Chicken N Pickle is one of the premier entertainment-focused pickleball venues in the country. With its indoor/outdoor pickleball complex, a variety of yard games, and hearty restaurant, Chicken N Pickle is a unique experience that seeks to serve its guests well. However, their guests are not the only ones well-served by the company as they offer their employees a robust benefits package to show their appreciation and care in addition to their wages. Of their benefits program, Jessica Sharpsteen, Chicken N Pickle’s Director of Human Resources, Training, and Recruiting, says, “Our benefits are in line with our core values. [We] want to ensure our team members have [the] insurance coverage they need to be happy and healthy but also feel valued for the time they give back to the community.” While it requires sacrifice on the company’s part, Chicken N Pickle understands the need to make their team members feel valued in order to run a successful business and does so through several generous elements within their benefits program.
One small way Chicken N Pickle shows their team members how they value them is by providing one, three, and five year anniversary gifts to celebrate a team members’ service to the company.
In regards to making them feel valued for their community service, Chicken N Pickle offers team members four paid volunteer days per year. Chicken N Pickle goes so far as to have a Community Impact Coordinator at each of their locations with one of their responsibilities being coordinating these volunteer days for team members. Sharpsteen says, “The team members submits a request online to volunteer and the Community Impact Coordinator helps coordinate a volunteer opportunity or approves the one the team member has planned.” This system allows team members to serve in areas for which they have an identified passion and also discover new avenues for serving their community. Further, she noted that while Chicken N Pickle compares themselves to other entertainment venues, such as Top Golf and Andrettis, which also value volunteer time, they have not seen other similar companies helping to plan and coordinate this time by someone on their team.
In addition to encouraging team members to participate in regular community service, Chicken N Pickle is committed to supporting team members as they become parents and/or add more children to their family. While following all state and local laws regarding reasonable accommodation and maternity/paternity leave, Chicken N Pickle’s leave policy is as follows.
In addition to the accommodation of a worker’s known limitations related to pregnancy, Chicken N Pickle, full-time team members with six (6) months of service who have worked 1000 hours or more will have access to up to six (6) weeks of approved maternity leave or paternity leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Hourly team members that qualify for the leave will be paid based on their average amount of hours for the previous six (6) months. *Tipped team members will be paid based off average hours worked and paid state minimum wage.
Chicken N Pickle strives to help team members during these substantial life transitions by offering them generous maternity/paternity leave packages not only for full-time employees but also for hourly employees. In order to support this level of leave, Chicken N Pickle management “[works] with their team members to ensure coverage of their duties while on leave.”
In line with their commitment to serving their local community, Chicken N Pickle established the Employee Giving Fund in 2020 which provides “needs-based financial assistance to employees,” according to their website. Sharpsteen elaborated on the impetus for creating the fund saying, “During Covid, we wanted to help all employees that reached out needing assistance with an unforeseen circumstance. We were able to provide groceries and help pay bills for those that would not be able to during that time. This rolled into the Employee Giving Fund.” In order to receive this funding, a team member will submit an application to the Director of HR (Sharpsteen) who will determine if the application meets the requirements. Then, the application, sans identifying information, goes to the Chicken N Pickle foundation for final review and approval. The Employee Giving Fund has tangibly blessed employees in a multitude of ways, to include paying for a new roof for a team member’s home after it was damaged by a tornado and covering funeral expenses for a team member’s parent. While the names remain anonymous to the Chicken N Pickle Foundation, Sharpsteen emphasized that the “thank yous” and “this means so much to me” from the team members “reminds us [that] this is why we do this.” Chicken N Pickle’s unwavering commitment to supporting their team members through all of life’s transitions and tough times is a sure sign of a company excelling at caring for their team.
