Hotel Online Special Report Are Your Employees Checking Out As Fast As Your Guests? Setting Up an Effective Training Program 
E-mail: [email protected] by Harry Nobles, May 1999
Are your employees checking out almost as fast as your guests? Are you spending a great deal of your time recruiting, interviewing, and hiring new employees? If so, you are not alone. High turnover is a fact of life in the hotel business. There is, however, something you can do to reduce turnover and retain good employees.
Effective training not only makes employees more productive and better able to serve guests; it can also raise self- esteem, increase confidence, and strengthen commitment to the employer. Higher self-esteem and increased confidence make employees more self assured, more productive, and less likely to look for another job. Often a small investment in training can return big dividends by improving job performance and reducing turnover.
The ultimate benefit from an effective training program is increased guest satisfaction. Your best guests are those who keep coming back because they are well served by a competent and experienced staff. Replacing the guest you lose because of incompetent service is expensive and almost impossible in today’s very competitive environment.
As you consider the training program best suited to your needs, I would ask you to consider the following “truisms”:
- Training is gentle pressure relentlessly applied
- Training costs, but it pays dividends
- Training begins at the top
- Your managers and supervisors MUST be involved
- Effective training is continuous
- An effective training program helps you identify 2 types of employees:
- The ones you should retain and reward
- All others
Setting Up An Effective Training Program
What is the criteria for an effective training program? I believe there are three requirements:
- it must meet your property’s needs,
- it must be continuous, and
- it must hold your managers and supervisors accountable.
I suggest the following sequence for setting up your training program:
- Establish specific job tasks and performance standards for each position, and ensure that each employee knows exactly what you expect
- Develop procedures that will meet or exceed your established standards
- Select or develop competent and committed trainers
- Determine when, where, and how to train
- Conduct training
- Assess the efficacy of training
- Conduct retraining as needed
- Review/revise training as needed to meet changing objectives
- Set up a system to regularly measure the results of your training
Contact: Harry Nobles Hospitality Consulting POC: Harry Nobles E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 757-564-3761 Fax: 757-564-0076 Pager: 800-577-7468 PIN# 303-9130 Credentials:
- Former head of AAA Lodging/Dining Ratings Program.
- An independent consultant serving the hospitality industry.
- A Special Training Consultant to the Educational Institute, American Hotel/Motel Association
Also See: The AAA Five Diamond Award for 1999 Earned By a Record 105 Outstanding Lodgings and Restaurants / Nov 1998 Mobil Travel Guide Announces 1998 Mobil Four-and Five-Star Award Winners / Jan 1998 Is 99% Good Enough? / Harry Nobles / Feb 1999 Dealing with the AAA or Mobil Inspector – Does AAA Approval Help? / Dec 1998 “AAA” – Hotel Online Viewpoint Forum The Legend of the Pineapple / Harry Nobles / Feb 1999