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F.acT: How did the Paznaun - Ischgl CREW come about? What were the driving motives and backgrounds?
Paznaun-Ischgl CREW Team: Our region, with all its local tourism businesses and many other upstream and downstream industries, is also affected by the issues of employee recruitment and retention. In 2018, we were able to identify some weak points in an employee survey, which were clearly a lack of appreciation and overly expensive leisure activities. Respondents were largely satisfied with the job itself, the pay and the accommodation. However, we reacted very quickly and straightforwardly to the points of criticism and initiated the "Ischgl CREW" pilot project. The concept was simple at first:
- Get companies on board that offer more affordable leisure time for employees through benefits, and
- create a corresponding employee card to receive these benefits.
The fact that this was so well received in the first year (over 2,000 CREW cards issued to a total of around 3,000 employees in Ischgl) confirmed that it was the right approach and the project was immediately expanded to the entire Paznaun region. Today, we are very proud of our "Paznaun - Ischgl CREW" and that our businesses and employees in all locations (Galtür, Ischgl Kappl and See) benefit equally from it.
F.acT: How is the CREW team set up and what services do you offer?
Paznaun-Ischgl CREW Team: Due to the expansion of the project, a separate "Destination Employer Branding" department has been in place at the Tourism Association (TVB) since 2019, which is staffed by three people, as the area of responsibility is now much more complex. In addition to the popular benefits, the CREW Card is linked to two other core services. One is the CREW Activities, where all possible leisure activities in Paznaun are listed, and the other is the CREW Academy, where a personality-building and subject-specific range of courses is developed and you can enjoy extracurricular further education at top conditions. We communicate information to employees via various channels and media. Whether it's the CREW magazine, the website, Facebook group, Facebook fan page, Instagram or, since July, LinkedIn - the multi-channel strategy has proven its worth for our broad target group. We also see the companies as an important key point in this project. For the initial contact between employees and employers, we take on the role of central recruiting, where we represent our entire region as an employer in external appearances and in cooperation with a partner destination. The most important tool here is our TVB job board, which is filled with job advertisements by the companies and which we communicate to the outside world. Once the employees are on site with us, they receive the CREW Card with all its benefits. We pursue a two-dimensional and sustainable goal: every employee - for us, that means all locals, seasonal and annual employees, interns, apprentices, etc. from all of the industries we are involved in - can develop at all levels and the added value remains in the region, as we draw on the resources available.
F.acT: What do you see as the biggest challenges in your day-to-day work?
Paznaun-Ischgl CREW Team: We are still in the middle of development, where we keep coming up against classic communication barriers and a lot of things are still based on the motto "learning by doing". Such a qualitative topic requires a lot of educational work until everyone is really sensitized to it. In addition, we are always walking a fine line between having the right amount of patience to allow things to mature and not making rash decisions to stop pursuing individual elements that won't bear fruit so quickly. Since the coronavirus pandemic, however, it has become even more important to react quickly in order to deliver a contemporary offering.
F.acT: In which direction should the Paznaun - Ischgl CREW develop in the coming years?
Paznaun-Ischgl CREW Team: We focus on short and long-term trends, particularly in terms of changing values and diversity in the labor market. We employ 50 nationalities from all over the world, aged between 16 and 81. Each of them wants to realize their own potential and be part of the overall success. At the same time, since the coronavirus crisis, there has been a large gap in training to compensate for the loss of tourism professionals, so that auxiliary staff can also be deployed as specialists in a shorter period of time. Our ideas are therefore to ensure a strong online presence and to expand recruiting with other cooperation partners as well as to place a major focus on the CREW Academy. The quality of service in Tirol can only be maintained with well-trained employees. At the same time, the digital development of the CREW Card is to be driven forward so that it becomes more user-friendly and also serves our quality management. We are incorporating the aspect of industry diversity in Paznaun into all measures so that this service is appealing to all businesses in the region and employees remain loyal to our businesses for longer.
Our journey with the "Paznaun - Ischgl CREW" is and will remain very exciting! And wherever it takes us, we know for sure that a destination-wide employee program is an additional area of responsibility in the TVB towards our businesses and that we can create added value for the stakeholder "employees" with bundled strength, which increases appreciation and enables personal development.
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