Despite being the country's largest employers, the hospitality and hotel industries have a fair share of challenges. High employee turnover is perhaps the most pressing issue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the turnover rate hit 73% in 2016. With the current low unemployment rate, experts caution that the figure could be higher. So, why do most employees quit? What can CEOs, HR, and branch managers do to address this challenge?
In a 2018 Workforce Learning Report, LinkedIn unraveled that over 90% of employees would continue working with companies who invest in their careers. Clearly, talent no longer looks at training and development programs as optional perks. They view them as signals that employers value them and are interested in their success- not just profits.
So if you want to reduce your turnover, invest in the right corporate training and development program. But to do that, you must first overcome the challenges of corporate learning today.
In this post, we look at these challenges in detail and explain how a mobile learning management system (LMS) can help manage them.
Challenges of Corporate Learning Today
Low Budgets
The training and development process usually begins with budgeting. In most companies, training budgets tend to be low and are cut first in case of a financial crisis. Ironically, the demand for well-trained staff is always rising.
Resorting to traditional training can be extremely expensive. The cost of employees' time, hiring venues, facilitation, travel, and securing equipment can quickly add up.
Successful companies have moved to digital and mobile training programs. Doing so eliminates the cost of travel and reduces facilitation costs significantly. They have also invested in mobile learning management systems to maximize their budgets. Going mobile makes it possible to reach a larger number of employees.
Customizing, Personalized Training
Running a restaurant or hotel means you have diverse employees ranging from front desk to managers. Therefore, you can't afford to offer generic courses in your training and development programs.
Failing to customize and personalize training to suit roles strains learners, leading to disengagement and worsens other training challenges. With mobile-first learning, you can customize employee training and make only important training compulsory.
Delivering Consistent Training
Brand consistency is extremely important to restaurants and hotels. And one way to maintain and improve your brand is by delivering consistent training in all your branches. But that's often easier said than done.
Relying on external trainers makes it difficult to ensure teaching style and expertise remains consistent throughout your branches. With a mobile LMS, this challenge can be mitigated by creating standardized modules. For example, all your modules can have similar and clearly defined outcomes, equal time constraints and delivered visually in the same manner across your branches.
Engaging Younger Employees
The average age of hotel and restaurant workers tend to fall within the millennial brackets. And yet, companies struggle to engage and retain millennials. According to a recent Gallup study, 21% of millennials say they've switched jobs in the last year and only 29% feel engaged at work.
But what millennials really want can be great for your company. For example, most of them want:
- A purpose
- Career development
- Ongoing conversations
- Coaches
- Good job
As you can see, focusing your brand's purpose and aligning millennials with it can help you grow. For instance, when you provide the right training and development program, career development becomes something your workers can easily access, readily consume and can't wait to apply.
So, approach training in mobile devices and use gamification, social media and micro-learning to engage younger employees.
Reporting And Measuring Training Effectiveness
Many companies find it challenging to monitor and measure the effectiveness of their training and development programs. This is major because most businesses do manual record-keeping and therefore have limited online capability to track performance on their learning platform.
Fortunately, a great mobile LMS can make this challenge can be a thing of the past. For instance, PlayerLync offers rich analytics and real-time tracking. In addition, the LMS can record important data, such as:
- Engagement rate
- Automated assessment results
- Satisfaction feedback
- User access
- Resource performance
These challenges of corporate learning are common in the hospitality and hotel industries. And clearly, a mobile LMS can help address most of them. To learn more, read our guide: "Why a Mobile-First (vs. a Mobile-Responsive) Training Strategy Wins Every Time."
