Employees working in the hospitality industry make their jobs look effortless. In reality, it is a busy field that never takes a break. The industry is busy 24/7, 365 days a year. It takes dozens of employees to manage a large hotel, restaurant or catering service. Training new hires and running a company can become burdensome. Managers need to stay on top of the challenge of hospitality training and retaining employees and are looking for an improved and impactful way to deliver. Training needs to be flexible and reinforced throughout an employee's career.
The Power of Technology
The emergence of new technologies in the hospitality industry has made it easier to streamline the onboarding process for hospitality employees. E-learning is a reliable training program that can offer consistency in continued employee training. At a restaurant, employees are expected to remember all menu items, daily specials, and add-ons. Introducing quizzes into each training can help with retention and engagement. Also, adding the e-learnings and menu on their phones will allow employees to access the information on the go. For example, the quizzes may ask, "What four items come with the Thursday special"? Since technology can provide simple training on mobile, managers can track and observe employee performance and what they are learning. With the right training techniques, you can:
- Analyze data and create reports to review what training formats are most successful
- Use data to see what topics employees volunteer to be trained on
- Ask employees how training can be completed easily for them
- Review data to see which training topics are the most popular
- Observe which hospitality training programs & formats create the most engagement
- Look over which training is causing difficulties for an employee
- Add new training content
- Measure ROI
Hospitality Onboarding Best Practices
The onboarding process can be frustrating and time consuming for most hotel managers. There is always a guest to serve, events to cater and there is never enough hotel staff to fulfill each task. Using the right technology can streamline and simplify the hospitality onboarding process and training program. Our guide, Find Train Keep - Addressing Challenges in Hospitality Hiring and Retention with Better Technology suggests training time and associated costs can drop by as much as 50% with the right software. From the beginning, let the employees know that they are being hired into a tech-supportive culture.
Mobile Training
Individuals can take part in the training practices wherever they are on the property. Employees will be more comfortable taking breaks when they want and work at their own pace. Mobile training ensures that they are trusted with the responsibility of completing each lesson and helps to instill value. Watching a quick video when it works for their schedule or when they have downtime, allows them to get up to speed without a loss of productivity.
Cross-Training
The most valuable employees are those who are great at more than one job. E-learning can make the cross-training program available to someone who may work as a banquet server but also needs to learn the kitchen prep duties. Redundancy in training will come in handy during peak seasons or staff shrinkage. Having everyone trained in a well-rounded manner will create an excellent customer experience.
Social Learning
Gather all of the tutorials, videos, quizzes, and checklists onto a tablet anywhere within an employee's reach. Using a tablet allows an individual to finish a lesson from anywhere within the building. There is no need for a stuffy office or meeting space. Make an employee's job easier by offering a tool to finish any initial training.
Forget the days of sitting in group training classes with binders full of lengthy documents. Shorten new hire training time and drop associated costs with effective learning software.
