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Have you planned out your rental shop training strategy this year? Have you hired new staff or brought back the same crew? How are you going to get the new staff up to speed and refresh your returning employees? Yes, we know you’ve heard it before, but proper staff training is essential to running a safe, successful rental operation.


The Issue: Safe and Sound
The issues surrounding rental training are certainly not new, but they are persistent. Resorts have a legal and moral responsibility to their guests to ensure employees are trained to install rental equipment safely and ensure skiers’ or snowboarders’ equipment is fitted properly. This responsibility is met by ensuring that rental staff are adequately trained and certified for their job. How that is achieved varies, but the importance of good training cannot be overestimated.

Steve Hanft, a risk manager at Snow Summit and Big Bear resorts and former instructor of rental training workshops, emphasizes that a resorts’ defense against legal claims involving a rental-associated injury rests on the resorts’ proof that they have trained their staff to do their jobs correctly.

“All of our training programs are really important, because we want to do the job right, and we want to be able to take advantage of the indemnification agreements that are part of our [rental equipment] dealer agreement,” he says. “That’s really important: if we’ve made a mistake, then the indemnity could be denied and you’re defending the case yourself.”

The obstacles to having a well oiled, well trained rental operation include seasonal turnover of staff, supervisors who may not understand the importance of training, bored or uninterested staff, and a lack of focus on hands-on training. Clearing these hurdles requires ingenuity and a top-down commitment from resort management to creating effective training regimens.


Solution: Book It
The ways in which training is tackled varies from resort to resort. A common training tool is the Ski and Snowboard Mechanics Workshops run by Vermont Ski Safety Equipment (www.vermontskisafety.com). The clinics, which are in their 17th year of operation, visit 18 ski areas across the country from September through November, and they offer a mix of classroom-style teaching and hands-on learning..

“Hands-on is the best way for someone to learn,” says instructor Scott Belt. “We try to do both; we go through a lecture series and then they get to try hands-on afterward. We have an assistant instructor at every table to oversee trainees and make sure they are going through the proper procedures in every section. If they make a mistake, well, that’s the place to learn, rather than on equipment that someone spent $1,000 or $1,500 on.”

The workshops cover topics such as basic binding mechanics basics and advanced binding mechanics, rental mechanics update, plus ski and snowboard tuning and repair. The team also runs management seminars at three of the stops on the tour for the resorts’ top management.

Some winter resorts, such as Whistler/Blackcomb, B.C., have devised their own training program for the staffers who join, or re-join, the resort team every fall. Whistler moves a significant amount of product through its 15 separate rental shops during the winter and their training system is rigorous.

“Rental techs receive 28 to 30 hours of instruction before hitting the sales floor for the first time,” says Paul Vacirca, retail rental operations manager for Whistler/Blackcomb. “Training checklists are assigned to each staff member and must be signed off by a coach or senior staff member before [the employee’s] first shift on the floor. Binding certification is completed first and then practice sessions are available to all techs. Product knowledge sessions from the ski or board reps go through each model of ski or board in the rental fleet. The boot-fitting course is a four-hour session with practice sessions to follow. Waiver management and loss prevention are high priorities in our resort due to sharing equipment between 15 rental shops.”

At Hunter Mountain, which handles a high amount of rental traffic due to its proximity to New York City, the resort’s rental manager, Eric Johnson, schedules a full day of training before the season even starts.

“This all-day session usually covers everything from guest service and customer relations training to equipment sizing and performance to tuning and repair,” Johnson explains. “Then during the season, I try to encourage that the best training a rental shop employee can get is to go outside and get some turns! Once you’ve used the equipment, whatever brand it may be, you can better describe how the gear responds on the snow, how the fit should feel, and the advantages of the newer technology compared to gear just a handful of seasons old.”


Prevention: Finders Keepers
With the proper training in place, the next step is to insure the quality of the employees. Snow Summit’s Hanft says that it seems harder and harder to attract the right people to rental shop positions and that it’s increasingly difficult to keep them, too. Deborah Fletcher, co-founder of Season HR Solutions, a ski- and golf-resort human resources consultancy firm based out of Collingwood, Ont., says employee attraction and retention requires a multi-faceted approach in which supervisors and management play a key role.

“It comes down to great supervisors. They are the most important person in terms of employee retention. The supervisor has to promote clear expectations,” she says, referring to the old HR saying that “people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.”

It’s a strategy that Gail Thompson, Welch Village rental department manager, says she tries to employ consistently in Welch’s rental operation. “I try to meet with all employees at various times to correct anything that needs to be corrected and compliment them even for the smallest things,” she says. “Sometimes, if not a lot can be said, I always thank them for coming to work.”

To get the right kind of people in the door, Fletcher recommends writing clear, detailed job descriptions when hiring staff for the season and focusing on personality as much as skills, especially in a rental shop where guest-employee interaction is high. Once the employee is on board, ensure the employee remains true to the job description and that they’re happy while doing so. This takes consistent participation from management and keeping an ear close to the ground.

Whistler/Blackcomb attacks this by conducting post-training surveys each year to learn what people thought was effective and what wasn’t during their training. Once the results are tallied, the resort works toward solutions to the problems.

“This past year’s survey revealed to us that there’s still an opportunity to improve our staff rental set-up confidence and speed of process skills to properly meet our guest’s expectations,” Vacirca explains. “Much of that confidence comes from hands-on experience working in a live situation. We are adding 12 more hours to the training platform for this coming season, which is intended to focus on individual store rental process management, and practice sessions conducted with fellow staff members between rental shops.”

Dedication to training rental staff is an effort that is rewarded with smooth, problem-free rental operations that guests look forward to using. Rental is not just an income-generating assembly line in the resort—it’s the gateway for new recruits who will sustain the industry into the future.