Every November, the same thing happens.
Ski resorts across Canada scramble to onboard 150 people in three weeks. HR managers drown in paperwork. Returning employees who worked four seasons get treated like strangers. Someone, somewhere, is still checking voicemails to track who called in sick.
Meanwhile, the software that was supposed to fix all this sits there. Expensive. Underused. Fighting you at every turn.
Most HRIS platforms were built for companies with stable headcounts and predictable hiring cycles. They work fine when your workforce grows 10% a year. They fall apart when it grows 400% in eight weeks.
Ski resorts aren't most companies.
We've spent years working with seasonal operations across Canada. This article breaks down what actually matters when you're hiring 150 people before first snowfall... and what most platforms get wrong.
Your workforce doesn't grow gradually. It explodes.
Canada's ski and snowboard industry employs over 30,000 seasonal workers annually. Most of them need to be hired, onboarded, trained, and clocking in within an eight-week window. Miss that window and you're running lifts with half the staff you need.
Here's what we see at most ski resorts before they switch:
HR enters new employee data into the onboarding system. Then enters it again into payroll. Then again into scheduling. Then again into the LMS. Four systems. Four logins. Four chances for someone to fat-finger a SIN number.
One Ontario resort described their old setup: "Employees were being sent all over the map with different logins for different systems."
Paper schedules posted on walls. Voicemail systems to track absences. Managers manually calling through contact lists at 5am trying to find someone to cover a shift.
The information about who was actually qualified to work those shifts? It lived in managers' heads. No system. No backup. No audit trail.
This isn't HR management. It's chaos with a salary attached.
Here's the part that makes no sense.
60-70% of your seasonal staff are returning workers. They know the job. They have direct deposit set up. They completed safety training two years ago.
They're not strangers.
But most platforms treat them exactly like strangers.
New profile. New data entry. New banking forms. New emergency contacts. As if the system has collective amnesia every April when the snow melts.
We built WorkZoom differently.
When the season ends, employees move to inactive status. They're not deleted. Their complete record stays intact: every pay stub, every T4, their full compensation history, banking details, emergency contacts, certifications, performance notes. Everything.
When they come back next November? You reactivate them. Create a new employment record with the new effective dates. The system picks up exactly where you left off.
No duplicate profiles. No re-entering banking information. No hunting through archives. Someone who worked for you three seasons ago can be back in the system in minutes with their entire history intact.
You don't have time to collect the same banking information from someone whose direct deposit details are already sitting in a database. You have 150 people to get on the mountain.
"WorkZoom is like a Lamborghini; where my old software was like a Bug. It's amazing that WorkZoom is not only going to reduce the stress for us, but the stress for our new hires by having all of our previous documents automated and in one place." — Castle Mountain Resort
This is where a lot of ski resorts get burned.
They sign up with a platform that claims Canadian payroll support. Then they discover the "Canadian module" is a surface-level adaptation that struggles the moment you need to do something actually Canadian.
Provincial tax variations? Struggles. ROE filing with specific timing requirements? Good luck. Statutory holiday calculations that differ by province? Hope you like spreadsheets.
Canadian payroll is genuinely complex. It's not American payroll with different forms. The rules are different. The timing is different. The penalties for getting it wrong are different.
For a seasonal business running its last payroll in late December, this is critical. You need T4s generated correctly the first time so employees can access them through self-service. Not corrected in March after everyone's already filed their taxes. Not mailed to addresses where seasonal staff no longer live.
WorkZoom is Canadian-owned and built for Canadian payroll from the ground up. Provincial tax variations, statutory holiday calculations, ROE filing, T4 and RL-1 generation. Native. Not adapted. See how it works →
Let's talk about money walking out the door.
Time theft costs employers an estimated 5-7% of gross payroll annually. For a ski resort with $2M in seasonal labor costs, that's $100,000+ disappearing every year. Not stolen from a safe. Just... gone. Clocked hours that were never worked.
The ski resort version of this problem is particularly brutal.
Your employees are wearing ski masks. Goggles. Heavy gloves. Their fingers are frozen. Traditional fingerprint scanners? Useless. Badge systems? Your staff figured out how to buddy punch each other by week two.
When you employ young people in their first real jobs, the temptation to have a friend clock in for you is real. It's not malicious. It's just easy.
And expensive.
Facial recognition terminals solve this. They work with masks. They work with goggles pushed up on foreheads. They verify that the person clocking in is actually the person scheduled to work.
But here's what matters more than the hardware: integration.
When that time data flows directly into scheduling and payroll without manual re-entry, your payroll staff stop spending 80% of their time collecting and manipulating data. They start auditing results and catching problems before paychecks go out. Not after.
Ski resorts like Castle Mountain Resort and Devil's Glen Country Club chose WorkZoom for biometric time clocking and seasonal workforce capabilities. If you're evaluating options for next season, let's talk about your requirements →
"WorkZoom is like a Lamborghini; where my old software was like a Bug." — Castle Mountain Resort
Ski resorts have real compliance requirements.
Lift operators need specific certifications. Ski patrol needs different training than rental shop staff. Food service employees need food handling certification.
These aren't suggestions. They're requirements.
The problem with most LMS systems: training gets assigned to individuals. When an employee moves from rental shop to lift operations mid-season, someone has to manually update their training requirements.
Someone forgets. Someone gets busy. Suddenly you've got an uncertified employee operating a chairlift because the system didn't know they changed jobs.
A better approach: tie training to roles, not people.
When you assign someone to a new position, the system automatically updates their required training modules. The LMS becomes part of onboarding, scheduled as recurring annual requirements where needed. Employees complete modules on their phones. Managers get notified when certifications expire.
You provide the content. The system handles delivery, tracking, completion verification, and expiration reminders.
No manual updating. No "I thought someone else was handling that."
Here's a scenario that happens at unionized ski resorts every single year.
Collective agreement negotiations conclude in April. The new rates are effective January 1st.
Congratulations: you now need to calculate retroactive pay for every union employee for every hour worked in Q1.
If your payroll system can't handle backdated rate changes with automatic retro calculations, someone is spending the next week buried in spreadsheets figuring out who gets what.
WorkZoom handles this automatically. Update the rate with a retroactive effective date. The system calculates all retroactive pay owed across all affected employees. Payroll runs with the adjustments included.
This sounds like a niche feature until you're the one staring at 180 employee records and three months of varying hours trying to figure out who gets what.
Your employees are young. They live on their phones. They expect to complete onboarding forms, access pay stubs, and request time off without talking to anyone or filling out paper.
If your system requires them to email HR for a pay stub, you've already lost them.
Self-service for seasonal workforces needs to include:
Access regardless of employment status. When employees move to inactive at season end, they don't lose access to their records. They can log in months later to retrieve T4s for tax filing, pull pay stubs for loan applications, or generate employment verification letters. Their entire history from every season they've worked. One place.
Offer letters with electronic signatures. Send the offer, get the signature, trigger onboarding automatically. No printing. No scanning. No "can you resend that?"
Employment verification letters. When a seasonal employee needs proof of employment for a landlord, they should be able to generate it themselves. HR has better things to do.
Certificate uploads with approval workflows. When an employee completes first aid training through an external provider, they upload the certificate. A manager reviews and approves. The system updates their qualifications automatically.
Mobile-responsive design is not optional. These employees are not sitting at desks. Everything needs to work from a phone or it doesn't work at all.
Here's a frustration we hear constantly.
Ski resort contacts HRIS vendor in July. Vendor quotes a six-month implementation timeline. Resort needs to be live by November.
Deal dies.
Enterprise HRIS vendors are built for year-round businesses with stable headcounts and flexible timelines. They don't understand that seasonal businesses can't wait six months for "Phase 1."
You need onboarding working in November. Time clocks configured before the first snow. Payroll tested and validated before your December 26th pay date.
An eight-week implementation is realistic if the vendor is structured for it. Data import, configuration, parallel payroll testing, and user training can happen concurrently rather than sequentially.
The key is starting at least eight weeks before your first live pay date. That gives you time to import historical employee data for returning staff, configure your specific policies and pay rules, run parallel payroll tests against your old system, and train managers on exception-based time approval.
Planning for next winter season? The best time to start evaluating HRIS options is spring and summer. Not October when you're already scrambling. Book a 30-minute call to see if WorkZoom fits your operation →
The pitch for integrated HR platforms often sounds like marketing fluff. "Single source of truth" gets thrown around a lot.
But for ski resorts specifically, integration creates advantages you can actually measure.
Every person in your system has one continuous record. Whether they're active, inactive, or being rehired for their fifth season, it's the same profile.
Their complete compensation history across all seasons. Every pay stub they've ever received. Contact information that updates once and reflects everywhere. Training records that accumulate year over year.
When an employee updates their address in the self-service portal, that change reflects in payroll immediately. No one re-enters it. No data reconciliation.
When a scheduled employee calls out sick, the system already knows who else is qualified to work that shift based on their certifications and availability. Managers get automatic notifications. Qualified replacements can accept the shift from their phones.
When a new hire completes onboarding, their banking details and tax information flow directly to payroll without manual entry. They show up in the schedule as available. Their training assignments populate automatically based on their role.
When someone moves to inactive at season end, their record stays complete. When you reactivate them next November, payroll already has their banking and tax details. Scheduling already knows their certifications.
You're not starting from zero. You're picking up where you left off.
If you're evaluating HRIS options for a ski resort, here's what to pressure test:
"What happens to employee records at season end?" Are they deleted or moved to inactive? When someone returns, do you create a duplicate profile or reactivate the existing one? Can you see their full history across all seasons? The difference between "start over every year" and "pick up where you left off" is hours of admin time per returning employee.
"Show me your Canadian payroll handling." Not a slide. Not a checkbox. Actually demonstrate T4 and RL-1 generation, provincial tax handling, ROE filing, and statutory holiday calculations. Ask for references from other Canadian seasonal employers. If they hesitate, you have your answer.
"What biometric options work in cold environments?" Ask about facial recognition specifically. Ask about mask compatibility. Understand what happens when the terminal can't connect to the network. If they only offer fingerprint scanners, they don't understand your operation.
"What's your fastest implementation timeline?" If a vendor can't get you live before the season starts, they're not the right fit. Ask for references from organizations that implemented on compressed timelines.
"How does pricing work for seasonal headcount?" You shouldn't pay full-year pricing based on peak headcount. Ask how pricing adjusts for seasonal workforce fluctuations. Get it in writing.
"Can I try this on my phone right now?" Pull out your phone during the demo. Try completing onboarding forms. Try requesting time off. Try viewing a pay stub. If it's clunky on mobile, your seasonal staff won't use it.
WorkZoom is a Canadian-owned HRIS platform built for the exact challenges ski resorts face: seasonal workforce fluctuations, returning employee management, Canadian payroll compliance, and biometric time tracking that works in real winter conditions.
What we do differently:
Ski resorts across Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario have already made the switch. Castle Mountain Resort and Devil's Glen Country Club chose WorkZoom to eliminate the manual chaos of seasonal hiring and get their teams clocking in before first snowfall.
"WorkZoom is like a Lamborghini; where my old software was like a Bug." — Castle Mountain Resort
Book a demo and we'll show you exactly how our workflow handles your returning staff, how biometric clocking eliminates buddy punching, and how your T4s generate automatically at season end.
If you're planning for next winter season, the best time to start is now.
Most resorts that come to us in October are already behind.