
Management
CREATING A NEW
By Robin Shelton • CCM, PGA Master Professional General Manager • Newport Beach (Calif.) Country Club
“I am not telling you it will be easy. I will tell you it’s defi nitely going to be worth it.”
This quote has always been a ‘north star’ or guiding directi on when asking our team members about big ideas or new and challenging concepts.
Our club had been facing a challenge that I think is common in our industry—the onboarding of new employees and ensuring they understand the club’s culture, performance standards, and measures of success. Too oft en, I found, we were ‘delegati ng’ training to anyone working the same shift .
I used a football analogy with our team— no team would just put eleven players on the fi eld and tell them to ‘go play.’ The football team will have a playbook, huddle before plays, review video footage, discuss opportuniti es from the bench, and so on.
So the questi ons became: How do we improve our onboarding and new teammember training? How do we not just do what we’ve always done? How can we learn from other industries or sports?
NEW POSITIONS FOR A NEW APPROACH
Our team has embraced the opportunity to prioriti ze our employee training with a strong new focus on club culture and hospitality. We have created two new management-level positi ons, Training Manager and Assistant Director of Food & Beverage–Training, that have quickly had an impact and been well-received by both members and staff .
Melanie Stacklie, a 20-year employee at our club, was promoted to the Training Manager positi on. Every new hire now completes an individual comprehensive orientati on, including videos and situati onal training, with Melanie before he or she starts work. With this approach, all team members have, at minimum, two days of training before performing any duty.
Additi onally, Melanie has been developing training programs for all team members and working with all departments to make conti nuous improvements through training and re-training.
The videos used in the orientati on
Newport Beach CC’s guides for each of its five food-and-beverage outlets include photos of dishes and detailed lists of all ingredients, including sauces, as well as menu-knowledge tests.
process are all hospitality-focused. They feature Danny Meyer, Bobby Stuckey and other prominent hoteliers and restauranteurs, on topics that include hospitality vs. service; team-member empowerment; making connecti ons, and putti ng your people fi rst. The videos are discussed before and aft er they are watched, and it has been interesti ng to see each person’s interpretati on of them.
For the situational training, some fairly simple scenarios involving hospitality are used, with the goal of getting new hires focused on seeing opportunities to enhance the member experience. For example, one scenario involves a member asking for a Gatorade in an area where it is not served. Because we do serve it in another area, what would they do in that situation?
The objecti ve of these exercises is not to try to stump or trick the new employee, but to help them realize that there are numerous ti mes each day when they can make an improvement. We love it when they get every answer correct, and because the situati onal training comes at the end of the orientati on, the great news is that most of the new hires do.
Melanie, who previously held an Accounting Manager position here, and has also served as our Interim Director of Spa & Recreation, has been excited about the opportunity to help create this brand-new program and to see how it can have such a huge impact on the entire club. Her decades-long knowledge of Newport Beach CC, and the relationships she’s built in her 20 years here, are proving to be an incredible asset for her in her new role.
To put a special emphasis on our food-
CREATING A NEW TRAINING STANDARD
and-beverage operati on, we have also hired Karen So, who was previously General Manager of Henry’s Uncorked, a popular wine bar in nearby Hunti ngton Beach, Calif., for our new positi on of Assistant Director of Food & Beverage—Training. In additi on to her restaurant experience, Karen has her Level 3 from the Wine & Spirit Educati on Trust (WSET) and her 1st Level of The Court of Master Sommeliers. (Melanie Stacklie has also enhanced what she can develop and provide in her positi on by recently obtaining her WSET Level 2, with merit.)
In her new role, Karen works with all members of the food-and-beverage team to ensure they are expertly trained on products, menus, service standards and hospitality. And she has jumped right in, creati ng detailed menu guides, onboarding training schedules, menu-knowledge tests, one-on-one coaching, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for our fi ve diff erent food-and-beverage outlets.
The detailed menu guides include photos of dishes and a detailed list of all of their ingredients, including what’s in any sauces that are part of the dish. The menu-knowledge tests ensure that team members know exactly what every dish is and what is in it, while the training schedules cover the details of every step of the training process, including where someone will be training, what to wear and exactly what they’ll learn.
The SOPs are formal writt en instructi ons for diff erent processes. Because each document is so detailed and specifi c, it is easy for
For its new positions, Newport Beach CC promoted
Melanie Stacklie (left), a 20-year club employee, to
Training Manager and hired Karen So, previously
General Manager of a popular local wine bar, as Assistant Director of Food & Beverage—Training.
them to be custom-tailored to each outlet. (Editor’s Note: Examples of some of the SOPs and training guides that have been developed by Newport Beach CC can be viewed with the online version of this arti cle at www.clubandresortbusiness.com)
PROOF THAT IT’S WORKING
I am excited for what’s ahead in our future at Newport Beach Country Club. It has not been easy developing these programs. They have required a lot of ti me and energy, and as we all know, getti ng 25- and 30-year team members to see the value of training and re-training programs can be especially challenging,
But it has all quickly proved to be totally worth it—and ti mely as we strive to have members fully enjoy our new 65,000-sq. ft . clubhouse (see pg. 28) while also preparing to host The Hoag Classic for the PGA TOUR Champions in March of 2022.
In additi on to the tangible measurements that we track of the program’s success—including the number of member referrals into the club; growth in covers and F&B spending, and a reducti on in the number of items ‘comped’ for service recovery—we are already seeing great feedback from both club members and team members about this new focus on training and the creati on of these training-focused management positi ons. Here’s just some of what we’ve heard: • Aft er two weeks of our focused training, a 34-year veteran on our staff who was very reluctant to go through it at the beginning said “I really see how this will be helpful for us, and especially for our other team members.” • A team member who was promoted to a Lead Server and Floor Trainer said, “This will help get us all on the same page.” • And perhaps best of all, a member said, “What a diff erence in food and service in the last six months. You and the team are to be complimented. We have to start telling more members how great the service and improvements are in Seahorse [our upstairs dining room].”
