Brand Study: The Role of HR at the Isle of Capri Casinos


TMI has had the opportunity to work with the Isle of Capri Casinos, the world's seventh largest casino, over an extended period. The Isle provides a complete example of what can happen when HR is invited to play a strategic role in developing a brand and a business. [8]

Predominantly a riverboat casino in smaller (compared to Las Vegas and Atlantic City) gaming markets, the Isle spearheaded the development of the Mississippi Gulf as a gaming destination. When the Isle first invited TMI to work with its staff, it had just acquired the Lady Luck casinos, doubling its size. The Isle requested help with two challenges: to spark a branded style of customer service that would be delivered consistently throughout all its properties and to emphasize a distinct Isle of Capri culture across all the newly acquired properties. What were the overall results? Problems stemming from the merger issues immediately and fundamentally disappeared. Significant progress has been made on branding the Isle's customer service.

The first stage of TMI's work involved establishing a baseline with an audit. Today, the HR department continues to gather metrics across a wide range of activities in the Isle's attempt to become a "top box" company—that is, a desired place to work as well as a home to its guests.

Management briefings were first facilitated at the corporate and senior management level and then moved to all the Isle properties. This assured that Isle property managers understood what was happening and let them know how they were critical in supporting this process. Internal brand champions, called Navigation Teams, were organized. These teams played host for the two-day branded customer service intervention that twelve thousand Isle team members attended. Programs were held in a tightly concentrated three-month period with sessions offered across all three shifts of the twenty-four-hour operation. Isle corporate leaders personally either opened or closed over 90 percent of these programs. The idea behind concentrating the brand communication effort was to dramatically shift the organization in the shortest time possible.

The Isle's mission had already been defined: not the biggest but the best—best for its guests, best for its employees, best for its communities, and best for its investors. The Isle's HR vision is to be "a best place to work," to operate as an employer of choice. This HR vision is tied to the Isle's overall service delivery, which the employees aspire to living internally as much as they deliver it to their guests. Every year, the executive team establishes five strategic goals that relate to aspects of this mission. Action plans and budgets are established to accomplish these goals as actions cascade down at a furious pace through the organization.

The Isle also had defined its brand of service. On a rational level the Isle's brand is "Each Isle of Capri facility offers comprehensive and satisfying entertainment, dining, shopping, and a variety of special events." On an emotional level, the brand is "CAPRI (Courteous, Attentive, Playful, Resourceful, and Impassioned)." Its brand promise is "Isle Style means fun." Fun means playful, courteous, impassioned, and reasonably priced, and guests are known by name. The Isle's logo is a picture of a macaw perched on the letters of the "Isle of Capri Casino." The bird is an important part of the Isle's identification. At all the Isle properties, you will find exotic, live macaws, all playfully named Eno.

The challenges the Isle faces are twofold: managing high staff turnover, which is common in the hospitality industry, and making sure its management style is in harmony with its brand elements. Isle managers are highly committed to this process; they understand it is not a simple one. They work with simultaneous multiple interventions. Every time we interact with the sprawling Isle organization, we are again reminded of Jim Collins's statement that we quoted earlier about "a giant heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until breakthrough, and beyond." [9]

After completing the first wave of branded service programs, Isle executives invited TMI to return to the properties with a series of eight half-day management and supervisory programs for its seventeen hundred managers and supervisors. [10] As a part of these programs, each management topic was looked at through the lens of "CAPRI" brand delivery. One of the courses was about staff retention. After considering the human and financial costs of high staff turnover and what to do about it, we looked at what would be involved in retaining team members while delivering CAPRI branded service. Questions were posed that related to each of the brand attributes, for example: A: How can you be attentive so team members feel they are special every day they come to the Isle? and I: How can you be impassioned about your team members as part of your strategy to retain them?

A series of on-brand and off-brand behaviors were suggested that related to each management topic. On-brand leadership, for example, involved

  • communicating the Isle vision clearly and consistently

  • delivering focused service messages while communicating with team members

  • being willing to display passion about the Isle and its products Off-brand leadership meant

  • assuming that team members know and understand the Isle's vision

  • judging staff as stupid if they don't buy in to the Isle vision

  • Assuming that team members will be motivated if they merely focus on the functions of their jobs

A group of Isle leaders also identified functional areas of the Isle and then listed all customer touch points in each of these areas that could be looked at through the eyes of the CAPRI brand. These touch points were brainstormed to find ways that they could be delivered CAPRI style: Courteous, Attentive, Playful, Resourceful, and Impassioned. By the end of this session, the potentiality of defining the Isle's culture with the brand was more than apparent.

TMI was then asked to help the Isle of Capri in a half-day empowerment program called The Power to Please. During this process, a forty-one-page Brand Book was produced that continues to be distributed to all Isle team members. The Isle has since set up a mentoring program, it gathers metrics, it is assessing the efficacy of its training programs, and it continues to work with all incoming staff to see that they are imbued with the Isle culture.

Will this continue? Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but we believe it will for two reasons. First, the executive team members are strongly committed to being the best in their markets. They understand achieving this goal is not a one-COO process. They have transitioned from one COO to the next, and their brand efforts continue under Tim Hinkley's leadership. Robert Boone, corporate vice president for HR, plays a strategic role in deciding the direction of the Isle. Isle managers all understand that gaming customers have many other choices, but they are committed to positioning the Isle of Capri with its service so when a customer thinks "fun," the Isle comes to mind first. Second, the Isle's culture is strongly blended with its external branding. We hear it in the employees' conversations with us; we see it when we visit the Isle's properties; we watch it in its corporate meetings.

Is the Isle there yet? No, but it is much closer than it was four years ago when we first met its managers. As of the writing of this book, the Isle has just announced record first quarter results. It is beginning to win awards for its internal functions; customer service experts write about it.

Its other statistics? When we first met Isle executives, staff turnover rates were at 60 percent. Today they are at 34 percent, and these are the lowest in the industry. [11] The Isle has had no difficulty filling staff positions when it opens in new markets. When it opened its casino in Boonville, Missouri, unemployment was less than 2.6 percent. The Isle attracted almost two thousand people who wanted to work for it—90 percent of whom were already working for someone else.

Two questions that people frequently pose to companies that are successful with culture change efforts are, "Why are you sharing all this information? Isn't this your competitive advantage?" We believe that the organizations that engage in such a process understand their template is not their competitive advantage. It's just a road map. Implemented action is what counts. And this is action that has to be made on a detailed and daily basis. Remember, service is your brand in action.

We once heard the head of Harrah's Casinos speak to approximately 150 of his competitors at a Las Vegas gaming conference. He spelled out very clearly what Harrah's is doing that he believes contributes to its market growth. Someone in the audience raised his hand and asked, "Aren't you afraid of sharing all this information with us?" The CEO's answer was, "No. We know you guys won't do it anyway."

There's a certain amount of truth to this. We believe there is also a second reason. Even if you adopted Harrah's or the Isle of Capri's basic road map, you would still have to tailor the process and ideas to fit your business. If you just duplicated what the Isle of Capri or Harrah's is doing, you might be better than you currently are, but you would certainly not be a differentiated brand.

In order to create some of the magic going on at the Isle of Capri and Harrah's, you need your own brand toolbox.

[8]The key players in the organization include Bernard Goldstein, whose vision it was to develop the gaming industry on the Gulf Coast and then eventually to expand his casino nationwide and now even internationally; Jack Gall-away, who was COO when TMI was first introduced to the Isle; Tim Hinkley, current COO; Robert Boone, vice president of human resourcs; and Cynthia Payne, director of cultural development, who keeps the vision alive across the many Isle properties.

[9]Collins, Good to Great, 14.

[10]Both of these programs have continued under the committed direction of Cynthia Payne, director of cultural development.

[11]Statistics provided by the Isle of Capri. Average annual staff turnover rates in the casino industry's regional markets are 45 to 55 percent.




Branded Customer Service(c) The New Competitive Edge
Branded Customer Service: The New Competitive Edge
ISBN: 1576752984
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 134

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