Staffing challenges in the casino and hospitality industry are here to stay, even after the pandemic subsides, and tribal casinos are turning more to automation and other strategies to fill the void.
Workforce issues, including recruiting and staff retention, have been a focal point at this year’s TribalNet Conference & Trade Show in suburban Dallas.
The problem is well documented in the commercial and tribal casino world, but isn’t typically addressed at TribalNet’s annual conference that focuses on technology and attracts information-tech professionals.
“The overarching theme was how hard it is to hire and retain people,” said Patrick Tinklenberg, vice president of IT at Sycuan Casino in Southern California who served on the board putting together the conference. “We ended up creating a whole track around HR. It was amazing for a technology conference to talk about HR, but it was unbelievably important to everybody we talked to.”
The conference featured a session by Larry Fretz, a vice president for Info-Tech Research Group, who spoke about replacing humans with automated or digital solutions. The discussion centered on kiosks, virtual reality, and robotics and the need to be nimble and flexible in dealing with staffing challenges.
“Even in a post-pandemic environment, I think there will still be staffing challenges,” said Fran Moore, director of IT at Wildhorse Resort & Casino in northeast Oregon. “And it won’t necessarily be just because of geographical locations. I think a lot of the hourly employees can find reasonable employment without the added stress of the hospitality and casino environment and jobs probably paying a little bit more.”
In their region, Moore said McDonalds is paying $17 an hour, while their casino’s housecleaning crew and some other staff earn $14 to $15 an hour.
“So we’re having to be competitive and pay them more money or offer them some type of incentives,” said Moore, who added the industry is looking at other solutions.
“You’re also going to see a lot more outsourcing to try to offset some of those staffing challenges.”
Steve Neely, general manager at Rolling Hills Casino north of Sacramento, said that patrons are accommodating when it comes to using technology as an option for dealing with staffing problems.
“Customers are showing a willingness to use technology in ways they weren’t before,” Neely said. “There’s always resistance (from us to use it more), simply because we thought it would be too much for our older demographic. We’ve added a lot of technology and machinery to begin the process of filling positions with technology we simply can’t hire for.”
Neely said they’re using kiosks at food outlets and investing in robots to deliver food in their restaurants.
“Our kitchen is a long way from our dining room. We have staff where all they do is take food off the line, bring it to tables, and bring dirty dishes back. We’re replacing those people, so I can repurpose them with jobs that we can’t fill right now.”
Neely said customers’ willingness to embrace the change caught them by surprise. This is an era, however, in which their older customers figured out how to Zoom with the grandkids.
“So checking into their room on their phone and using their phone as a room key — they feel quite comfortable doing that these days,” Neely said.
Tinklenberg talked about how the industry had already been doing more with kiosks to service people, rather than hiring people to work at a desk. That has sped up with the pandemic. He also discussed how casinos are changing their recruiting processes.
“Two years ago, we didn’t allow people to work from home. My entire staff was on site one hundred percent of the time and our HR and accounting departments all worked on site all the time. We never thought about people working from home. Now, on the administration side, fifty percent of our people work from home and it’s going to stay that way. That’s a huge change for us and everybody.”
Tinklenberg said that when he interviews people today for open positions, the first question they ask is how many days a week do they get to work from home.
“That’s amazing. That never happened before. In the past, I would have told them zero and expect to work holidays too. Now, we have to accommodate that, because we need to hire people. If that’s the expectation now, we have to bring those people in.”
Neely said knowing it’s difficult to fill technical positions for $15 to $18 an hour, they’ve put more emphasis on hiring management level. That means instead of paying two people $25,000 each, they pay one person $50,000 to attract that talent and are able to get more out of them.
“The bad part is more of the work falls on the senior folks and that’s where the technology piece fits in,” Neely said. “If you can automate a lot of those manual processes, it can work out fairly well, like it has for us.”
Despite all of the staffing issues the industry is facing today, Neely said labor problems eventually correct, as they always have in the past.
“The bad part is people right now who are in the highest demand are also the ones who, when it does correct itself, are going to be the most vulnerable,” Neely said. “In the positions that are open right now, most likely won’t exist anymore because of the investments we are making in this technology.
