Blockbuster employee engagement with Michael Hartley of Golden Ticket Cinemas

 Daniel Blaser (00:07):

Hello and welcome to On the Clock presented by Workstream. If you care about hiring and retaining hourly employees, you're in the right place. I'm Daniel Blazer, and today I'm clocking in with Michael Hartley, director of Operations at Golden Ticket Cinemas. Michael and I discuss how things have changed in the movie theater workforce over the past few years, why it's so important to create a positive employee experience, the power of listening to your team and more. Oh, and we also chat briefly about his favorite movie of all time. Enjoy. I had love to hear why you love your job.

Michael Hartley (00:43):

Movie theaters are a very important cornerstone in our communities. It's a place where people go to bring their families to realize their traditions and to sit together and watch a story be told. And I take a lot of, don't typically want to use the word pride, but I take a lot of effort in making sure that that is the best experience for everyone to enjoy. And when it all works together, it brings an experience that customers remember for decades, for generations. I think everybody has that kind of moment when they were a kid or where they met their significant other, they went on their first dates. It's just all these different things really revolve around the movie theater experience and being able to bring that experience to the community is a very important facet and something that we take a lot of joy in.

Daniel Blaser (01:47):

Yeah, I absolutely have some of those movie theater memories myself, just like you said. And I have to ask just because it just seems right. Do you have a favorite movie of all time? Maybe that's an impossible question for you.

Michael Hartley (02:01):

No, it's not an impossible question in terms of a favorite, it is hard to quantify that. I always have a top like 10. I think that's everybody, right? But if I had to resort to one above all others, it would be one that, and I grew up as a kid. I didn't have cable or anything like that. And so we just used Turner Television, TBS, whatever, showed up on the little antenna box TV you had in your living room. And one of the most common films that would show up was Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And as a direct result, it didn't matter if I seen the movie a thousand times, me and my dad would sit there and watch that movie every single time. So that's the one I got to give it up to.

Daniel Blaser (02:52):

That's a good one. I love that movie. As you look back over the last couple of years, it seems like you got a couple years before all the Covid Mayhem and then a couple years after. Can you talk about some of the staffing challenges that you faced over the last 18, 24 months?

Michael Hartley (03:13):

The evolution of our societies have changed quite a bit in that time, and people have different expectations when they want to come to work. The climate for employees has shifted so drastically that you can't really go anywhere without hearing of your local businesses having staffing concerns, being indoors and going someone through all these experiences that we went to, I think that people have been very hesitant to go back to work. And the ones who are hesitant, they don't seemingly want to be as engaged as they once were. Movie theaters used to be kind of place for those for first time jobbers, like someone right in high school, that's their first job. They want to come and sell concession stands stuff and watch movies all the time. I mean, high school, college, it was very commonplace for that kind of applicant. And it's not anymore. It's changed a lot.

(04:23):

You see far more adult mature individuals who are just trying to get a job and a paycheck, but everything from minimum wage increases and the competitive markets of various types of businesses used to be you could come to a movie theater and you didn't mind making minimum wage because it was the experience working at the movie theater. It was, like I said, typically for people with coming into their first job, but nowadays it's shifted so much that you used to be a dollar and a half difference between your closest business to then the movie theater, but now it is double. And so theaters have had to make a drastic shift in payroll expectations and standards, and that impact is just still being navigated once you would have a file full of applicants. I mean, we used to just for years had just did paper applicants people walk in, want a job and give 'em an application. They fill it out and you file it. And it's not like that anymore. People aren't interested in looking for a job that way, that's for sure.

(05:56):

Everything's got to be fast, everything's got to be quick. It's not like a paperwork. And then you got a talent pool you can go through or anything like that. You got to keep applicants flowing into your building because you might get an employee who might come in and be engaged for a few minutes and then they quit. It's just, I don't know. It's a very unusual time for that, where the drop off is a little bit more than expected, and it's very market based too. It's very strange. One market, it's doing very well, and then the next market, it's not doing so well. And then you take that a month later and they're all going to flip flop. So there's just kind of a constant evolution and anomalies there that we haven't all navigate. And so this is an important topic for sure.

Daniel Blaser (06:55):

Yeah, that's really interesting info. You kind of touched on retention a little bit. From your perspective in your role, what are the key factors that improve retention among hourly workers?

Michael Hartley (07:11):

For years? I calculated it to a simple explanation of giving the employees an experience. I can tell you that anyone who's worked in a movie theater remembers being the usher, being the projectionist, oh, I used to sell candy here. And they actually say it with a lot of pride as well. I used to do this here. I was young. It was one of my first jobs mean. So working at the movie theater was an experience. I mean, we used to do late shows for the crew. I mean, we'd all come in together as a team and watch the new movie coming out, and we would have popcorn and sit there and relax and have a good laugh, and then get up and get to work, and we'd all be tired and exhausted the next day. But that was kind of all part of that culture, and that was what it all came down to was theater culture.

(08:08):

That's what people looked for when they came and worked for the movie theater was being, to experience that culture, being able to be the first ones to watch the movie and have all the popcorn you can possibly eat. I mean, you can just fill yourself up with soda and popcorn and then discounts and stuff like that. So these were all kind of just really awesome things for people to really absorb into their life and have something to talk about. And it wasn't the retention for an employee, it was hand in hand with bringing the guest experience. It was all about the culture. Customers come back to your theater because of the culture, and employees like working there because of the culture. But the shift nowadays has changed to there's seemingly something missing in the workforce where the inspiration to work hard is actually not as easy to find as you would think it would be. It's there, but it's taken some time. And I think a lot of that may be played in hand with just, we all kind of enjoy being home a little bit more, to be honest with you. I mean, I don't think anybody's going to argue that. Right. But that anomaly has been a reverberating downside to the hiring process, I would say.

Daniel Blaser (09:34):

To kind of go into that a little bit more, so this conversation, part of our conversation will be released as a podcast, and a lot of people that listen are in HR recruiting different people that are also facing probably some of the similar challenges that you're talking about. Do you have any advice or any perspective on how to rekindle that work ethic or how to increase employee engagement or any of those things that you're talking about? Have you kind of started to find recommendations or solutions to some of that stuff?

Michael Hartley (10:10):

I have actually. I have an excellent answer to that. It's to listen to your people. They've got concerns. They've got needs. I mean, when you talk about increase in pay rates, that means everything's going up and you have to listen to that. You have to care about your crew. You have to care about what their concerns are, and you have to care about making adjustments that are outside the normality of what you're used to. I mean, we're talking about decades of running movie theaters and what worked yesterday doesn't work today. Part of instilling that culture means that we first and foremost, listen to 'em, and you can talk about incentivization. You can talk about giving a discount or just chalking up another 50 cents to their pay, you think. We think that that's what makes our staff happy, but most of everything is the capacity to listen to your people, listen to your team, treat 'em like they're human beings, and listen to every bit of the feedback. I mean, sometimes the answer is going to be no, right? I mean, that's, it's a unfortunate byproduct of the ecosystem that we're currently having to deal with. A lot of it also is being patient, and we have to exercise a lot of that as well. And I think that's something that permeates through every level in just about every company right now is we have to be patient and we have to listen, and we got to sincerely care. If we can do those things, your crew will care. They'll honor you for that.

Daniel Blaser (11:49):

That's a great word of wisdom. I really like that. Well, thanks again, Michael. I really appreciate it.

Michael Hartley (11:55):

Yeah, no, my pleasure. Anytime. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel Blaser (12:04):

Thank you for listening to On The Clock. For more info, visit workstream.us/podcast. I've also included a link in the show notes to connect with Michael on LinkedIn. Until next time, we're clocking out.