How to Be Clear About Business Principles So Both the Company and Workers Can Thrive

BY Katie Chambers | March 28, 2025

Justin Sibley, CEO of POWDR, has moved through diverse work environments, from HR roles in Silicon Valley to the more “laidback” culture of a leading outdoor recreation brand. Each experience contributed to a smart, intuitive, and flexible management style, one that has become a particular asset at his organization based in the beautiful mountains of Utah. 

When employees understand what sustains their business and the purpose of its policies, they’re in a better position to help all the corporate functions work well together. Sibley, the CEO of the adventure-lifestyle company POWDR, owner of Snowbird and many other resorts, illuminated how this principle influences hiring, education, corporate culture, and dealing with new challenges during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Salt Lake City conference.

The Value of Transparency

One of the keys to clarity is transparency: being honest and open with your employees about what is going on at the business—both the good and the bad. “There’s a lot of dialogue around being authentic. And if you’re in any business long enough, you’re going to have speed bumps, you’re going to have issues that come up, and you’ve got to figure out the best way to get through that,” Sibley said. If that is the first time you decide to be open with employees, Sibley says, you could get burned. “A lot of companies get accused of not following their corporate values when they have to make tough decisions, [such as] not pursue a great opportunity, cut back on expenses, or even [have] layoffs.”

Staying open with employees from the outset can help them better understand the how and the why behind painful decisions. “There’s a lot of pressure for people, when they're developing their mission, vision, values, and culture, to present it in this altruistic way,” Sibley said. At POWDR, Sibley and his team aim to “balance the objective with the subjective,” instilling a welcoming community-centric culture while also not shying away from a focus on sales, profits, and longevity. 

This requires buy-in from HR. “It’s important the HR team understands what we’re doing and why, [so] that when they’re onboarding people, they can support the same thing,” Sibley said. “The HR team is part of developing that authenticity around, ‘Hey, we're in this business because we love it, but we're also in this business to stay in this business.”

Reimagining the Hiring Process

Many of us have a mental image of what kind of person might work at an adventure-lifestyle company like POWDR. “Historically, the outdoor rec industry used to hire people who could display as much passion as possible for a powder day,” said moderator Lauren Gustus, executive editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. But Sibley is changing that. When he first arrived, he found a staff that was full of “really great mountain bikers or skiers,” but was finding it challenging to reach the next level in departments like tech, finance, and infrastructure.

So, he prioritized hiring employees who displayed just as much passion in their vocabulary and body language during an interview about their work skills as they do for the great outdoors. “The outdoor industry is just like every other industry. We have complicated problems we need to solve, and we have opportunities that we need to grab on to, and it takes that functional skill set to do it,” Sibley said. This all comes back to a continued conversation with HR about values: “What are we doing, why are we doing it, what kinds of skill sets do we need. It’s just part of the conversation, not an event. It’s what we talk about on a regular basis.” 

Navigating Modern Challenges

Having a strong set of values and a focus on organizational growth and success is particularly helpful as POWDR navigates the unique challenges of the current moment, including the impact of climate change on the outdoor adventure industry and how recent immigration reform efforts might impact the availability of seasonal workers, many of whom rely on H-2B and J-1 visas. Sibley wishes the reform conversation in Congress would touch on things like stability, lifting the caps on how long foreign workers can stay, or making the hiring timeline more flexible. Currently those visa candidates must be hired in January, when businesses like POWDR are already well into their core season.

His organization is taking a proactive approach. “We’ve hired somebody who has deep experience with working in D.C. with our government and has those relationships, and we've worked on  getting in front of the Department of the Interior [and] whoever we need to get in front of to make that happen,” Sibley said. He urges that corporations can’t rely on trade associations alone to advocate for governmental changes for their industries. “When we came through COVID, I realized that we need to take responsibility for ourselves on that front, and make sure we have those relationships and that we're speaking to our representatives directly.” He says HR teams can add value to this process by hosting lunch-and-learns with local reps to familiarize them with business initiatives. 

Expanding on a National Level 

With government relationships top of mind, POWDR is now breaking into a new area: national parks. This expansion includes running Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley and the lodge inside Zion National Park, taking over admin, hospitality, and HR from the Park Service, bringing their luxury adventure hospitality brand to established government properties. “We took everything that we consider to be our core competencies, hospitality, food and beverage, hotel management, retail rentals, helping each place be the best version of itself, and we don’t try to homogenize anything,” Sibley said.

Even though Sibley acknowledges this side of the business does not have the highest margins, it still provides a valuable opportunity for the staff within POWDR, even boosting retention. Among its 8,000 employees, about 6,000 are seasonal. At the parks, Sibley is finding that people who want to enjoy “gap year” style jobs but keep it for longer can simply shift from working at his ski resorts during the snow season and move on to, say, Zion National Park in the warmer weather. “There’s tremendous employee synergy in having these off-season businesses where we have housing available for people. It’s seamless for them to move from place to place. And kids in their early 20s, they love it.” POWDR looks forward to bidding on additional national park opportunities in the future. 

Ultimately, company culture must come from the top. “It’s my job to set the tone, hire the team, and make sure people have the tools. My focus is on making sure that [the mission] is well-known. We work hard with the HR and tech teams to make sure that we have scalable ways to disseminate that to the farthest reaches of the organization,” Sibley said. Part of the culture includes communicating actively with all employees, meeting them where they are, whether they communicate via company email or WhatsApp. “But my job is to make sure that I’m living the culture that I say I want,” he said. “And then to make sure that I’m fighting for the resources with the board to make sure we have all the tools to get it done.”

Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

(Photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)

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