Kevin Stickelman is the new director of skier services at Mt. Bachelor.

Mt. Bachelor ski area enjoyed a long, snowy winter and record attendance last season, but it also encountered service problems and employee complaints.

The new ticket turnstiles had glitches that sometimes left frustrated visitors waiting in long lines, some skiers and snowboarders complained of lift problems, and some ski school instructors complained that their long hours kept them from taking breaks.

This year, Mt. Bachelor is tackling those issues head-on with a redefined corporate culture, said Janette Sherman, Mt. Bachelor spokeswoman.

”We all can admit that last year was a hard year,” Sherman said. ”We’ve had to evaluate where we were as a company and improve our work environment.”

Sherman says Kevin Stickelman will instigate some of those improvements as the new director of skier services. Stickelman started at Mt. Bachelor in July.

Mt. Bachelor’s ski school is a focal point of the company’s improvements because it employs almost 200 people and is a major revenue stream, Sherman said. Mt. Bachelor employs about 800 people at peak season and is a key player in Central Oregon’s tourism industry.

Stickelman already is overhauling the ski school structure – a point of contention with multiple instructors last season, leading to two signed Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries complaints about the lack of adequate break and meal periods. A handful of other employees submitted anonymous complaints, but the bureau does not accept unsigned complaints. The bureau is still investigating the two signed complaints.

Stickelman’s changes will directly address the employee complaints.

”Our lessons will be scheduled so instructors have breaks,” Stickelman said. ”We’re also hiring additional staff to help supervise kids while their instructors are at lunch, to give the instructors a break.”

Additionally, Stickelman is abolishing the four- and five-hour private lessons and switching to one- and three-hour lessons. Full-day lessons will have scheduled lunch breaks, he added.

Other changes include:

* Instructors must fill out questionnaires describing their schedule, workload and certification level, so Stickelman can build an employee database, organize schedules and track payroll.

* Changes to the types of lessons and lesson structures: 4- and 5-year-olds will have their own program with a maximum of three children per program. Other local programs will be expanded, including the most popular one, Mighty Mites, which will now be six weeks long instead of five. Adult and teen programs also will be added.

Mt. Bachelor recently approved Stickelman’s overhauled pay scale for instructors. In the past, instructors got hourly wages for all lessons, plus a percentage of the cost of private lessons. The new pay scale is still hourly, but includes more opportunity for wage increases: bonuses for outstanding job performance, merits and increased certification. As always, instructors will be paid for their level of certification and experience, Stickelman said.

”We need to be able to pay employees a competitive enough wage to recruit and attract instructors from around the country,” he said. ”Instructors will be compensated based on (their) teaching and based on the number of private lessons.”

Stickelman declined to say how much instructors will make, but said they will receive roughly 25 percent more pay than they have in the past.

Pay rates were a sore issue last year for 10-year ski instructor Bob Gordon. Gordon was the first Mt. Bachelor employee to file a signed Bureau of Labor and Industries complaint. His complaint stemmed from the lack of break periods.

Six months after he lodged his complaint, Gordon is cautiously optimistic about the resort’s proposed changes.

”(Stickelman) has some good ideas and I feel he will try to change things and get things on the right path,” Gordon said after meeting with Stickelman. ”But all these things can’t be corrected today.”

After a decade of instruction, Gordon, 61, isn’t sure if he’ll join the ski instructor staff again this winter.

He said he’s pursuing other seasonal work, where he can work less and ski more.

”I want something that will enhance my soul and make my life better,” Gordon said. ”I worked up there 10 years, so I can’t have been really unhappy most of the time. I’m sorry things didn’t go that well at the end.”

Stickelman said the ski school’s changes will support Mt. Bachelor’s focus on improving the upcoming ski season. Sherman agrees, adding that Powdr Corp., the resort’s parent company, was the instigator behind the changes.

Powdr officials could not be reached for comment.