Summer Camp Staff Orientation: Creating a Culture of Leadership

About the Program

Category: Personnel Management, Employment and Training (Best in Category)

Year: 2016

In 2015, Henrico County’s Division of Recreation and Parks collaborated with the Department of Human Resources to revise the orientation for 196 seasonal summer camp employees, with tremendous results. In past years, camp staff was not handling issues at their sites but instead deferred leadership to full time Recreation employees. To combat this pattern, we transformed the former 14-hour lecture-style orientation into a four-day immersion experience, involving staff with core content, leadership expectations, and each other so they could engage over 1,500 children a day in summer camp. Content focused on camper safety, conflict resolution, leadership, and parent engagement, and reinforced the expectation that summer camp staff needed to take accountability to resolve issues themselves. Employees left the training with a deeper understanding of both content and leadership concepts, and independently applied what they learned throughout the summer. They handled 95% of complaints on-site instead of deferring them to full time staff, and there was an astounding 90% reduction in parent complaints to the Director of Recreation and Parks. Camp employees resolved all internal team conflicts independently, and 94% plan to return to work for the County next summer as a result of their experience.