Inside the high-stakes ping pong tournament designed to keep workers from quitting

Last month, nearly 300 Montage International employees packed into the ballroom of the company’s Deer Valley, Utah hotel dressed in their Wimbledon-inspired best. After grabbing concessions like strawberries and cream, they filed into stadium seats, eyes fixed on a ping pong table where former Olympians served as referees for the company’s biennial Compass Cup tournament.

The scene was the culmination of months of competition across Montage’s 15 properties. Many of the luxury hotel company’s 7,000 employees had played their way through local brackets before the top players were flown to Deer Valley for the finals.

At a time when companies are aggressively cutting benefits and even more are laying off workers, spending money on a company-wide morale event might seem hard to justify. But Jason Herthel, Montage International’s president and COO, sees it differently.

“We see........

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