Vail Resorts plans to lay off 64 HR workers in Colorado as part of 2-year restructuring

Vail Resorts is beginning to trim down its corporate workforce as part of the company’s “resource efficiency transformation plan” that was first announced in September.

Employees were notified this week that the company has decided to permanently close its HR shared services operating unit in Broomfield, with the first separations expected to occur on June 2.

Sixty-four employees in total will be separated as part of the plan, including 22 HR shared services coordinators and a variety of other HR-related positions.

The resource efficiency transformation plan is scheduled to take place over the next two years and will “improve organizational effectiveness and scale for operating leverage as the company grows,” according to a release issued by Vail Resorts. “Through scaled operations, global shared services, and expanded workforce management, the company expects $100 million in annualized cost efficiencies by the end of its 2026 fiscal year.”

Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch said the execution of the transformation plan is part of a natural progression for the company, which now has 42 owned and operated mountain resorts, plus hospitality, retail and rental operations.

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“No matter how big or small the impact of position eliminations, we do not take lightly any decision that affects our team members,” Lynch said. “Our team members are the core of our mission to create an Experience of a Lifetime, and we have tremendous gratitude for their passion and commitment to our mission, our mountains, and our guests.”

Vail Resorts, in a release announcing the transformation plan, said the plan contains three pillars: scaled operations, global shared services and expanded workforce management.

Concerning scaled operations, “the company’s operations leaders have developed substantial operating best practices and learnings on how the ski industry solves the same problems differently across the U.S., Canada, and Australia,” according to Vail Resorts. “The company now has an opportunity to capture acquisition synergies by leveraging those best practices and introducing new tools to scale the way operations are supported across the company. This will enable operations to focus on the guest experience and reduce the administrative burden on frontline managers.”

On global shared services, “the company plans to consolidate and outsource its internal business services and call centers into best-in-class global shared services to support its North American businesses while creating a scalable model that can expand for future global expansion support,” according to Vail Resorts.

And when it comes to expanded workforce management, Vail Resorts recently implemented new technology across its North American resorts “to provide the company’s frontline managers with the tools and data insights needed to allocate talent based on the guest experience and demand, resulting in more efficient use of hours,” according to Vail Resorts. “The tool also gives frontline team members visibility, access, and cross-training for available shifts in-resort and network-wide. The Transformation Plan includes an expansion of Workforce Management by leveraging best practice models, adding lines of businesses and departments, and adding new functionality.”

In addition to its 37 North American mountain resorts, Vail Resorts owns and operates three mountain resorts in Australia — and over the past two years has expanded into Europe with the purchase of Andermatt-Sedrun and Crans-Montana Mountain Resort in Switzerland.

And if the company wants to keep expanding into Europe and beyond, the resource efficiency transformation will be a necessary step, Lynch said in announcing the plan to investors in September.

“We saw that we needed to head in this direction to enable future growth and even to enable to the global expansion that we aspire to,” Lynch said. “So really getting our operations, a global shared service model and expanding our workforce management puts us in a situation where we can scale and get operating leverage as we expand further into Europe or grow the company.”