Training plan development and implementation

Training

The ADDIE model for training is "Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation" and reflects the five steps that are required to bring about an effective training program for our hotel (Culatta, 2013). The hotel has had issues to this point with customer service. At the heart of the issue is that each department is run separately, and the training reflects that. The customers sees "hotel employees" but the employees see themselves as part of a department. They have no training on customer service in many cases and in other cases have no cross-department training. Thus, in far too many circumstances, customers engage with employees about an issue but are unable to gain any resolution from that. Reviews online indicate a growing level of dissatisfaction with our service quality, and that dissatisfaction is not matched in equivalent critiques of our competitors -- we are lagging the local industry.

The training should increase the breadth of training that all employees acquire. There are two elements to this. All employees, regardless of whether or not their job entails direct customer contact, will need to be trained in basic customer service principles and the hotel's philosophy of customer service. The second element of the training is that employees should have a basic idea of what each different department does, who is in charge of that department, and in many cases even basic functions. As an example, if a customer says to the valet "Oh yeah, and I need more toilet paper in my room," the valet would be able to make sure the issue is remedied, by knowing who to contact to make that happen.

As a large hotel, we have our conference and meeting facilities, and these are where the training will be located, unless they are fully booked. The training will be delivered in classroom format. There will be both discussion of underlying theory and the use of simulations. Managers will need to identify examples that are critical learning incidents, and build the simulations around those. The training will be spread out over at least a week, if not longer, in order to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to take part in the training. It will have to be paid training, so it is important that the training is worked into the overall schedule.

Training sessions should last no more than an hour. They are likely to take place before or after a major shift change. The shorter time period allows for the concepts to be absorbed. Most employees have been out of school for a while, so will not have the patient to sit through anything much longer than an hour. Using multiple, shorter training sessions also are beneficial for learning, because of latent learning, where the concepts are slowly absorbed through action and "digestion" of the lecture material (Molloy, Moore, Sohoglu & Amitay, 2012).

The training will be mandatory, because this is a hotel-wide issue. The training will be delivered by the human resources department, which will be working with senior management and the department heads to clarify a training strategy and design the training program. It is possible that a professional trainer will be brought in to deliver the training, but this depends on the budget. It is believed that the budget for this initiative will not support that expense. The training without a professional trainer, and using vacant facilities, should come in around $20,000 for the total initiative, most of that in wages paid to the employees for their time, and around $1,000 for materials.

The number of people trained at once will be in the range of 15-20. This is equivalent to a small class size, but is large enough that we will be able to run simulations, and that the groups will include people from different departments. It is believed that the latter component is important because different departments encourage communication and knowledge exchange between the different departments at a peer-to-peer level.

There will be a pilot training session, with the department heads. This will allow them to test the training process before bringing their employees into the training. The heads can give feedback about specific issues, and allow for adjustments to be made with respect to the scenarios that are used.