Entrepreneurial Audit: Opportunity Identification

At the Human Resources level of a Country Club:

1) What are the routines/procedures that the organization uses to identify new opportunities?

The head of the Human Resources Department is very much responsible for identifying new opportunities for HR to contribute strategically to the overall business. 

• The HRD's boss is the GM, the head of the organization and the GM sets annual goals as part of the HRD's yearly performance review; the HRD can be as creative as needed to reach the goals
• The HRD shares these goals with the staff according to the specialty area of HR (recruiting, benefits, payroll, etc.) on their yearly performance reviews, so they can be as creative as needed over the upcoming year to meet the set goal
• New opportunities are identified as needed solutions to new problems that arise; new problems are brought to the executive committee to discuss and the HRD has a seat on the EC; if it is a problem that HR can assist with solving, the HRD bring a solution to the next meeting
• The HRD is responsible for identifying and proposing new opportunities, so the HRD fosters a similar "keep an eye out and your mind open" culture in the HR department, in addition to the HRD attending meetings with local HRDs in the same industry, attending SHRM conferences, and similar events to get out of the same old same old and think of, discuss and see new best practices

2) Explain the relationship between these routines/procedures with the organization's performance. 

With the head of the department taking an active role in identifying and implementing new opportunities, this same mental attitude spreads among the department and the HRD is made more effective by specialty areas of the department thinking of new opportunities in the fields they know well and bringing those ideas to the HRD. The same happens with goals being shared by specialty area and the HRD still being held accountable for all goals HR-wide, it structures the department to stay aligned with the company's goals. However, the best new opportunities are the results of discussing new problems because the entire situation is so new, it gets the creativity flowing to both understand and solve the problem simultaneously. Annual reviews and regular meetings can become routine and squash the excitement of new ideas.

3) What are some of the more important opportunities that your organization has discovered in the past five years?

After the economic downturn (ok that was more than 5 years ago but creative solutions have spanned since then), the board of directors voted to no longer sponsor any visas. This was traumatic for recruiting because we had always recruited through visas to increase our labor for season, and it was only needed temporarily. How were we going to find affordable labor? 

• We partnered with high schools that had culinary programs (employees needed to be 16 or older). During our biggest events when we needed extra hands over that weekend, we had the students from the culinary program come work the weekend under supervision of our chefs and experienced supervisory cooks. It turned out great and if I was high schooler there, I would definitely have taken advantage of the opportunity to get hands on experience and a paying summer job.
• We partner with the local university. Did you know you can commission a college class? We didn't either until we came across this possibility! We partnered with four other country clubs and the five of us paid to commission a college class on Club Management as part of the hospitality school. We timed it so the class was offered during a term that ended just as our season began. At the end of the term, the students visited each of the sponsoring Clubs and interviewed at each Club. As the best one, we got the most recruits and they were great additions to the employee team.

A new challenge has been the healthcare reform laws, which mandates that an employee routinely working 30 hours per week must be offered healthcare insurance coverage, and employees who don't keep a steady 30 hours per week are at risk of losing their insurance. Thankfully we had already set our full time and part time hours cutoff at 30 hours, so we didn't even have to rewrite the handbook much, but we did have to keep an eye on part time employees picking up extra shifts during our peak business times. Originally, we appreciated these employees stepping up to help out and we were happy to share in the money, but now it carried with it the risk that they would qualify for health insurance after a busy month. In order for employees to still get the extra hours they depended on, we partners with local Clubs to refer great part-time employees. Most of the best employees on our staff work two jobs, a primary one at one Club and secondary at another Club to get extra hours. The Clubs are all respectful of this arrangement when it comes to scheduling and it has worked out for employees to get up to a total of 60 hours steady each week by working at two locations, instead of a temporary upswing to 40 or 50 hours for a short time.

4) Describe one routine/procedure the organization can implement right now to improve its ability to identify new opportunities. What is the routine? What additional resources would it require to organization to acquire?

The Executive Committee and the Board of Directors could do quarterly SWAT analyses. The current routine of setting year-long goals may not be moving fast enough for the competitive landscape. It couldn't require any more resources than perhaps a few more meetings and mental power for critical assessment.

5) Overall, does the organization do a good job or a poor job of identifying opportunities?

Overall, a very good job. Each department head including the HRD are aware of how the same operations are carried out at competing clubs. Being aware of the best practices for the local market helps the leadership team see changes in the landscape and identify problems while they are still far off in the horizon allowing time to think of solutions and they can also identify new opportunities presented on the horizon.