Workers take their jobs on the road - Quality of Life

Camping World's Multi-Location Crewmember program lets RV-loving employees work at different stores around the country while retaining benefits. The program helps Camping World fill its need for experienced seasonal employees.

At the Camping World store in Nashville, cashier Carolyn Kincaid feels just as footloose and fancy-free as the wandering recreational-vehicle owners who stop by to pick up a new set of splash guards, get help with an air-conditioning problem, or price a mobile satellite TV dish. She and her husband are "RVers' too. Over the past few years, the couple--she's 59, he's 61--has roamed from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Portland, Oregon. "We just love to follow the sun, and see different parts of the country," she says.

Surprisingly, Kincaid has logged those myriad miles on the odometer and still managed to work full-time for Camping World, the nation's largest provider of products and services to RV enthusiasts. Even more surprisingly, Kincaid's employer not only tolerates her rolling-stone lifestyle, but also encourages it. Kincaid is a participant in Camping World's Multi-Location Crewmember program, a four-year-old HR initiative that enables employees to work part of the year at one of the organization's 30 stores, take some time off to travel, and then resume work at another location. The program's 50 or so participants enjoy the freedom to roam while still retaining the security of a full-time position with health-care and other benefits.

Camping World's management loves the program as much as Kincaid does, and with good reason. Across the nation, the company's supply and service business is highly seasonal, with customer volume and demand for services rising in Florida and Arizona as RV enthusiasts head south or west to avoid the winter snows. Having a mobile contingent of full-time workers has helped the 36-year-old company cope with what was once a chronic shortage of competent employees in stores during the seasons when the firm did the bulk of its business.

Being able to deploy already-trained workers has enabled Camping World to vastly improve productivity and revenues. "It's safe to assume that each of these MLC people represents $25,000 to $30,000 in additional sales for each month they're in this location," says Nashville store manager Bruce Wright. "You don't have to waste a month breaking in a new person or recruiting a temporary employee that you won't be keeping around after the season is over. The MLCs can step right in and do the job for you, and then move on to their next place."

The MLC program is a big favorite with store managers because the mobile employees tend to be older and have more diverse work experience than typical hires. Even more important, they possess something that no amount of training alone can provide--an intimate, exhaustive knowledge of the company's products and services from the perspective of the customer. That's because they are RV enthusiasts themselves, often recruited by the company from its customer base.

Thanks to the allure of the work-travel opportunity, the company not only is able to attract experienced, talented employees, but also is able to retain them. While Camping World won't disclose the specific numbers, MLC participants have a retention rate that's twice as high as that of conventional employees. "We've found a way to give everyone what they want," says Kelly Taylor, the HR coordinator in charge of the program. "For the employees, it's the best of both worlds--they've got the advantages of part-time work, with the full-time income and benefits. And the stores get experienced, quality workers when they need them, plus reduced costs and more productivity."

In recognition of Camping World's astute approach to helping both its employees and its own bottom line, the company is this year's recipient of Workforce's Optimas Award for Quality of Life.

Capitalizing on an organic trend

Camping World's HR team doesn't claim to have invented the concept of mobile employees. Taylor says the company got the inspiration for the program in the mid-1990s, when HR noticed an intriguing phenomenon. Customers were taking breaks from their RV expeditions and signing on to work at the nearest Camping World store in the summer or winter. When the seasons changed, they would contact a store somewhere else along their intended route and try to find another job.

"We thought, Hey, this is an interesting concept. What if we formalized it?" Taylor says. "Really, what we did was just add some structure."

She may not admit it, but she did quite a bit more than that. In order for the phenomenon to evolve into a strategic asset for the company, HR support was essential. For one thing, the employees who initially tried to create mobile jobs on their own had been faced with a number of inconveniences. They had to somehow find out about openings at distant stores on their own, and then convince the managers to hire them. If they took a hiatus from work to travel between seasons, that usually meant quitting temporarily, which in turn necessitated either going without health and other benefits during that period or subsidizing the cost themselves. And if they wanted to continue to be mobile over a longer period, they had to repeat the whole process from scratch each time. All in all, it was enough of a hassle that probably only those with incurable road fever wanted to give it a try.

From a corporate standpoint, the informal system was an inefficient use of workers. Without guidance, the employees didn't necessarily best fit company or personal needs. Store managers who needed seasonal workers didn't have a process to hook them up with potential candidates. And advance planning wasn't usually a possibility, so opportunities that might have benefited both employees and store managers inevitably were wasted.

Creating a workable HR structure to allow employee mobility

One of HR's first steps was to analyze both the employees' and the company's needs. It soon became apparent that the mobile positions should be structured as full-time rather than part-time jobs. HR discovered that employees who'd experimented with mobility often gave it up because they found themselves becoming part-time workers without benefits. "They'd move once or twice, and that was it," Taylor says.

From the company's standpoint, the unpredictability of a part-time labor pool was a minus. HR figured out that it was actually more cost-efficient to employ a single mobile full-time worker at different locations than it was to recruit, train, and deploy multiple part-time workers. And what managers really wanted was experienced full-time workers, even if they only needed them during the busiest time of year.

The challenge was to develop a system that made it comfortable and convenient for fulltime workers to move around the country and enabled them to retain their benefits while working only part of the year. HR looked at stores' peak seasons, when personnel demands were highest. In Minnesota, for example, a store did the bulk of its business from May to September, whereas in Texas, the prime period was November to March. That made it possible to design a structure with some variability. Mobile workers could take a monthlong break for travel in the fall, arrive at a store in the Sunbelt, and work a schedule that started at 32 hours a week and gradually grew to 40 as the season intensified. After a two-week break for travel in the spring, they could begin the cycle anew at a Northeast or Midwest location.

That schedule still allowed an employee to work full-time for 10 months a year, and to average the 30 hours a week required to qualify for the company's health-insurance program. The company offers a preferred-provider health plan, so it's possible for an MLC participant to arrive in a new town and immediately see a physician from the same network.

"We've been able to offer the MLC people the same benefits that we provide to all of our employees," Taylor says. "We haven't had to change any of the benefits structure that already was in place."

HR did, however, add some other incentives for employees who want to travel. The company compensates them for the mileage between their destinations at the standard Internal Revenue Service rate of 36 cents per mile, and pays $7 a day toward their campground fees. Camping World has found that even with those expenses, the overall cost of filling seasonal positions has been reduced. Since stores no longer are forced to duplicate one another's efforts, recruitment and training expenses have been reduced by half. Even when the $150,000 annual cost of the MLC program is subtracted, the net savings amounts to $350,000 a year.

At the company's headquarters in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Taylor, an HR professional, was assigned to act as a traffic manager for the program. Workers who want to be in the MLC program send her an application, indicating several ranked preferences for a seasonal assignment. Taylor then tries to match those requests with store managers' needs.

Recruiting high-quality talent from the customer base

Camping World's HR team also used the MLC program to help solve a long-standing challenge: attracting quality employees who could interact comfortably and knowledgeably with Camping World customers. The latter, typically, are in their mid-50s and want a slower-paced, less pressured existence with more work/leisure balance. When the HR team noticed that more than a few customers actually were inquiring about the possibility of working part-time for Camping World, it again saw a way to capitalize on a nascent organic trend. The MLC program offered those potential job candidates an attractive option--a way to actually work full-time without giving up their lifestyle.

To advertise the program to customers who might be potential job candidates, the HR team opted for an unorthodox approach. They did nothing. "We didn't even put up posters," Taylor says. Instead, they relied largely on employees who told customers about the program in the course of everyday conversations, and a passing mention of the program at the Camping World RV Institute in Bowling Green, where the company offers classes in RV repair and maintenance. That low-key recruiting approach has worked, which says something about the sheer appeal of the MLC program. "I get 10 to 15 calls a week about it' Taylor says.

Turning a perennial problem into a potential advantage

Last year, 23 of Camping World's 30 stores made extensive use of MLC workers. The store in Mission, Texas, brought in eight MLCs during its peak season, swelling its workforce by 30 percent. In Nashville, store manager Wright says the four or five MLCs that he welcomes into his store each summer eliminate what for him and other managers was a continual problem--the paradoxical drain on productivity caused by adding parttime or temporary employees.

"When we used to have to hire technicians, for example, we would need to train them for 90 days before we could let them loose to work on a coach," he says. "That's another distraction when you're already busy. This year, I have two technicians from another location, and they showed up the first day all ready to work. With sales, it's an even bigger benefit. A lot of our business is big-ticket items--an RV refrigerator, that's a $1,000 sale. People are a lot more willing to buy a product like that from a salesperson who owns and lives in an RV themselves, and knows what he or she is talking about. If an MLC person makes one additional sale a day, you can see how quickly that adds

And while new employees sometimes can disrupt the delicate equilibrium of a workplace, Wright says that those who come to him through the MLC program actually tend to enhance stability. "They're more mature and reliable than the norm, in my experience," he says. "There's no element of competition with the other employees, because they're not looking to move up in the company or whatever--they just want to keep enjoying the lifestyle they already have. The other employees are actually eager to see the MLCs come every year, because they're so willing to help out." MLC participants even can be utilized to mentor younger employees. "I would have no problem, for example, teaming an MLC with a new employee who was trying to learn the cash register," Wright says.

Camping World is so happy with the success of its mobile full-time experiment that HR is trying to expand it. "Right now, about 50 people is a comfortable number for us," Taylor says. "We're hoping to increase participation, but gradually, so that we can make sure everyone has a place to go."

In the meantime, Wright says, the mobile employees report that they're experiencing something that might best be described as deja vu, RV-style. "They'll work in a store for a season, transfer to another store in a different part of the country, and they'll find themselves waiting on the same customers as in the last place. The customers will say, 'Hey, you look familiar--didn't I see you in Tacoma? Or was it Tucson?' It's part of what makes the program fun."

workforce.com

For more info on: Camping World

Get several job descriptions for positions at Camping World. workforce.com/02/10/feature5

RELATED ARTICLE: Tips for Developing a Mobile Talent Pool

tools

Camping World's HR team says that a company can benefit tremendously from encouraging some of its employees to travel around the country seasonally and work in different store locations. They offer the following tips on how to set up such a program.

Use the appeal of travel to recruit high-quality employees. Camping World uses its mobile-crewmember program to recruit employees who are often older and have extensive work experience. That enables the company to fill its seasonal workforce needs in various locations with increased competence.

Make it easier for mobile employees to travel. Camping World actually reimburses employees for their mileage between locations, and picks up a portion of their rental costs at RV parks. An experienced seasonal employee is likely to bring in additional revenue that more than covers the cost of such perks.

Make sure your health-benefits package is flexible and portable. Camping World's benefits plan is structured so that employees who take time off to travel between the company's peak retail seasons can still accumulate enough work hours to qualify for full coverage. And the company's preferred-provider setup makes it simple for mobile employees to quickly find medical care, no matter where they land.

Train mobile employees to fill skilled positions. If your business is seasonal, you probably have a spike not just in retail, but in repair work and other service demands as well. Seasonal workers who can step right in and perform. those jobs will help you avoid slowdowns caused by shortages of mechanics or technicians, or the need to break in new ones. You'll boost customer satisfaction in the process.

Set up a central traffic manager for workforce mobility. It's certainly possible to have workers simply apply directly to site managers for seasonal transfers, but you can achieve greater efficiency if you manage the process from headquarters. At Camping World, a designated HR staff member focuses on matching each employee's list of preferences for seasonal destinations with local managers' projections of seasonal work needs. That way, everyone's needs are satisfied.

Finding Work/Life Balance

business results

Here are links to stories on several of the previous Optimas Award winners for Quality of Life:

2001: First USA Bank

At First USA Bank, promotions and job satisfaction are up, thanks to the Opportunity Knocks program, which helps employees zero in on career dreams and achieve them. workforce.com/archive/feature/22/27/40/index.php

2000: Pataqonia

By hiring sports and environmental enthusiasts and providing a culture that supports their passion, Patagonia reaps success and, in turn, supports "green" causes worldwide. workforce.com/archive/feature/22/23/20/224311.php

1999: Fannie Mae

Given that its mission is its customers' quality of life, it isn't surprising that Fannie Mae offers a wide range of benefits to help employees balance the demands of work and family. workforce.comlarchive/feature/22/17/54/index.php

Patrick J. Kiger is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.

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