While “business is booming,” at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, the number of job applicants isn’t, according to Director of Human Resources Jasmine Taylor.
For the first time, the park’s offering bonus incentives to all employees
Seasonal “team members” who work through Oct. 31 can earn up to an additional $500-$1,000 or more with a 10 percent bonus for wages earned from July through September and a 15 percent bonus for wages earned in October.
It’s “too early to tell” if the monetary bait works, said Taylor, adding that many employees are also paid from $1 to $3 an hour more than pre-COVID.
A Maryland transplant eight months into the HR job in Vallejo and Hurricane Harbor in Concord, Taylor sits on the Workforce Development Board in Solano County and said filling positions easing out of the pandemic is shared by many.
“Everybody’s definitely expressed the challenges of not being able to maintain a staffing number,” Taylor said Friday by phone.
Six Flags needs to fill 350 “regular” jobs plus another 200 for Fright Fest that runs through October.
“When we have challenges filling shifts, we either close locations or stagger the times,” Taylor said.
Taylor said 1,300 Six Flags positions earmarked for year-round staffing.
“We’re open every weekend. We always need staff,” Taylor said.
Though the park has offered one-time bonuses before this year, “it’s never been done on this scale,” Taylor said.
“Once we’re close to the end of the month in August, when folks normally go back to school, it’s when the bonuses come into play so we’ll see if they hang on a couple more weekends,” Taylor said.
There are “a number of things” in play causing the work shortages, Taylor said.
“People’s motivation for work has changed” since COVID, Taylor said. “We have to figure out what motivates people to come to work. Is it money? Is it having a better life-balance? A lot of people were workaholics and now want to send more time with family so they cut back.”
“A pandemic certainly shifts a lot of things with people, for sure,” Taylor said.
The park still gets “a lot of 14, 15-year-olds” applying, though normally late teens and older apply for the food and beverage positions “and we’re not seeing that,” Taylor said, with “older folks” — older than 18 — usually applying for those jobs.
Taylor acknowledged that there is competition for food service jobs with a rush to hire when COVID-19 restrictions relaxed.
“The food service industry has been hiring nonstop since the pandemic” opened up, she said.
Over in Concord, Hurricane Harbor is fully staffed at roughly 600 positions, Taylor said.
In fact, she noted, “we’re over-staffed on lifeguards, which is unique for our industry. We’ve been aggressive in reaching out to people and we do many things that make them want to stay.”
The market “on that side of the bridge is just different” than Six Flags, said Taylor.
A criminal justice major at the University of Maryland, Taylor has been with Six Flags nearly 16 years. She worked in human resources at the Six Flags in Largo, M.D., before accepting the cross-country job in Vallejo.
When she started last December, “I felt like I went back in time a bit,” Taylor said. “Maryland was more open (pandemic-wise) then California. When I moved out here, there was a stay-at-home order.”
Obviously, Taylor hopes next summer is back to normal.
“I don’t think we’ll have the same challenges next year,” she said. “I think the employment market will stabilize.”
For more information, visit sixflags.com/discoverykingdom.
