Ep 63 - Valuing Swim Coaches Across America

In this week's episode of The Your Sports Resource Podcast, Matt and I talk about pay for coaches and more specifically those coaches who tend to hold a full-time job with a club, and how these leaders (Coaches and Boards) should quit making assumptions, and view their situation realistically.

Transcript

00:00:03 - Introduction

This is the Your Sports Resource podcast where each week you'll learn actionable strategies that you can implement. So the operations of your club support your coaching staff and the direction of your organization. We are committed to excellence in youth sports leadership. Let's get started.

00:00:26 - Renata

Hello and welcome everybody to the Your Sports Resource podcast. My name is Renata Porter, and we have Matt Bos with us today. And we thought for the very first episode for 2024, can't believe we're almost in the middle of 2024 that we are going to talk about. I want to revisit the coaches and swim staff pay salary that we conducted September, October time frame and then we turned around and handed those results out. 

00:00:56

Or was it October, November? And then we handed those results out in December, and I wanted to just kind of have a discussion about what we found out and then give a bit of direction to clubs on how the actual package, employment package, pay, and benefits, how that is a big picture in recruiting and retaining quality coaches. 

00:01:25

There's a lot of clubs out there that have high turnover and part of it is culture. I think culture is a big piece of it, right? But also, the actual employment package is a big part of that. And I think it's part of the reason why we'll get into it, why we have so many coaches that are leaving the industry. 

00:01:47

So, what I thought I would do is let's just kind of look at the full-time coaches. So, when I was looking at the stats for the head coaches, the head age group coach, and even the assistant or the associate coaches, the pay was really kind of low, and then the bulk of them do not have benefits. 

00:02:11

So, the one thing that we learned is that when I just look at the head coach in general, the pay is not overly disappointing when you just look at it on the surface and feel like they are working normal and regular hours. 

00:02:33

But if you think about the amount of time that they actually put in and what I tried to do is canvas, I followed up because we didn't ask the question in the survey, but we've got it added to next year's survey or this year's survey in that. 

00:02:53

Okay, if you had to estimate an average, because I know some weeks are horrible and some weeks aren't as much. If you had to average your amount of hours that you work on an average week, I think they came out to be around 60 hours a week. Okay. 

00:03:09

And we feel like still that's probably a low number given from the fact that there's probably a lot of things we'll go into today, but there's a lot of other things in there that really brings your hourly rate down to $19 an hour. 

00:03:19

So again, I guess on the surface you could say that's not horrible, but they are giving up their prime family time. So, the hours that they work on deck are typically during prime family time. They miss breakfast, they miss dinner with their family. Right. 

00:03:44

Not to be rude, but dang, they could go to McDonald's and make more than $19 an hour and not have to deal with emotional parents and children and board members who have their own agendas. What do you think about that hourly rate or even the hours that they're working? Am I undershooting 60 a week, you think?

00:04:11 - Matt

Depends on the week, right? I mean, there's going to be those stretches in between seasons where you're planning, and that's not an hour or two. That may be not 60 hours a week, but that could still be 30 to 40 hours a week. And then the flip side of it is you get into these longer championship stretches and you're out there. 

00:04:35

I mean, I don't even think you want to add it up some of those weekends, right, or weeks as a coach, you're like, I spent 80 hours working this week. So, I think if you average it all out, it's 50 or 60. And I think, like what you said, when you're looking at this, you have to kind of look at the big picture of everything that the coach is doing. 

00:04:56

And then when you want to take that compensation, it's like, look at the total compensation package, right, where you're exactly right. It may be the average is $60,000 a year, but then if you aren't getting insurance and you don't have all those benefits, that's really not $60,000. Right? Like you're starting to knock all those other things down. 

00:05:20

So, it is tough. And it is tough during those times because you're not working at a time that's conducive to family like you said, and you want to get involved with your own kids. Those factors, I think, do all kind of come into play. 

00:05:38

And then it really comes back to, if you're a club, what do you want out of your coach? Right? Like there's coaches that can show up and just do the minimum, but that's not what most people want. They want somebody who is engaged and is being proactive and trying to learn and do different things. So, yeah, they're going to be working a lot of hours each week, for sure.

00:05:58 - Renata

Yeah. And I think that's a big misconception from board members and even coach-owned teams, even though those coaches really, truly probably understand better than anybody. But when you think about the amount of hours that they're spending, I don't want to say stress, but the amount of relationship management that they have to go through. Right. It's not just the time that they spend on deck and the time that they do planning. 

00:06:28

It's all the, I don't know, meet entry work. There's parent conversations, there's board conversations. And then if you've got a discord between parents or you have a discord between the board, that just elevates the stress level to no end. And a lot of times when there is stress from the board, it's because they don't understand everything that the coach does. 

00:06:53

All they think they do is the coaching hours on deck, and they don't consider all the other meetings, all the other conversations just getting caught in the pool, trying to leave at night and get everybody out of the building, lock up. I mean, all that stuff is if you were doing that, you'd be pretty upset if your hours were well in excess of 60 and you're making pretty low when it comes down to an hourly rate. 

00:07:24

And then, like you said, if you've got to go out and get your own medical on top of that. Listen, I'm not trying to say that it's a horrible job because these guys and these men and women, they get into this role because they want to be here. They truly want to be here. 

00:07:42

Now, obviously, there's probably some head coaches or full-timers that phone it in, and there's probably even more of the hourly people that it's not their ultimate dream, but they do like to do it and they like to do it on the side. 

00:07:55

But those head coaches and those head age group coaches and head associate coaches, I mean, they're there because they love being there. And I think we need to get the board to understand the importance of their dedication and time that they actually put in and raise the level of what they're being paid.

00:08:17 - Matt

Yeah. Think about it. If you're on deck for, say, 4 hours a day, right, that's just practice time. The coaches are going to get there early. Right. Sometimes they're going to communicate with potential assistant coaches who may just, that may not, like you said, may not be their full-time job. 

00:08:34

So now, hey, I got to bring them up to speed. They're coming off of their day of teaching or maybe whatever else they do you want to be there for the athletes prior to just because you need to be the one in the facility, you're going to engage with those kids as they're walking onto the pool deck, kind of see how their day is. That's that interaction time where as a coach you have that time to spend communicating with them and asking them how their day went. 

00:09:02

And then, like you said, after practice, it's going to be the same thing. You're engaging with the kids, you're probably engaging with the parents some at that point. So that 4 hours of time just there probably turns into more like 5 hours, right? And then that doesn't take into account that you're planning. And as much as I think parents and sometimes even the athletes think, the planning part does take quite a bit of time. 

00:09:26

As a coach, if you're trying to consider where are the kids at, here's where we're at in our training cycle, but you're trying to write the best workout you can and then you've got different types of kids within the practice, so you're trying to cover all your bases and there's a lot of time and energy that goes not just into writing that out, but actually putting that thought in and kind of understanding where you're at on the season. 

00:09:54

And then on top of it, you kind of mentioned this is a job then where you're potentially, if you're a board run team, you kind of have this group of other people that you have to kind of keep in communication with. They may have feedback on things. So just the daily stuff is not just practice from this time to this time. 

00:10:17

I mean, it is significant and then we're not even getting into, well, there's meets coming up, and again, here's, I think the misunderstanding of coach is not just throwing kids in events, to throw kids in events. There's a lot of thought for each kid of like, hey, I want to see this out of this kid. 

00:10:34

Maybe we're going to stretch them a little further and put them in events they normally don't do to kind of test them. There's a lot more thought that goes into it. There's not as random as you think of like, oh, we're just throwing in these events for this meet and you're thinking about that meat plus the next meet. 

00:10:50

Plus the next meet, most likely as you do those. So you're always working ahead one, two, three months. That was one of the things when I was coaching that I always thought like, time seemed to go by fast because I was always thinking two, three months in ahead if not further. Right.

00:11:09 - Renata

Project management. I never knew what month I was in because I was always thinking so far ahead.

00:11:11 - Matt

Yeah, it's March and I'm already thinking about what July and August are going to be like. And it's just you're always planning so far ahead.

00:11:18 - Renata

And what about the internal meetings and training you have to do? Well, we as an organization, I know not a lot of head coaches do, but we as an organization are really pushing our head coaches to invest in their coaching staff and to quit having so many just silly admin meetings and reduce those and reallocate that meeting time to leveling up all the coaches on your deck, which again means you have to understand where they're at in their coaching space, which is meetings. Right. 

00:11:58

You have to understand where they need to grow, which means you have to spend time with them on deck and what they do know and what they don't know. And then planning out what your training schedule is for your staff. 

00:12:09

Again, not making excuses. What we're trying to say, if you're a board member listening, is that, yes, it's all part of the job, but what we want you to do is move out of the mindset of they only work a couple of hours a week or a day and it's nowhere near the truth. 

00:12:27

Not for your full-time coaches that are as a head coach and probably your head age group coach, which probably does even more planning, I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong, then the head coach or it's very different kinds of planning. So we just want you guys as board members or leadership of your teams to consider that.

00:12:49 - Matt

And most of the teams we work with, Renata. Right. We're seeing at least one all-coaches meeting like per week. Right. I mean, that's the norm. And then maybe they're having some one-on-one, the head coach at least having some one-on-one meetings in with some of their head age group coach or those other people. 

00:13:10

So then that kind of puts it out to where there's more than those. And then maybe once a month they're getting together and doing some sort of group training. And then so there's all that preparation that goes into that stuff. 

00:13:21

These are weekly meetings and then that are happening just within the coaching staff, but then bigger monthly meetings, and then your coach is probably reporting into the board probably once a month. So then they're preparing for those meetings and that doesn't take into account the number of emails and phone calls and off-deck conversations with the mom or dad or the athletes.

00:13:47 - Renata

Right. There's one other stat that I just kind of want to share that I thought was really interesting to nail at home. And then I want to talk about what boards can do in order to prioritize their budgets to offer a nice employment package. 

00:14:04

So I went back and did a little reverse math on the results that we received and I looked at just the staff that was full time and 32% of them do not receive any benefits. And then we have like the hodgepodge going in where they may just get medical or they may get medical and retirement and then it gets bigger as it goes. 

00:14:36

But I was really surprised to see that of the full-time employees, 32% of them don't receive any benefits whatsoever. And like you mentioned earlier, that's a good monthly chunk of change to the employee. I also recognize it's a good chunk of change to the organization as well. 

00:14:58

But if you're hiring people, those are the things that you should be budgeting to be able to do. Whether it's now or two years from now, you got to plan for that to take place.

00:15:09 - Matt

Yeah, this is why a lot of coaches, you see it's appealing when you're young because you're like, okay, I can do this, it's fun. And then as you get a little older, that realization of, okay, I need that medical benefit or I need to start planning for whatever's going to happen down the road.

00:15:26

And why I think that you do see a lot of coaches in their 30s and 40s start to leave and pursue other opportunities. It's not that they don't love it anymore. It's that life circumstances change and they're obviously looking out for what's best for them at that point.

00:15:43 - Renata

Yeah, absolutely. So if you are a club and you want to try to prioritize increasing your bucket for staff and I mean your budget bucket for payroll, salaries, benefits, and I think there's a few things that needs to take place because, listen, I understand there's quite a few clubs right now that just they feel like they can't do it and they have no money and they are barely making ends meet. 

00:16:17

But from my perspective, I think it all comes down to priorities. And I'm not saying that you have to do it tomorrow. Like, if you're really tight, then you need to go back and kind of have a conversation about first you got to start with maybe looking at the survey results on the website and going, okay, we need to bring our staff up a bit in the pay because we're nowhere near what they can get in other clubs. Right. 

00:16:48

So they need to understand who's being paid what in their local area and whether or not they're receiving benefits. And then that way you can understand where your shortfall is and how much that shortfall is and it gives you a target number. 

00:17:03

Then the next thing that I would recommend that you do is you look at your budget and see if there's areas that you can change your allocation of funds. Like if you've got a really deep pocket. I don't even know where to pull an example from, but I don't know. Apparel. Let's say you put a lot of money into team apparel. 

00:17:26

You like them to have all these new things. The kids have new things all the time. Well, maybe instead of all the time, instead of every quarter them getting a new shirt or a new whatever, that you reallocate some of that to go into the bucket so you can build the bucket up for pay. 

00:17:45

That apparel is probably a really horrible example, but did that point come across correctly? Just reallocating some areas that you're spending money on your budget? Like, do you need to spend that much? Do you need to spend that at all? Is it more valuable than paying your coaches so you get to keep them?

00:18:07 - Matt

I think that then comes back to, first of all, again, why are you there, right? What's the purpose of this club? And if it's to serve those kids in your community and you want to talk about developing those kids, well, then you have to invest in your coaches. Right. 

00:18:23

Because there are the people who are not unlike a teacher in a school that you're entrusting, that those kids are going to go there and not just necessarily become better swimmers that they're going to become or build skills that are going to go beyond the pool. 

00:18:40

So if that's the purpose, then that's the first big investment that has to happen out of your example. The second thing I think you have to do is just make sure you have your budget in place. Right. Like, make sure that you are going over that, right? Yeah. 

00:18:55

That you are projecting going forward. So this is going to require that you have a good understanding of what the money is coming in, what the money is going out. And like you called it, like the buckets. It may not happen this year, right? 

00:19:12

It may not happen next year, but start putting in a plan to where you can have that bucket for salaries, for coaches or hourly pay, whatever that's going to be to make it happen. But you got to start somewhere and so getting a good understanding of that and then setting a goal and start working towards that goal, then.

00:19:34 - Renata

Yeah, I think I was talking to a coach the other day that was talking about their annual dinner. The budget for that is quite massive. Right. And it's like, okay, so is there more value there than there is on your coaches? There are certain things that I just think you need to assess and go. 

00:19:55

Could we go a year with a smaller banquet or do we need a banquet this year or can we do something differently? I just think you just need to reassess how you're allocating your funds. And then I think the next area is the board and the committees and the volunteers. 

00:20:14

They really need to step up probably in the next year or so, either with themselves or finding people with the right skill set to go for grants, get sponsorships, get corporate partnerships, and do some fundraising. And now, I would never tell a club that that's the money you need to pay your staff because those come and go, they get bigger, they get smaller. Sometimes you don't get them. So you can't depend on those to pay your staff. 

00:20:47

But what you can is through that reallocation process is your staff numbers can get a little bit. Sorry. Your budget for salary and benefits can get a little bit bigger because you're going to allocate more membership funding for those numbers and you're going to use your grant money, your fundraising money, your sponsorships and partnerships. 

00:21:08

All that money can go towards other initiatives, but you still need to do that outside activity of securing those corporate partnerships, those fundraising events. And you need people to be able to do that. Which means the board might have to, again, take a really close look of who they have and who they need in order to take advantage of those types of funding opportunities.

00:21:37 - Matt

So I think part of this goes back to, again, what we said. If this is what's important, then this also means that you're right. As a board, you have to determine, okay, what is our vision? What are we valuing as a club? Why are we here? And then. Right. 

00:21:54

It requires other people outside of the coaches then to step up. So if you are a board member. Right, you're right. Then everybody needs to be actively playing a part. Because you use the example of apparel. Well, you can go out and find a sponsorship. Right, to cover your apparel. Right. And that'll put a name or a business on the shirt as well. 

00:22:16

And I'm sure they'd be more than happy to, but that requires somebody on the board taking on that responsibility, and then that takes that cost of the membership, the dollars for membership, or they're not going towards things like apparel, those costs now can move over and then that pool of money starts to build up to use it for those more fixed costs of salaries or pool rental or stuff like that.

00:22:44 - Renata

That's right. So my main hope is that those of you who are listening, I know you probably feel like it's a massive uphill too, you probably feel like you're barely making it with the salaries that you're doing now. 

00:23:00

But I think that, again, if your priorities are that you actually want to attract and keep quality staff, and I really think if you have these conversations with your parents, they're going to want to fundraise, they're going to want to do things because they also want to keep their kids coaches. Right. 

00:23:19

So I think that, quite honestly, what's the alternative? Is high turnover. Okay. Is an unhappy coaching staff. Okay. Is having that battle over and over again about what a person feels like they are worth and their value is lowballing that. Okay. 

00:23:43

So I think, again, it does come down to really doing some priority work and understanding where you're trying to get to. Again, we as advisors are not telling you that you have to. I mean, if you've got the money, go for it. But we're not telling you that you got to turn the switch on today. What we're telling you is you've got to start planning today. 

00:24:03

So in a year or two years, you've got the buckets to be able to offer great benefits, offer some really good incentives and bonus plans and programs that actually helps a coach make a decent salary. So not only do they love their job, but they're rewarded for doing a good job. And that only just, gosh, that would just elevate the team altogether, wouldn't it? They're happy at home and they're happy at their work.

00:24:33 - Matt

Well, the most successful teams that we see right, over a long period of time typically tend to have coaches that have been there for a long period of time. And that's for a reason. Right. And those kids are, it's not just the swimmers then. 

00:24:49

It's the other coaches on those teams. Like those other coaches are being elevated. Right. They're getting better at those things and they're more likely to stay as well if they are a part-time coach. And they're like, hey, the head coach is happy. They're engaged in what's going on. 

00:25:07

The structure of the team is good. The kids are doing great. They're going to want to stay and be a part of it. It's really hard to leave a coaching position when things are going really well, right? You're like, man, it's a difficult thing to do when you're part of a group and a community of people that work hard and have fun and enjoy what they're doing.

00:25:29 - Renata

And they're well taken care of. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everybody, for listening. I would like to ask for you to please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so we can reach a bigger audience and help others such as yourself. 

00:25:45

And don't forget to visit the website yoursportsresource.com, where you can find a copy of the survey results, but you can find other articles and tools as well. And finally, just remember what is common sense isn't always common practice. Put what you learn into action. Don't just be good, be good at it. Thanks, everybody.