Ironman Triathlon FAQ

Pros

Great co-workers and small team dynamics. Travel the country.

Cons

Lack of leadership and education

Pros

staff is generally competent and collaborative . Flexible manager as far as time off is concerned.

Cons

Serious infrastructure issues . Unrealistic expectations for the amount of staff.

Advice to Management

lnvest in Staffing and infrastructure before purchasing Or launching more events

Pros

A steady paycheck and a 401K

Cons

Everything else. After firing half their staff last July, they’ve had dozens of people leave the company since December, and for a good reason: employees are underpaid, overworked, and analytical decision making isn’t valued. You will never do what you were hired to do, instead, you’ll end up doing what they tell you to do. If you have ever thought they don’t give a s*** about their customers, it’s even worse for their employees. They say this is a fast-paced company, but the truth is they do everything last minute and expect you to be available 16 hours a day. Run away, or you’ll try to within 3 weeks of on boarding.

Advice to Management

Let your employees do what they were hired to do. This is a top down issue. Stop overworking employees, and stop promising things that will never happen. Pay employees their value, or they’ll leave for better opportunities.

Pros

Free schwag, occasionally treated by vendors. Some team members are cool, C-levels are friendly enough, but don't focus on providing employees with enough resources or actually recognizing their contributions (even though they like to talk about it). Holidays off.

Cons

Expectations are high, however there's almost no internal development of employees. You get promoted when your superior leaves. So eventually will get overwhelmed with work when your team starts finding better jobs. Really high turnover - you'd think they'd address this, but they don't care. They will hire new people and burn them out. A lot of talk about "celebrating employees" - this means you get a branded coffee cup at the end of the year and some free leftover event t-shirts. This also requires you to be in the office, in spite of a raging pandemic. and no discernible reason the work couldn't be done from home. No internal processes documented. When senior employees leave, you are left with a mess to figure out on your own. No planning, everything is a fire.

Advice to Management

Hire people to support all the acquisition assets. Invest in employee development. Fix your terrible culture.

Pros

Triathlon is an amazing sport. Most staff are great and really do care about the athletes.

Cons

Endless work weeks. A lot of talk about mental health, diversity, caring for staff, but no meaningful action. HR is not trusted. Extreme micromanagement and artificial deadlines by the CRO and no respect for work life balance. PTO is discouraged even during the holidays and you cannot roll days over. There is no career development, promotions are rare and people are forced into roles with no say. Turnover is crippling. When well respected people are fired they are treated horribly. New leadership could make this an incredible company.

Advice to Management

Advice to owners. You've got people that care and have institutional knowledge that are aggressively micromanaged. Eventually It's a relief to be fired in a toxic culture like this one. Don't let the internal training presentations fool you, that's for show. Take a hard look at top leadership and the fear based culture they have developed. Remove that, sky's the limit.