Was your last meeting about why you’re meeting? Do you spend half the meeting flipping through personal calendars trying to find a time for your next meeting? Do you come away from a meeting wondering what, if anything, was accomplished or why you were there? Chances are you do not work in the ski industry.

Despite enormous challenges—geographically dispersed operations and personnel, issues of seasonality, different schedules, the need to ramp up and down quickly and smoothly, hire and fire hundreds of employees at a clip, operate at peak performance seven days a week, relatively small numbers of computer users—internal communication at most ski areas is surprisingly lean and efficient.

“The flow of information within the organization is something we strategize about repeatedly from a number of different angles,” says Kirby Brown, director of employee experience, development and delivery, which includes HR, guest services and information technology at Whistler/Blackcomb. “As we get more complex and offer more products and different ways to become more flexible, the amount of information needed by employees is growing. Internal communication is one of the most poignant issues facing our organization.”

Which is probably why Snowshoe, W.V., just created a brand new position: internal communications coordinator. “Internal communication is such a big issue in any company, especially as you grow,” says Andrea Smith, Snowshoe PR manager. “We realized that not only is it important to communicate to your external public, but if your own employees don’t know what’s going on, how can you effectively communicate that information to guests and the community at large?”

Ski areas use a variety of different tools to manage the internal flow of information, including e-mail, websites, employee portals, old-fashioned print materials and face-to-face meetings. But the medium is only part of effective internal communication. There is also the message.

“A long time ago we figured out what messages employees need to know, what messages are nice to know and what kind of messages are important enough to deliver face-to-face,” Brown says.

Here’s a look at how a few ski areas are matching messages and media to communicate with their employees.

Newsletters and websites: Many ski areas, particularly larger ones, use employee newsletters to communicate information that falls under the heading, ‘nice to know but not required reading.’

Most newsletters are published weekly; some are monthly. Content ranges from what’s happening this week to employee transitions, new employee initiatives, awards programs and Q and A’s with senior management about resort policies, procedures and operations. In addition to passing information to employees, newsletters help build community, particularly important because of the large numbers of transient workers ski areas must hire every year. Because of limited employee access to computers at most resorts, newsletters are still generally printed and distributed via mailboxes, lunchrooms, employee lodging facilities and within departments. Resort websites communicate other “nice to know” information such as job openings.

Operations updates and calendars: This is the vital information employees need on a daily basis to do their jobs. Copper Mt., Colo., even calls its weekly update “In the KNOW” (Knowledge to Navigate Our Week).

Operational updates are sent out weekly, sometimes daily, via e-mail, printed by supervisors and department heads and made available to staff. Bolton Valley, Vt., sends out both a weekly calendar of events and an operations-specific e-mail update—what’s open, lifts running, etc.

“There are different levels of access to the calendars,” says Molly Mahar, Bolton Valley marketing director. “Some people can just read items and print them out; others can go in and change or add entries.”

E-mail has vastly increased the flow of need-to-know information at ski areas, not only to staff but also to guests. “In the summer, for example, we may have 75 percent of our restaurants open,” Smith says. “That may change from week to week. Hours may change. Our internal communications coordinator compiles all of this information and sends it out to all of our employees, retail shops, front desk people. They print it out, hang it up and put it in every guest packet.”

While e-mail has dramatically improved the speed and efficiency of internal communication, it has created problems as well, mainly too much information. “E-mail has added a massive volume of medium to low importance information that people receive,” Brown says. “The sheer volume of information people are receiving is overwhelming. People are very creative in using e-mail to replace meetings and telephone calls to the point where it is detrimental, because of the sheer volume of information and the fact that people don’t build relationships over e-mail.”

Meetings: Although e-mail can reduce the need to meet face-to-face, it has also helped fuel the rising tide of meetings.

Mammoth, for example, has an informal rule of thumb for gauging when to meet: more than five e-mails on a single subject. “If five people are on the CC line and everybody starts weighing in, sometimes it’s more efficient just to sit down and have a meeting and figure out what to do rather than sending endless e-mails,” says Dana Vander Houwen, communications manager.

But whether e-mail or just the complexity of operations is to blame, meetings are no doubt on the rise at most ski areas. Last winter, Snowshoe instituted a biweekly department-wide, all-inclusive marketing meeting. “It’s made an amazing difference, it’s fabulous,” Smith says. “Before we rarely met.”

By including the entire department, even receptionists, Smith says the meeting helps keep everybody informed and boosts morale—“how would you feel if everybody was meeting except you?” Smith asks. She says the meeting also provides brainstorming opportunities, saves time—“people don’t have to run around trying to find out what’s going on”—and reduces worry—“before I might have forgot to tell my boss something,” Smith says. “Now I can do it in the meeting.”

“Meetings can be perfectly good or perfectly evil depending on their content, who’s leading them and their objective,” observes Brown. He says Whistler feels so strongly about meeting efficiency that it has made meeting protocol part of the management training program at the resort.

Other resorts take a more informal approach to meetings. Most have regular interdepartmental meetings either weekly or monthly, run by the GM or other senior exec. Keeping the meeting focused and on time is important, as are complete and timely minutes which provide a record of decisions made and keep absentees informed.

Maybe because skiing and ski area operators are more action and results oriented than process oriented, meetings, although definitely on the rise, do seem to be kept to a minimum.

“We certainly have a lot fewer meetings than other places I’ve worked,” Mahar says. “It’s kind of nice. If you’re running to meetings all the time you can’t get your work done. Striking a balance so you’re not over meeting to death but still getting the information people need to have to do their jobs is important.”

In this regard, Brown says, ski resorts have an advantage over other types of companies and businesses: “We totally advocate meeting on the chairlift,” he says.