The 4-day tourism work week

When I was running the mountain bike operation at Skyline we started season one with a standard 5 day work week.

It all looked straight forward but ended up being a nightmare.

Turns out mountain bike staff love to mountain bike... A lot.

This also means they get injured, a lot.

This then leads to leaning on other staff to work extra shifts, often on their day off (when they'd rather be mountain biking).

It also turns out that a lot of people in tourism aren't in the job for the money - they're in it for the passion and the lifestyle.

So in season 2 we implemented longer shifts, 4 day work weeks and additional casual staff (who often ended up moving to 4 days once someone got injured).

This meant that staff had time to ride, were more open to working their days off and created a place where people wanted to work with more returning staff each season.

With a tight labour supply at the moment, if I had a tourism operation now, it's definitely something I would look to implement (in consultation with the team).

NB: half of the staff pictured in this photo have gone on to start their own business in Queenstown!