Last month, nearly 300 Montage International employees packed into the ballroom of the company’s Deer Valley, Utah hotel dressed in their Wimbledon-inspired best. After grabbing concessions like strawberries and cream, they filed into stadium seats, eyes fixed on a ping pong table where former Olympians served as referees for the company’s biennial Compass Cup tournament.
The scene was the culmination of months of competition across Montage’s 15 properties. Many of the luxury hotel company’s 7,000 employees had played their way through local brackets before the top players were flown to Deer Valley for the finals.
At a time when companies are aggressively cutting benefits and even more are laying off workers, spending money on a company-wide morale event might seem hard to justify. But Jason Herthel, Montage International’s president and COO, sees it differently.
“We see the return on the investment in the form of really low turnover,” he told me. Hospitality turnover can hover around 70%; at Montage, it’s closer to 25%, he said. He also credits the unique offering as a successful recruiting strategy.
Of course, no one ping-pong tournament is keeping employees from leaving. But the Montage is betting on visible, shared experiences as part of a broader culture strategy, one aimed at making employees feel connected to the company.
The idea of hosting a recurring ping-pong tournament took some cajoling before the CFO was on board, Herthel admits. He first pitched the idea eight years ago after noticing employees who typically wouldn’t interact playing ping pong at the corporate office. His fellow executives were “groaning and rolling their eyes” at his idea initially, he said.
His breakthrough was tying the tournament to a budget line item Montage already had: its annual leadership summit. Rather than spend on nightly entertainment, the company could fold the tournament into the summit, building culture at roughly the same cost.
“It’s really been a catalyst for just bringing people together, creating excitement and creating engagement for the company,” Herthel said.
Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com
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