You, as an IAVM member, are our most important asset. Without your commitment to the association and to the venue management industry, we wouldn’t be here. Because of your support, we are featuring member profiles in our I Am Venue Management series.

If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be a: teacher. I have grown up around teachers. I have a wide variety of family and friends that are all teachers. I would want to be an elementary school teacher, because I love kids and think that teachers can have such an important impact on kids’ lives. I am a better person today because of the teachers that I have had.

Most impressive person I’ve ever met: is Sarah Rogers. Not because of what Sarah has done or the accomplishments she has (which are incredible), but because of the person she is and the heart she has. Sarah has a way of caring about students and their futures. She has definitely had an influence on my life.

I unwind by: going to the gym or going for a run. My biggest stress relief after a crazy day is definitely running.

On my desk right now: are lots of sticky notes, papers, and a note pad with highlighted reminders.

My favorite IAVM conference I ever attended was: VenueConnect. Doug Sandler gave my favorite session called, “Nice People Finish First” at VC15. It was a powerful message that left you feeling like you can do better and be a better person.

One trait an up-and-coming venue manager should have is: a good work ethic. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone wanting to work in this industry, do the work you don’t want to do, because one day it will pay off. Be ready for long days and lots of hours. It won’t always be glamorous, but it will always have its benefits.

One of my goals for this year is to: implement an app so students at our university are able to redeem their sports tickets online or on their phones. This will help for tracking purposes and make life a lot easier for everyone involved.

How do you plan to help elevate the profession? In today’s era, technology is rapidly growing and becoming more diverse. I think the world of technology has so much to offer, and for those of us just starting out in the industry, I think it is important to get behind social media and truly understand the capabilities and endless possibilities it can have for a company.

Where do you see new growth opportunities in the profession? This profession has definitely expanded tremendously in the last decade. With my foot in the door, I hope to continue developing and learning from all those surrounded by me. Being that I have just started out, I don’t know where life will take me, but I full heartedly believe that possibilities are endless.

How do you stay current with industry trends and developments? I try and stay on top of all the industry trends by doing lots of research and reading lots of articles. Not all articles pertain to my current job or even my profession, but I feel like there is potential for growth by reading and learning for all avenues.

Who are three people you’d invite to a dinner party and why? I would invite my dad, because he has been my role model and my biggest supporter. I would also invite Holly Rowe, because my dream would be to work for ESPN. Finally, Aaron Rodgers, because what girl wouldn’t want to have dinner with Aaron Rodgers!

McKell Bennett is assistant marketing director for the Adam Center – University of Montana in Missoula, Montana.

Every venue and organization has its star employees. However, the influence those stars have on others around them is often overlooked, according to research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

“Star performers produce more than other individuals, help increase the productivity of those around them and have an important impact on the performance of their organizations as a whole,” wrote Herman Aguinis (John F. Mee Chair of Management and professor of organizational behavior and human resources) with Kyle Bradley (a PhD candidate at Kelley) in the article, “The Secret Sauce for Organizational Success: Managing and Producing Star Performers” in the journal Organizational Dynamics.

Aguinis and Bradley analyzed research studies over the last five years involving more than 600,000 people in a variety of occupations and found that an individual’s performance doesn’t follow the normal bell curve distribution.

However, many organizations force managers to assign a set percentage of their employees to specific performance measures in order to cause a normal distribution. This has the effect of clustering a majority of people around the average of the distribution.

“Rather than a normal distribution, our research suggests that performance usually follows a power law distribution … Under this type of distribution, we expect to see many more star performers,” Aguinis and Bradley wrote.

A dictionary definition of power law is, “The concept that the magnitude of a subjective sensation increases proportional to a power of the stimulus intensity.

“If an organization implements a performance evaluation system that forces a normal distribution when performance actually follows a power law distribution, several star performers will be rated as average,” Aguinis and Bradley wrote. “This could have demoralizing effects on the individual and result in loss of motivation, drops in performance, or even turnover of some of the organization’s most valuable human capital.”

To manage and produce star performers, Aguinis and Bradley offer several recommendations below (from an Indiana University news release).

• Fairness does not mean equality in terms of rewarding everyone the same, but it involves everyone being given the same opportunity to become a star performer. To do so, organizations need to be transparent about the relationship between specific employee behaviors and results with rewards. Chipotle was cited as an example, due to its promotion process that enables anyone to move from making burritos to senior management.
• Remove situational constraints, which unleashes star performance, including when teams are put together. “Managers should leverage their star performers in team settings. This can be accomplished by allowing star performers to rotate in and out of teams, instead of keeping them locked down to one specific team,” Aguinis and Bradley wrote. “As stars rotate through teams, they will be able to have an impact on several other individuals.”
• Instead of focusing training resources on average workers, managers should “recognize that small, incremental improvements to star performers can have a much larger impact than trying to shift all individuals up the performance scale,” Aguinis and Bradley wrote. “Managers should use stars to help train and develop others within the organizations.”

“Implementing such practices may get us closer to reaching one of the most coveted ‘holy grails’ in management: turning human capital into an unbeatable and long-lasting source of competitive advantage,” Aguinis and Bradley wrote.

(Image: Jesús Belzunce Gómez/Creative Commons)

More millennials are becoming bosses every day. You may not be working for one now at a venue, but you may in the future. Then the question arises, if you’re in an older generation, how do you deal with working for a younger boss?

Expert career counselor Dawn Rasmussen, CARW, CMP, offers a few suggestions via a LinkedIn post. Let’s look at some of her tips.

Educate Yourself on the Younger Mindset
“There are a lot of great books out there that talk about how technology has sped up how rapidly younger people acquire and consume information, and how that has shaped their interactions.”

Leadership Coaching
“Find a way to offer advice without coming across as condescending, patriarchal, or teacher-like. Gentle coaching that inserts the lessons learned can provide leaders with a diplomatic way of asking for more information on how to avoid making mistakes without looking bad or inexperienced.”

Adapt
“If we don’t adapt to changing workplaces and leadership styles, we will likely find ourselves on the way out.”

Please read Rasmussen’s full post for more advice and her great answer to the interview question: “How would you handle working for a younger boss?”

(Image: Roger Do Minh/Creative Commons)

Nokia Networks has signed a memorandum of understanding with Artemis Networks to test pCell wireless technology next year in large indoor venues and other high density areas.

Artemis created a new technology that it called pWave.

“Wireless antennas using the technology, the company said, would be able to create small ‘bubbles’ of connectivity around smartphones, tablets, and other devices that would eliminate the need for people to share bandwidth, and speed up internet connections dramatically in crowded spaces,” Rich McCormick reported for The Verge.

The “bubbles” are called pCells, or personal cells.

“Theoretically they will follow smartphones as their owners move around,” McCormick reported. “That makes them ideal for deployment in crowded areas, where normally hundreds or thousands of people share the same cell, and slowing down connection speeds.”

To better understand pCell technology, please watch the video below.

(Image: Artemis)

Did you know that the average cost of replacing a minimum wage employee is US$3,500? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, customer service and hospitality are two of the top industries where turnover is highest. For a business to thrive in today’s economy, finding and retaining the best employees is imperative to be successful.

There can be several factors that determine why someone decides to leave a company or to stop working for your venue. As venue managers, we want to cut down on these factors and keep our best employees as they continue to grow and develop year after year, season after season. Having to replace staff every season can be extremely costly and an ineffective way to run a venue. Some of the costs to consider when replacing staff members are advertising, interviewing, screening, and hiring costs—as well as you and your co-managers’ time and money, loss of productivity, errors made by new team members, the time associated with the inevitable learning curve, and the cultural impact it has on the rest of the team. So we have to ask ourselves, does your company or venue track the cost of employee turnover? How do you know if you’re losing money, or if you are doing well in terms of retention? What are things we can do to measure this?

Here are a few tips to determine your profit or loss when it comes to retaining your invaluable team:

1. Start by tracking retention rates, costs of advertising, interviewing, training, etc.
2. Research retention strategies and find one that will work for your venue—there is not a one-size-fits-all solution
3. Get feedback from existing team members
4. Implement benefits or rewards and recognition programs
5. Conduct exit interviews

Analyzing these factors can help you determine what you need to change or what you should keep the same in order to create the ultimate fan experience for your guests.

Two of the most important things venue managers should be implementing immediately if they aren’t already are ensuring they are hiring the right people and rewarding current committed employees. So how do we make sure we are hiring the right people and making sure they are loyal to our organizations? Some items to consider are compensation, job fit, and work environment. Believe it or not, compensation tends to be the least important factor of the three when it comes to retaining employees. While paying your team too little can have a negative impact, it’s determined that the job fit and work environment are stronger factors when it comes to retention.

Being completely transparent and honest during the recruiting and hiring process is essential to ensure team members have clear expectations and can find the right job that is fit for their demands as an employee of your company. The job description and interview is not the time to embellish the glory of working in the end zones or upper deck levels—as we all know these can be the toughest locations in a venue to work where guests feel they can get away with a little more.

When it comes to developing a work environment, your team members need to feel their skills are being utilized properly, and if so, they will feel appreciated. Then, they need to be recognized and rewarded when they are carrying out your venues’ missions and creating the guest experience we, as venue managers strive for.

The next step is looking at what types of recognition programs we can execute and figuring out when to reward our team members. Since cost is so commonly an issue when it comes to executing these programs, we as venue managers need to be creative in coming up with different items we can offer our staff while still staying within the means of our budget.

At Ralph Wilson Stadium, we have several different reward and recognition programs in place. The rewards vary depending on the value we have placed on them. For example, some of the reward programs we offer are small, on-the-spot recognitions, while others are more involved and can include tickets to a game. We place the highest value on creating a memorable guest experience and ensure that our rewards and recognition align with our mission. Some of our most popular programs are our Service Coin award, Touchdown Challenge, Guest Recognition Reward, Player of the Game, and Years of Service Reward.

The Service Coin is a specially designed coin the size of a half dollar distributed to all of our game-day supervisors who reward team members for on-the-spot recognition when they are seen going above and beyond with our guests.

The Touchdown Challenge is a year-long contest we designed to raise our average mystery shop scores. Each game, the Overall Experience is calculated and the football marker moves up the “field” in hopes to score a Touchdown. The challenges are designed so that team members need to work together to achieve the goal. At the end of the season, if our team members “score a touchdown” they are rewarded with gift cards.

Anytime a guest writes, calls, or emails into their ticket office representative or to our venue managers directly, complimenting the service they got from one of our game-day team members we reward them with an autographed mini-helmet from our yearly stock of inventory.

Our Player of the Game and Years of Service awards are our two biggest awards. After each game, every game-day supervisor nominates a Player of the Game. The venue managers then select one Player from each of our seven partners, and the winners are rewarded with two game-day tickets to the following game, on-field recognition, video board recognition, a $50 food voucher, an autographed mini helmet, and pay for their days work. Since this is the fourth season we have implemented this reward, our staff gets really excited and continually strives to go above and beyond to get recognized by their supervisors. Finally is our Years of Service award. Each year, we recognize team members who have completed 10, 20, 30 and 40 years of service. Team Members that have completed 10 seasons with the Buffalo Bills receive a player plaque, 20 receive a personalized football, 30 receive a Buffalo Bills watch, and team members that have completed 40 seasons with the team receive a personalized Buffalo Bills authentic jersey, two game tickets, and participation in welcoming the players onto the field in Stampede Row.

We also raffle off prizes for participation in a weekly “online training” session that contains a short PowerPoint and quiz to keep team members informed of changing policies or remind them of existing policies throughout the season. Additionally, we reward gift cards for receiving a 100 percent on a mystery shop and celebrate a successful season by holding an annual Team Member Appreciation Party.

Regardless of the time and effort we put in each year to improve our hiring process and add more reward and recognition programs, we still find ourselves struggling to staff the whole building come mid-season. Again, the factors of absenteeism can vary: the weather, team performance, and other elements can all influence why the call-offs increase halfway through the season. But, we continue to strive to improve all the things that go into making our staff happy, because making your employees happy will ultimately make your customers happy.

(Image: Idibri/Creative Commons)