Pros
-Company has grown from 150 clubs when I started to more than 200 in less than 3 years. More clubs are coming aboard, so there are great opportunities for career movement -Free golf not only at your own club, but at all the other clubs around the country -The company has an excellent database of tools from which you can use -Because of the sheer size of the company, you can form a great network and support system with other clubs
Cons
-Unlike equity clubs, ClubCorp is strictly for profit, so your job is to take care of the members...just as long as you're making your numbers for the company -Because the company is effectively run by Wall Street, the budgets and COGS have been squeezed to the Nth degree. Very few F&B Managers stand any chance of making the end-of-year bonus. When we do make the quarterly F&B Net bonus, it isn't paid out for ten weeks. TEN. That's unheard of in today's world, and nothing but a way for the company to hold money longer -With COGS budgets squeezed down to numbers similar to stand-alone cash houses, operational supplies budgets squeezed down to the bare minimum, and labor budgets lowered against total sales, the Managers have no choice but to start cutting corners. Whether that's not buying supplies the staff needs to service the membership, cutting the quality of food purchased in order to bring the margins up, or cutting staff to save hours, the bottom line is that more work is required by the Managers. When more conference calls and desk time are factored in, you have a situation where the Managers are now required to work between 60-80 hours a week just to keep up. ClubCorp will tell you you're expected to work "50 hours per week" as a Manager, but that is no longer possible if you intend on giving the service that the members deserve and the support that your staff deserve -Since every club struggles to make their sales numbers, they'll take anyone into the club as long as they bring a check to pay the initiation fee and dues each month. This makes life a living Hell on Sales Managers, and turns off the members as some real low-life's join the clubs -Compared to equity (member-owned) clubs the salaries and benefits are well-below average for Managers, and the hourly service staff don't make the same money as servers at your local Applebee's. As a Manager, this means we can only hire inferior talent which have to be trained, and once trained they leave for better money. When we can hire quality people, they quickly realize how bad the situation is and leave. This puts the Managers in a constant state of hiring and training, pushing other duties to the back burner and thus increasing the workload -As F&B Managers, 25% of our compensation comes in the form of taking a percentage out of the overall Tipshare. In effect, we're taking a percentage of tips from each server, which while not illegal, is borderline immoral and simply wrong. Furthermore, when they do pay out bonuses, the totals are based on your salary, not total compensation. This effectively lowers the total bonuses you can earn. Lastly, three years ago the decided to take a percentage of the service charges right out of the pool, meaning every manager, supervisor, server, bartender, and busser loses money. Again, it's not illegal, but it is immoral and flat-out wrong -The demands placed on the General Managers are so severe that they rarely have the time to support the rest of the staff, and most of the GM's I've known were truly good people -Each club must help support all the other clubs in the region, so even if your club had a great quarter, spending freezes and labor cuts are put into place if the region as a whole fails to meet budget. In effect, your club can do great but you'll pay the price for the companies failures -There are no annual raises, only merit raises, which are very hard to get even for great employees. In order to get a good raise you essentially have to be promoted to another club, and some people don't have the ability to be that mobile, especially if you have a family
