Kenneth Smit meets…

Pieter Willemse | 24-11-2020

Fairplay Casinos: Gambling is just like drinking, do it with your mate(s)... 'Kenneth Smit Meet' aims to let people speak who have something relevant to say. This month we started talking to Ilse Donkers, 40 years old, and for a number of years branch manager at Fairplay Casinos, one of the largest arcade organizations in the Netherlands with almost 40 branches. Welcome to the world that your reporter hardly knew, a very exceptional, but therefore also fascinating world.

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Ilse, how did you end up in this industry?

This question of mine immediately triggers Ilse and what follows is a beginning monologue.

Ilse Donkers: 'Well, it started as a side job during my studies to become a social studies teacher. After a year in the classroom, I knew that teaching would not be my calling and I started working on sailing ships. Not a logical choice, but it seemed fun to me. First in the Netherlands in the 'brown fleet' as a sailor on old cargo sailing ships that are now used as passenger ships. Then in the Baltic Sea, also on the brown fleet, and then sailing on private yachts as a stewardess all over the world. You should know (laughing) that I had never sailed before. I am a real adventurer who doesn't want to do the same thing every day. I also have that at Fairplay Casinos where I started, as they say, 'on the floor' and then progressed to the job of branch manager.

I had never thought in advance that I would work in a casino and that applies to most people who work there. That is why we have a very diverse team, from drop-out to highly educated and everything in between. What matters is whether you are willing to serve and how you can deal with people, that does not depend on your education, but on your attitude. By the way, there is a very high turnover because on the one hand it is a catering industry, where you can have a lot of social contacts, but on the other hand it is quite heavy because many 'casino players' do not want any social contact at all. You may work in a small team, but a lot is happening around you and you have to be able to cope with it. Lots of lights, lots of sounds, you see people who are not happy, people who are slipping and showing a lot of emotions and sometimes even aggression. The nice thing about the job is that you work with people in very special circumstances that are always challenging. Corona has now made it a bit less attractive. The catering part has now completely disappeared, which means that my people have to be present, but actually have little to do. Except for keeping an eye on our customers. As a result, the days have felt very long and I have a challenge to keep them motivated. On a busy day they walked around with a tray all day, now they are mainly busy cleaning.'

What are the most important skills you need to do this job well and for a long time?

Ilse thinks for a moment and resumes her argument: 'Look, we now have a team of 23 people. They are often young people and not everyone can do this work immediately. You have to dare to speak to people and you have to learn that assertiveness. We have a duty of care; so if people are going to come more often or play more, and look unkempt, then we have to speak to them and advise them; – for example, leave your 'debit card' at home, have yourself placed on the 'white list', which is a voluntary ban on entry, then you are not allowed to enter for six months. That is a huge dualism; -we make money from people who gamble and at the same time we have to protect them from themselves, which makes them spend less-. We refer about 10 people per year to help agencies here at our branch, because things go completely wrong. After a while you really know who can no longer be saved. By the way, it is not the case that everyone who plays a lot actually has a problem. When you work with us you see a lot, including a lot of misery and sadness, people who can no longer pay the rent or partners who call that there is no more money for food, you really have to be able to let those kinds of situations slide away.

On the other hand, it is extremely fascinating and educational and I can really recommend young people to come and work with us for a year or two. Here you always work on the dividing line between creating turnover and protecting people against gambling addiction. Working here means that you have to have excellent people skills, you have to constantly take the sting out of things, but then you have to know when that is. For example, if someone starts tossing his coins from one hand to the other, you have to be very alert and start a conversation with him. If you don't handle this properly, it will go from bad to worse and affect everyone. We have an external video room that we can ask to watch, where there are people with a lot of experience who can give advice or intervene by, for example, calling the police.

Is it just misery or does the work also have positive aspects?

Ilse: 'I understand what you mean, but I and most people in my team do not consider the above to be a negative side of our work, but rather the biggest challenge. And there is a real positive side to the work too, we have a great 'jackpot policy' where we give away a lot of money. You get a lot of happiness in return. In addition to the heavy gamblers, we also have a lot of small players, who play for five or ten cents per tap and have hours of fun for fifteen euros. These are also the people who seek much more social contact with you and who all know each other. If a jackpot falls there, they have fun together and there is a lot of interaction. Under normal circumstances, our customers are offered food and drinks from us here - tailored to local needs and with the necessary variety - but no alcohol; that is a conscious choice. Losing and alcohol don't go well together. So for a lot of small players it is a very nice evening out for them and for us.

What kind of company is Fairplay Casinos?

The Janshen-Hahnraths Group, to which Fairplay Casinos belongs, is a true family business and has been around for more than 60 years. Management is now in the hands of an external party. The company has grown enormously and is an organization with high standards and values ​​and excellent morality. The company knows its responsibility very well and spends a lot of money on its duty of care. For example, the head office in Heerlen employs a full-time so-called 'problems manager' who maintains constant contact with health care, mental health care and addiction care. We also work with these parties, but also with the AGOG Foundation. This club helps treat problematic gambling.

In our casinos we have various customer groups that you can recognize by the machines they play on; the small players, who really play for only five to ten cents per tap, in addition the group that plays on the machines for twenty to forty euros per tap and then of course you have the roulette players. Another separate group, a more difficult group, but a group with which you have the best interaction.

The success of Fairplay Casinos is the employees. My employees here determine the difference, because in fact there are the same machines in all arcades. That's why this is such a fun job. I have been able to work on my team for over a year to bring it to the level it is now performing at, a top team. I now want to raise the knowledge level of my team and I want to create another hierarchical intermediate layer. That is still an unofficial task, but I want to put a real floor manager there. That requires some organizational steps that I have to take.

I don't want to leave here until I can leave behind a self-managing team. I believe that creating an intermediate layer also makes it more attractive to come and work for us. In addition, such an 'intermediate layer' is a wonderful breeding ground for talents who would like to become a branch manager. This is very important for the company, because attracting (floor) managers from outside has not worked so far, due to the specific work in our industry.

What is your role at Fairplay Casinos?

Ilse (laughing) continues her enthusiastic argument: 'Few people have insight into what my work actually looks like. They sometimes ask me at a party: why I hardly ever work in the evenings? We are open 140 hours a week and my working week really only has 40 hours, so I'm not there more often than not. I sometimes still work in the evenings, but a lot less than when I was still 'on the floor'.

I now really have a full-time management job. We were closed for three months during the first corona wave, but I continued working full-time to have everything ready when we were allowed to open again. For example, we had to clean everything thoroughly. We have done a lot of training for my team to raise the level of knowledge. Even though we were closed, the vending machines still had to run. There is a memory in it and if they stand still for too long the memory 'empties', as they say; and we need that information for the gambling authorities, because very strict rules apply in our industry. In addition, our internal IT department has done a lot of work to replace older automation systems. That was a nice bonus.

During that period we also thoroughly examined all procedures. You know, there is always something to do in such an organization. For example, consider daily monetary transactions. This mainly happens early in the morning. The employees for this specific task start at 05:00 am. All machines are emptied, there are cash boxes that weigh five to six kilos and we have more than 100 machines. In short, that's tough work and all that money has to be counted. Our daily input, i.e. what customers throw into the machines, is between one hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand euros, so that is a lot of coins. Even now, during the corona period, which is really bothering us, the input is still approximately sixty thousand euros per day. In other words: there is a lot of money involved in this business and that is a very serious responsibility as a manager.

What is so fascinating to you about working in a casino?

Ilse: 'On peak days we have one hundred to one hundred and eighty guests in the house and then it is really running and flying, but now it is quiet due to the second lockdown. Fortunately, the work behind the scenes continues. Especially a lot of financial matters, planning, responsibility for all that money available, the schedules of my employees, reporting on what is happening, actually too much to mention. I am also very active in working groups from the central organization. I am now busy with marketing, what promotions are we going to plan and with our changed opening policy. Normally we are always open, 365 days a year, but now we will probably close on New Year's Eve, because we are not allowed to have an operational catering industry. No day is the same here and you are surprised every day.'

You have completed management training at our organization. Why did you do that and what was the added value of this training?

Ilse is very firm about this: 'My main reason for taking that training was that I wanted more tools to stimulate and enthuse my employees. I tended to say a lot myself and express less from my employees, so I did not make use of their ideas and creativity. So I kept them lazy and passive. It is nice to now mention a few things from the training that I really enjoy every day and can also apply very easily.

Look, this training works with a clear step-by-step plan that you can easily and immediately apply in practice. At a certain point it becomes a second or new nature for you and if you pick up the step-by-step plan again after six months, you can very quickly pick up the things that have slipped away a bit.

Another part that I really use a lot is “MORE-COAHING”. I have been able to use it very well in a number of improvement processes with employees and they have been very successful, if I say so myself.

In addition, giving compliments and how much that yields is really very special and finally, I think the so-called 'improvement conversation' is a really good instrument. For example, I have been instructed several times by the organization to tackle a branch that is not doing so well. By applying the technique of 'improvement conversations', employees now know very well what is expected of them and what the consequences are if they do not do enough. I have also benefited greatly from conversations with people who were no longer comfortable in their place and from whom I was able to say goodbye in a pleasant way.

Kenneth Smit uses the Insights Discovery personality profiles in the training, which allows me to understand my own communication preferences much better, but also those of my employees. This makes conversations flow much better. I even asked my own manager to look at my 'blind spots', which gave me more self-reflection. I think the great thing about these profiles is that they are based on the positive aspects of people, which they can do.

Finally, the meeting techniques included in the training are very recognizable and applicable. I now take the lead in meetings much more. It saves a lot of time and you no longer get bogged down in endless conversations; this is much more effective and efficient.

What is your market position in the Netherlands?

Ilse thinks for a moment and says: 'Our competitors are the other arcades such as Jacks Casino, Flash and some other clubs. There is still a kind of taboo for many people in our market. This is, for example, very different from Holland Casino, which is not a competitor because they have a completely different marketing policy and present themselves as an 'evening away', while in the end you can lose a lot more money. What sets us apart from our competitors is that we focus much more on larger players, meaning higher stakes. And in that market we give away the most prizes nationally, around 17 million in jackpots last year. We only give money. We also have special promotions such as 'the bank run', in which we raffle one hundred thousand euros among our customers on drawing evenings.'

What does the future look like for your company?

Ilse looks stern: 'There will be a system called CRUKS, Central Register for the Exclusion of Gambling, this means a national registration system of people who are not allowed to play, the well-known white list. Now customers who are on the 'white list' at a casino can still play elsewhere and with the new system this is no longer possible. This will really make a difference to customers. This also becomes very difficult for our employees, because they have to recognize people on that list from a photo. This is a major challenge for our duty of care. And what will happen online? That market will also open in the coming year. We and many of our competitors had already established gambling companies in Malta, for example. That will change in the coming year and the battle to conquer the online gambling market will be fierce because a lot of money is involved. Some casinos already work cash-less, i.e. with cards and no money. For many players, part of the gaming experience is that they have coins in their hands and that they hear the coins drop when they win, but that will certainly change. In short, there is still a lot to be done here.'

And what about your future?

The question about her future and where she wants to be in 10 years puts a smile on Ilse's face: 'I now manage the largest casino location and have noticed that my work is starting to become somewhat routine. I have trouble filling my 40 hours with useful tasks and that is very dangerous for an adventurer like me. For example, a role as a formula manager seems very challenging to me, on the other hand I am also curious about that added value in a completely different industry or in a role as a change manager or crisis manager. In short, there are still plenty of challenges for this ambitious jack-of-all-trades. In any case, with Kenneth Smit's training I have gained considerable knowledge that, together with all my experience, I want to be able to use for years to come.'

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