Pechanga Resort & Casino‘s Director of Communications (Media & Public Relations) – Ciara Green talks about how the HubEngage platform helped them stay connected with the changing employee population due to the pandemic last year. She also talks about how they were able to share relevant content with employees once they were rehired that not only helped to keep them informed but also helped to provide the best service to their customers.
Q1. Tell us a bit about Pechanga Resort & Casino and your role over there.
I am Ciara Green and I am the director of media and public relations. I work for Pachanga Resort Casino which is in Temecula, California. So we are the largest resort casino that is on the west coast and we have a casino floor that’s larger than anything in Las Vegas, we have several thousand employees who all do a fantastic job many of them have been with us since the beginning you know we are always hearing about team members who have been with us for 15 going on 20 years so it’s kind of mind-boggling to think of that.
Q2. How has the platform help to maintain communication touchpoints with employees?
So the name of our platform, we call it PRC Engage. As I mentioned, we have several thousand team members and so they also work across all three shifts. We have people who work the overnight shift, we have people who work during the day and we also have people who work the swing shift like the 3 to midnight kind of time frame. Getting messages and information across to team members across all of those timeframes can really be difficult of course they have you know managers and supervisors but to get things out on a very consistent even basis to every single team member can be hard. We have really found that getting all of our team members onto the PRC Engage platform allows us to be able to let our team members know in a fun, engaging way and sometimes you know temperate with our brand language and just really put it into the right frame of mind for team members and allows us to get the information out to them in a timely way so it’s really been a big plus for us. In that way, they have the time to plan they can you know if it’s something dealing with flexible spending accounts they have two weeks to a month or so to decide do I want to be a part of this or do I not want to be a part of this. It’s there, it’s a resource for them they know that they can go to it really any time to find that information that they want and they won’t necessarily have to hope that they happen upon it in a team member hallway somewhere where they might find a flyer and so it’s been a really big boon for us in terms of having that one singular location where they know they can go to be able to find the necessary information for themselves.
Q3. How were you able to bridge the gap between employees and customers?
With all of us really kind of you not turning the corner on the pandemic and Covid-19 and you know some of the regulations listening up there’s been so many questions that both team members, as well as the general public, have had and you know in terms of how it relates to us in the workplace. Team members really want to feel like they know their information and can absorb it and can be able to let our guests know what the proper information is that we want our guests to know about them coming here to Pachanga because it is such a guest service-oriented organization and one of the main tenants that we serve our guest on is that just a complete guest service. We want people to feel like when they’re coming here that they are special no matter if they are you know spending a lot of money in the casino or if they’re simply having a sandwich in the cafe, it doesn’t matter, everybody is important. For us to be able to convey that to our guests our team members need to feel a certain sense of that and hopefully a whole sense of that as well. So I think what HubEngage and the PRC Engage app helps us with immensely is being able to you know have the pieces of information that they need at their fingertips that would sort of bridge the gap between maybe them having to reach out to HR and having to only you know get to them between nine and five sorts of hour timeframe or maybe them not being able to visit the certain office that they needed to go to find something. They could reach out to us on the platform at midnight and post a question you know we would see it in first thing in the morning or if we were up late at night we would be able to see their questions as well and give team members the information that they were looking for you know it helps lend to the sense of comradery that people have here too. And, when they know things they can share the information, I think this helps everybody’s sense of morale and sense of being and can give that much more guest service and be better at their jobs too. It’s been good, it’s been a good sounding board and a great resource for me and for all our team members.
It’s a great tool for us to be able to introduce to our new team members. So as new people come on board with Pachanga, to be able to have those new people sign up for the PRC Engage just right off the bat on the first day of orientation we have found has been just really helpful and actually invaluable so that we don’t have to necessarily to catch them later on during their tenure at the Pechanga when they’re signing up there right off the bat, they’re already signed up, they can engage starting from the start and really kind of be able to grow with the app and know that there is that area of the company that is talking to them and talking with them and wanting their responses as well. We’ve been able to post some messages that will elicit their responses and so I think some people always like to give their opinions and let people know what they think.
Our experience with HubEngage has been really smooth, we really haven’t run into any hiccups or issues there have been a few kinds of custom requests that we have asked of you guys from the outside and everything has come through for us so we are really happy with it and you know we are trying to do more with the app and really kind of explore the various features that it has.
Learn more about how to make use of an employee communications platform effectively for employee motivation in the entertainment industry here.
