The 2016 Major League Baseball season kicked off last Sunday, with millions of fans heading to ballparks to enjoy America’s favorite pastime. As fans, we get to wear jerseys supporting our teams, enjoy the aroma of freshly roasted peanuts and scream at the opposing team when they score. But have you ever taken a moment to think about how human resources is involved in running a professional sports team?
Whether a team wins or loses, the game must go on. In fact, for the Chicago Cubs, six talented HR professionals ensure that the team’s front office continues to run during baseball season – and during the off-season. Whether it’s implementing a new performance management system or creating a new organization-wide values system, the HR team is continuously in motion.
Rachel O’Connell, SPHR, is assistant director of HR for the Chicago Cubs. In our article, Human Resources in Professional Sports, she shares that as a sports team, the Chicago Cubs have the exact same goal each and every year: win the World Series (as a long-suffering Cubs fan, I’m still waiting).
The business and operations sides are critical to moving the organization forward toward its ultimate goal. In fact, O’Connell says that the Chicago Cubs’ organization runs like a 100-year-old start-up in that there is a “go-go” atmosphere and a lot of energy and enthusiasm. That passion, paired with a very low turnover in staff – there’s extreme loyalty within the organization and almost everyone who works at the organization is a fan – makes for an incredibly dynamic work environment.
Staffing is a critical component to running a professional sports organization. Unlike most industries, you never know who is going to be on your team – or not – the following year. This certainly makes it hard to plan.
For the Chicago Cubs organization, there are full-time business staff and baseball staff. In addition, each season the Cubs hire hundreds of staff just for the baseball season. One of the biggest challenges for the Chicago Cubs’ HR team is that the organization’s staff isn’t always situated at the ballpark or in the front office. Many staff members, such as baseball scouts, are dispersed across the country. The HR team has to be proactive to ensure that remote staff has the same understanding of HR programs and benefits, and that they have the opportunity to ask questions of the HR team. To address this challenge, members of the HR team travel to Mesa, Ariz., the city where the Cubs hold their spring training each year and spend time with remote staff to ensure they understand everything HR.
Read more about the challenges and work of human resources in professional sports.
For more information on the intersection of human resources and professional sports, check out the following article:
The Globalization of Basketball: A Human Resources Perspective (Forefront Magazine)
Since this article was originally written, Rachel O'Connell (formerly Rachel Rush) has earned her Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) credential and is now assistant director of Human Resources for the Chicago Cubs.
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