Staff Retention Strategies; Pricing, Culture, and Technology

Association for Challenge Course Technologies (ACCT) is an international non-profit organization that advances the challenge course and aerial adventure park industry through technical standards, government relations, and professional development. ACCT's mission is to promote the use of challenge courses and aerial parks to facilitate learning, growth, and wellness while enhancing the experience and safety of participants. The organization accomplishes this by providing educational and training programs, publishing industry best practices, and researching to support the development of standards and guidelines for designing, installing, operating, and inspecting challenge courses and aerial adventure parks. You can find out more about ACCT and the 2024 conference here.

In this post, you will learn about 7 implementable tactics you can choose from to help solve your problems around staff retention.

Table of Contents

1. Increase compensation through smarter pricing
2. Cultivate employees as leaders...not "supervisors"
3. Leadership through open books and dashboards
4. Create a standard for your culture: develop a mission and values
5. Live your values through hiring, training, and benefits
6. Create transparency through business intelligence
7. Use automation to reduce mundane tasks 

1. Increase compensation

Offering a wage worthy of sacrifice and hard work should be the number one priority when making your employees feel their work is valued.  

That said, increasing wages can be scary, and difficult to comprehend where the money will come from. Zeb Smith, founder, and CEO of Zebulon LLC, an expert in consulting outdoor companies on cultivating and keeping leaders, says that by setting your price based on business needs and the value you deliver to guests, you can remove the roadblocks that feel unfeasible. 

"It is easy to get lost in all the varying pricing strategies out there,” says Smith. “I work with my clients to focus on two specifically: Needs and Value. With needs-based pricing, the price you charge your customers is the last number you come up with. Instead, you begin the process by determining your outfit needs, including employee compensation, so you work smarter, have more fun, and make more money. Value-based pricing is a great compliment to pair with this strategy because you aren’t comparing yourself to the bowling alley down the street, you are looking objectively at how to add more genuine value and determining what perceived value your customers place on your experiences.”

Zebulon utilizes a simple profit and loss template to work backward toward a goal price per person, ultimately arriving at an annual revenue goal. In Smith’s experience, the number can be a significant bump compared to what you are charging today.

But, he’s seen success with it time and again. And this is where the value-based pricing strategy comes into play.

1. Learn what your target audience values
2. Focus on their desired outcomes
3. Price based on the perceived value of your experience

“Customers value you differently than you value yourselves,” claims Smith. “Where you enjoy climbing, they enjoy time with their family, want to get their kids off their devices and out of trouble, create lasting family memories while they’re still teenagers, and have a good time. These are difficult to put a price tag - or cap - on.”

Once you set yourself up for success through a needs and value-based pricing strategy offering competitive compensation for staff (especially for management-level employees) becomes tangible and less painful.

Want more details on how to establish these pricing models and more strategies for your business? Follow us on Linked In, subscribe to our industry newsletter here or reach out to Zebulon LLC directly to set up a consult.

2. Leaders, not Supervisors

Research shared by BetterWorks, that over 57% of unhappy employees leave their jobs because of their bosses. Smith reiterates this by stating “Employees don’t leave companies, they leave their direct supervisor.”

Supervisor: responsible for overseeing the completion of job duties performed by other people.

Leader: responsible for unlocking the skills of each person they supervise and facilitating each person’s growth as an individual and team member.

The outdoor industry is notorious for losing quality talent due to the lack of guidance against supervising. Many managers' primary responsibilities are to get things done, not to grow their employees. This is a key reason why so many great young people leave this industry to pursue ‘adult' jobs where there is the opportunity for professional growth.

Below are some useful tools Smith shared to help you gauge where you are today and to understand if you are cultivating leaders or supervisors.

• In the book “First, Break All the Rules”, Don Clifton provides a simple 12-question survey to gauge your teams’ commitment to your business’s future and their likelihood to stay long-term. It’s a starting point to establish how you can help grow your team into stronger leaders and in turn retain them longer.
• Encourage your managers to take ownership of their roles and implement strategies that are within their control. Avoid micromanaging and check in with them (regularly) to get their ideas for how the company can improve and grow.

These sound like simple actions however implementing them can be difficult. Read on to tactic 5 (living your values through hiring, training, and benefits) to learn a few other tangible ways YOU can get the change you are needing.

3. Open-book Leadership 

Access to information is important for today's generation of workers that have grown up with all the world’s knowledge just a click away. 

Adopting open-book management is the concept of not only sharing your company financials but including your team in the process of setting goals and strategies to achieve those goals. People want opportunities to be involved and in turn, to contribute to growing the bottom line.

Zebulon Smith, who presented on this topic, recommends the following for beginning to transition towards open-book leadership:

1. Set aside a half day for a retreat with the leadership team where financials are introduced, challenges are outlined, and high-level desired outcomes are started.
2. As a team, the owner or general manager can facilitate the team to brainstorm solutions.
3. Each team member begins to define the desired outcomes within their control and identifies 3 ways to reach them which in turn delivers on those outcomes.

The creative results your teams come up with will be more than any single owner/operator can do on their own.

"My favorite example of this was with a company who opened their books to employees which involved a line item of $100,000 expense toward employee benefits,” Smith describes. “Employees were blown away at the generosity and immediately recognized the importance of current revenue goals and reducing expenses. The janitor proactively determined a way he could save $5,000 per year in paper towel use by taking some extra time in saving end caps on the rolls. In turn, the owner not only listened to him and empowered him to do it, but when the janitor saved the company money, the owner wrote the janitor a personal check for $5,000.”

Incentivizing teams to meet their performance goals can be extremely powerful. It’s a great way to increase compensation only if and when goals are achieved. Start by empowering your top managers and nurturing them to become leaders and employees with understanding.

The above section was presented by Zebulon Smith with Zebulon LLC at the 2023 ACCT Conference, Staff Retention Workshop hosted by The Flybook.

Zeb Smith, CPA is the owner of Zebulon LLC; a management consulting practice that helps outfitters turn Work Hard, Play Hard into Work Smarter, Have More Fun, and Make More Money.

Zeb has worked closely with over thirty outfitters from across the nation on pricing, team development, and business growth strategies. Zeb's efforts have helped outfitters increase wages company-wide, develop employee-owned cultures, elevate owners from owner-operations to owner-directors, and added hundreds of thousands of dollars to individual outfits' bottom lines in single seasons for little to no additional effort from owners and their teams. Zeb speaks regularly at national and state-level industry-specific conferences and is a qualified guide to help you on your business journey. Many outfitters have coined Zeb as "The Guide's Guide."

The following section was presented by Jack Marti of Go Ape at the 2023 ACCT Conference, Staff Retention Workshop hosted by The Flybook.

Jack A. Marti, SHRM-SCP
Jack Marti is the Manager of HR & Organizational Excellence at Go Ape.

Jack Marti is the Manager of HR & Organizational Excellence at Go Ape. He earned his Bachelors in Psychology/Human Resources from Westminster College and his MBA from Hood College. He also sits on the board for the Frederick County, MD Chapter of SHRM.  With a wide range of background and experience, he has helped a variety of organizations successfully attract, retain, and develop its talent. By possessing a strong understanding of both the needs of businesses he partners with and the employees he supports, Jack works to develop high performing teams, collaborative workplaces, and a culture of trust and transparency. In his spare time, Jack enjoys spending time with his wife and two children. He also loves to cook, smoke meats, write music, and play ice hockey.

4. Mission and Values

According to experts at Harvard Business Review, mission, and vision should be one sentence each and easy enough to remember that people can repeat them. They don’t need to be incredibly original, but they have to be authentic and distinct enough that you can use them to hold one another accountable. 

Mission: What is the core purpose of our collective work together? Why do we exist and do what we do? This is the north star around which cultures are built, the single thing each person can point to as their reason for working in the community.

Values are equally key in establishing a shared company culture. Values are impactful phrases that drive how an organization commits to working daily. These are statements of how a company does what it does and the principles it will consistently abide by. They help set expectations of behavior, performance, and how people treat each other. There is nothing more important for a company to do.

Marti shares that once values are defined, the real difference lies in how they are used on a regular basis. The continued use of Go Ape's values in daily practices has shaped his work experience with them.

Below is how you can begin to go about setting (and updating) your company values: 

1. Have senior leaders engage a broad group of employees directly. Some of this can be technologically enabled — videos from leaders sent to everyone, surveys, and online tools where employees can submit ideas. But much of it should be real person-to-person contact.

2. Senior leaders from the CEO/Owner down should personally lead diverse focus groups throughout the organization, in person or by video, to connect with a broad group of people and hear their feedback directly.

3. Leaders should encourage a culture of receptivity to feedback on the mission, vision, and values that will long outlast the formal exercise.

4. Once the staff feels heard the leadership team crafts the actual words used to explain the powerful feelings the whole team feels connected to.

5. Living Your Values

According to Marti with Go Ape, establishing, sharing, and truly living the Go Ape company mission and values has transformed the culture of their adventure and zipline park business.

Marti has confirmed what experts in the business world share, having a mission and values must be shared from the top (CEO/Owner) down for it to truly make an impact.

In Marti's leadership role running HR for Go Ape, he sets culture as a top priority and has learned how to infuse the values and mission into all aspects of the company resulting in their renowned culture (their google and indeed reviews confirm it).

Below are ways Marti shares to promote your mission and values in your own business:

1. Post your mission and values to your website and around the office or anywhere staff congregates. Transparency in sharing shows that the company stands behind what they say.
2. Incorporate the values into the hiring, onboarding, and employee performance review process. Marti makes sure to include the values in every job description to ensure that the expectation of their culture is set upfront.
3. Develop some basic collateral that is shared amongst staff or is even repurposed for retail. One example Marti uses in his operation is to include a one-pager stating the mission and values that is provided upon hiring along with other swag and work essentials. 

Go Ape's mission and values are available to the public through its website.

The Go Ape hiring packet includes swag, personalized goodies (a hit with staff), and a written sheet including the mission and values.

4. The hiring process is an opportunity for you to establish an expectation about what the company cares about and the values that align with the entire team. Marti uses behavioral assessments in the hiring process, training, and ongoing employee relations. For Go Ape, this type of tool is essential to allow staff to know and utilize their strengths. These tools also empower managers to become leaders by focusing on the information the assessment supplies and through regular check-in meetings.

5. Establishing benefits and bonuses for staff that they care about is another way to allow the company values to be lived daily.

"One of our values is to "be socially and environmentally responsible". For us, this means providing ways for our staff to act and live this value. We incorporated paid volunteer hours and group service days for the leadership team. These opportunities show everyone internally and in our community that we don't just talk about things, we act on them."

The Go Ape mission is "We want to inspire everyone to live life adventurously.  Life is just better with adventure." With these words, they developed other employee benefits to allow for the mission to come to life. From offering a Mental Health Assistance program, on-demand pay through their payroll company, and a contracted Employee Assistance Program, Go Ape is making sure their staff understands they are cared for so they can live life adventurously. 

The following tactics were presented by Megan Langer, co-founder of The Flybook at the 2023 ACCT Conference, Staff Retention Workshop hosted by The Flybook.

Megan is a co-founder of The Flybook reservation software.

6. Transparency through Business Intelligence

Transparency into the business's financial and operational health and performance isn't as straightforward as it sounds. However, as mentioned above in open-book leadership you can understand that the need is essential in rallying teams toward the same goals with a true sense of ownership.

Langer shared how Go Ape understands this need by investing upfront in creating dashboard templates together with Flybook and developing a variety of performance dashboards that are used daily. 

IBM states Business Intelligence (BI) is software that ingests business data and presents it in user-friendly views such as reports, dashboards, charts, and graphs.

Go Ape specifically uses Microsoft BI as the tool of choice to combine data from the Flybook (their reservation software) and other sources to create easy-to-read dashboards sharing information like:

• Activity and Product Revenue
• Guest Feedback
• Labor Efficiency
• Product and Merchandise by category

These dashboards are "live" meaning they do not need to download reports and manage pivot tables every time they need to refresh the information. The dashboards are directly integrated into Flybook, pulling real-time data and compiling the information essential to each manager's goals or responsibilities. This open-book approach has allowed Go Ape to share financials, and relevant metrics and keep regular tabs on the health of the business throughout the season.

Key metrics Go Ape uses to track and share the health of the business.

7. Automation

The happiest workplaces use and prioritize automation according to a recent Business Wire Article. Automation allows for staff to focus on more purposeful and creative work and 40% of the group surveyed for the article believe a software program would be more effective than their current boss.

Langer promotes this idea by recommending tapping into the reservation software you are using.

"Automation can be made easy by understanding the systems you have and the pain points your staff is experiencing," says Langer. She recommends asking staff directly what they "hate" about their daily work.

The Flybook has asked this question in the past and based on customer feedback has found a few top pain points that you can automate with reservation software systems (the following processes are specific to The Flybook reservations software):

1. Answering the phones. Specifically, it is time-consuming and monotonous for staff to answer and adjust reservations.
2. Managing large groups. With multiple waivers, restrictions, and logistics, managing large groups is tedious.
3. Managing weather changes. The outdoor industry is predominantly affected by the weather so when bad weather strikes it becomes an all-out scramble to make sure guests are aware or updated on the weather.

Langer explained three tools that The Flybook provides that can expedite the use of automation to alleviate these pain points.

Guest self-modification is a feature The Flybook offers to allow your guests to make changes or cancel their reservations online, without requiring a phone call. You can set up parameters for each action to uphold your cancelation policy. This feature has allowed many current Flybook customers to decrease the phone time their staff spends making reservation adjustments.

The Flybook offers group management tools by allowing shared waivers (internally managed within the software) and a CRM tool that helps move a group through a pipeline of tasks.

Lastly, on-demand rain checks and immediate mass text communication tools provide you and your staff with the tools necessary to avoid headaches and automate monotonous, tedious tasks.

Automation tools like the above and others like text tipping or survey requests are small ways to reduce headaches for you and your staff. In turn, they will appreciate how you work to make their lives easier.

The 7 tactics you can implement range from essential (shared company values) to helpful (automation tools). So, whether you can begin to implement one or many let us know what you think would be most valuable for you and your team in the comments.

Looking to learn more about The Flybook Reservation Software?