The Lake Elsinore Storm team up with Workforce.com to increase operations visibility

Minor League Baseball has been the city of Lake Elsinore’s pastime for a long time now – since 1994 to be exact. Perhaps nobody understands this better than the local team’s very own director of operations, Jason Natale.

“I’ve been coming here since I was about five years old. I sat on top of the dugout, had my birthday parties here … Storm Baseball was a big passion for me.”

Jason’s childhood passion continues to this day, as he is now the operations manager for the Lake Elsinore Storm, an affiliate of the MLB’s San Diego Padres. While the team’s goal is to win on the field, Jason’s primary goal behind the scenes is to ensure all 6,000 fans enjoy a clean and organized service experience at every game. 

CHALLENGE

Knowing what it’s like to be a fan himself, Jason takes pride in maximizing operational efficiency to increase fan engagement and satisfaction. “I’m a perfectionist,” he says. “I want everything to be pristine for the guests before they show up.” Achieving these results often proved difficult, however, as Jason conducted the majority of his work manually across multiple platforms; this limited the visibility he had into his workforce.

Simple administrative tasks like checking the attendance and locations of crews, managing overtime costs, and viewing sales per labor hour were taking too much time and energy. Most importantly, they slowed his reaction time to frontline issues impacting a wide range of the stadium’s operations entities. 

Since the Storm do not have the same revenue volume as teams in the major league, they rely heavily on providing a high quality service experience for their fans. Multiple entities operate under the Storm umbrella, from stadium cleaning to concessions, to curate this positive service experience. Jason needed increased clarity into the pain points affecting each of these entities in order to continue building customer satisfaction. 

SOLUTION

The perfectionist in Jason pairs perfectly with Workforce.com. The intuitive cloud-based system gives him the visibility he needs to optimize productivity and react quickly to frontline issues across his workforce. It handles all the time and attendance data for Jason’s employees, while also integrating with the stadium’s POS system, allowing him to compare labor hours and sales metrics. 

With Workforce.com, Jason uses his time more efficiently to prepare and operate the stadium for games. The software eliminates any frustration and stress that normally comes with inefficient administrative processes, making his job easier, and in the end, fan satisfaction higher. 

RESULTS

Jason now experiences success in operations throughout the stadium after Workforce.com joined the team. Here are some of the many ways the new workforce management system has increased operational excellence for both Jason as well as the team as a whole:

Optimizing sales per labor hour

With Workforce.com Jason can easily track cashiers turns, or sales per labor hour – a major KPI for the team. He can look at how much in sales a worker does in a shift and compare that to their labor costs. From these metrics, he can determine how to lead, schedule, and train employees better, increasing employee value.

Greater workforce visibility

Jason makes better decisions in the moment now with the help of leading indicators. With a live wage tracker, both the mobile app and kiosk app capture clock-ins, giving Jason live insights into whether he should call someone in, or send someone home, based on forecasted demand. Key alerts also greatly assist Jason, notifying him when he needs to address an abandoned shift.

“I can track my employees from my mobile phone. If someone didn’t show up, I can just look at my phone, and it’ll notify me, saying this person isn’t here. And I can reach out to HR and go from there.”

Minimizing overtime hours

Jason uses attendance features and push notifications in the app to control overtime hours among his employees. 

“With the pandemic, we are limited in staff, so a lot of our staff do get overtime,” Jason states. “So I am definitely getting notified when a person is beyond their hours and how to make sure they get home at the right time.”

Tracking attendance with GPS

With multiple service teams covering a large stadium, GPS clock-ins via the mobile app are critical for Jason’s visibility into daily operations. 

“I can track my people, I know when they’re coming, I know when they’re on site. It’s reassuring that it is all GPS located, so they’re not clocking in from down the street somewhere,” says Jason. 

Improved customer experience

Perhaps most importantly, the Storm are experiencing a major boost in sales following their partnership with Workforce.com, indicating an overall improvement in customer experience. In 2019, the average fan spent $24 per game across parking, ticketing, retail, and food; now the average has doubled to $48.

For Jason, a love for the sport of baseball has developed into a passion for optimizing service operations and increasing customer satisfaction. Baseball is about more than what’s happening on the field; it’s about the service experience as a whole, from cleaning seats to preparing hotdogs. In Workforce.com, Jason found a reliable teammate to optimize the operations driving this all-American experience.