RETRAINING FOR THE NEW NORMAL

Industry experts discussed the road back for casino employees post COVID-19 at ICE North America Digital, and how to create an enjoyable experience for guests while ensuring the safety of all parties involved.

DAVID NEWTON, partner, Hospitality Resources

RICK FIELDS, consultant, former SVP casino operations, Mandalay Bay

JULIA STEWART, founder and CEO, Alurx

CHRIS SMITH, vice president of HR, Boyd Gaming

DAVID CARROLL, SVP of HR, Seminole Hard Rock Support Services LLC

CHRIS SMITH: Overall as a company, we wanted to be very sensitive to our team members returning to work. We understood that because we furloughed our team members in March, they were coming back to a very different environment. When they left, no one was wearing a mask and now we’re requiring all our team members to wear one. We wanted to be very sensitive to that so we over-emphasized all the safety protocols we put in place. A lot of our conversations revolved around whether it was safe to come back, and what we were doing to protect people.

We called people back based predominantly on seniority and their roles. We had cases where not everyone wanted to come back. We had some team members who resigned or stepped out and we were sensitive to that. We offered different positions and roles where they would feel more safe, but at the end of the day some people

just wanted to leave the organization. For the team members that we have called back, I think they have been very appreciative of the safety protocols we do have in place.

RICK FIELDS: What I have seen work really well in Las Vegas is the presence of senior leadership up front when they are welcoming the employees back saying “I am in this with you.” I have seen that make a huge difference with personal friends of mine who are now back to work in the new norm.

DAVID CARROLL: We’ve enlisted some pretty good training programmes and even used some medical professionals to guide us to make sure that we’re not only doing the right thing, but the rules keep changing as we go, so we need to stay abreast of those changes as they occur. Even though we’ve enlisted the help of outside professionals, sometimes they don’t always agree so it’s kind of a moving target. Generally speaking, what I’m finding most critical is how you respond when somebody in the workplace tests positive.

JULIA STEWART: I think retraining is critical and you have to create a culture that suggests we’re all in this together. I can’t think of anything more important than regularly communicating and empowering people. I think that notion of retraining is part of it but the notion of why and the whole cultural part of it is absolutely critical.

CS: One thing that we’ve really wanted to emphasize is keeping the message fresh. Like everyone else, once you’ve done two or three weeks of training, you start to tune out the message. We've done a lot of things around face coverings and social distancing and washing your hands that have been fun and clever throughout our properties. We have intentionally changed the messaging so that people continue to pay attention.

It’s really easy to get lazy on how you’re wearing the face coverings, especially when you’re going from front to back of house. Team members will let down their guard and that’s just as susceptible an environment as anywhere else. We keep our message fresh and frequent to ensure we don’t let our guard down at all.

RF: A couple of friends of mine on the Strip here are having issues in the back of house so they have leadership back there reminding people that the masks stay on. They have done a couple of funny videos with executives washing their hands and getting scolded for not doing it properly. This is to keep it front of mind and make it fun so it doesn’t seem like a punishment.

CS: We have approached this like any other expectation we set for our team members whether it be service or compliance. We will coach as much as we can, but eventually a team member is not going to wear their mask properly or social distance and we may progress to discipline. It’s just like any other standard we employ from a compliance perspective. This carries the same weight.

DC: The vast majority of people are trying to do the right thing and a minority will not get it so we have to do what we have to do. Fortunately, there hasn’t been much of that and we have just had to give friendly reminders. A lot of the times it’s actually peer pressure, so that helps a little bit too.

JS: I would say there’s this notion of really effectively communicating what is different about the environment and how we are going about it. Then there’s also communicating how we notify our team members if someone in the team contracts coronavirus. It’s giving the message that we are doing everything we can to keep this environment a safe one for you as an employee.

We actually conducted a self assessment survey. Before you went on the floor or in the front or back of house, you had to take a self assessment survey to see how comfortable you were. That questionnaire helped us learn that about 20% of the workforce was uncomfortable to begin with. So we had to put additional strategies in place to address that.

CS: We’re actually going to be launching a survey here in a couple of weeks to start getting our initial feedback, but we’ve done a lot of listening exercises with general managers. As a result, we’ve adjusted a lot of our training. When you design these things before you open, you don’t know what you don’t know yet. For us to be agile during this process has been beneficial because we have learned something new every day.