Mr. Larkin

Human Resources, Recruitment & Training

Key Consinderations When Optimizing the Benefits of Training

By Enda Larkin, Founder, HTC Consulting

“Half of my training budget is probably wasted,” said one hotel owner to me recently. “The trouble is,” he continued with a wry smile, “I’m not actually sure which half...”

Ah, yes indeed, the old jokes are undoubtedly the best. Yet, despite the frivolity, he was making a serious - and in terms of overall business performance – quite a worrying point; namely, that much of his annual expenditure on training might, or might not be of any real value to the hotel. He wasn’t sure either way. And deep down he knew this was far from a laughing matter.

When seeking to optimize the benefits derived from training, it is helpful to explore some key factors across three dimensions: the context, content and contribution of training. In doing so, both the input and output aspects can be considered.

Context

Training cannot be viewed in isolation and broader issues such as the overall culture within your hotel and general attitudes towards training have a vital role to play in terms of optimizing benefits.

Culture is a fairly intangible concept in any business but it impacts heavily on day-to-day life. In relation to the benefits derived from training, the culture within your hotel will directly influence their likely scale and scope. Without a wider ‘developmental’ culture, where employees feel valued and respected, any expenditure on training will have limited impact; a degree in psychology is not required to understand just how irrelevant training becomes for employees who are badly managed on a daily basis, or when they feel undervalued.

In addition, the general attitudes held about training can also play a major role in determining its effectiveness. At a senior level, expenditure on training must be seen as an investment and not a cost, with decisions taken on that basis. When hoteliers look at other aspects of running the business they usually do so from a return on investment perspective, but when it comes to training, something changes and they frequently consider it solely from the cost side. If the investment mindset is adopted in relation to training, it is surprising just how quickly a shift occurs away from the question, “what’s this going to cost me?” to “what’s this going to deliver for me?” and this in turn creates a whole new dynamic around the training function.

Equally, operational managers and supervisors frequently use the excuse that they “don’t have time” to train their people. Again, with an investment mindset, they come to recognize that failing to train their people, amongst other things, makes them less efficient and ultimately less productive; as a result, management time is lost fixing the problems that arise from this fact. By front-loading the time in terms of training employees, the return is improved quality and productivity. No pain, no gain as they say.

In seeking to optimize the benefits attained from training, a good starting point is to think about these ‘macro’ issues in relation to your hotel: what’s the current situation? Is there a solid people-orientated culture in place?

Content

The second dimension to examine when seeking to improve training effectiveness is to focus on the inputs side; or, specifically in this case, on what training is provided and indeed how that content is delivered.

It seems obvious that the content of training offered to employees must be tailored to their needs, whilst at the same time remaining aligned to the needs of the business. But the reality is often quite different. For example, sending a relatively new employee and an ‘old-timer’ on the same customer care course is of questionable value, for either the hotel or the employee. Yet this kind of thing happens all the time: employees are frequently lumped together and shunted-off to training programs which may have little direct relevance to them. For sure, generic training in areas such as customer care is applicable to all employees, but even training of this type needs to be tailored to suit the varying levels of experience found in any hotel. There is no such thing as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ training program in this day and age.

Particularly in relation to personal development - be that at employee or managerial levels - there must be a direct link between the findings of annual appraisals and training plans for the year ahead. Yet, here again, you often see a group of managers being sent on a ‘management course’, the content, or indeed the level of which may be suitable for only a handful of those in attendance. A golden rule should apply here: any employee attending any training program must always clearly understand its objectives and how that particular course fits into their wider development plan. When they see its purpose, they naturally strive to learn as much as possible and are more likely to later apply that learning for the benefit of the business.

Linked to the content issue is the quality of delivery. The delivery of training has to be stimulating and engaging for employees so who runs a program, or delivers on-the-job training, and how good they are at doing so, is a critical consideration – and this applies equally for internal trainers and any external consultants used. Badly delivered training is a waste of time. This again sounds like an obvious consideration but often isn’t so in practice; not infrequently have I witnessed the demoralized looks on the faces of employees as they trudged out of training programs at the end of the day.

Focusing training on the needs of the individual is of course a challenge. It takes planning and organization to better align training inputs to personal needs, but a failure to do so simply means that much of the expenditure on training is essentially money down the drain.

Contribution

A third dimension in seeking to optimize the benefits of training is the ability to measure the outcomes from any training provided; quantifying its impact not only allows for a cost-benefit analysis to be conducted on training previously delivered, but also helps to better target future expenditures. Unfortunately, there is still a fair degree of ‘ad-hocery’ going on when it comes to measuring training outcomes in concrete terms. This perhaps goes some way to explaining why owners and managers are often so quick to slash the training budget when hard times hit; it’s difficult to justify expenditure for an activity where the returns are too frequently described in ‘pink and fluffy’ terms: making the case to the Chief Accountant that training leads to increased morale, improved quality, reduced turnover and so on is hardly a winning argument. True as those claims may be.

That said, there is no pretence that measuring the impact of training is easy. It is not. The key is to try to link the outcomes from all training activities to specific business measures. Here are some basic examples of what is required:

• If you offer customer care training for employees, you naturally expect this to have an impact on the quality of service provided. The impact of that particular training could be measured by monitoring scores attained on future mystery guest assessments, or from tracking customer satisfaction levels.

• If you send an individual manager on a training program, as mentioned earlier, you should be very clear as to what areas of performance you are seeking to help her improve. If, for example, it was her leadership skills which required development, one way of measuring the impact of that training would be to analyze her specific feedback results under the ‘leadership’ heading on the next annual employee survey.

These are snapshot examples of how you can measure training impact and developing a comprehensive approach takes time; much depends upon how extensive your management information systems are at present, so it might take several years to get to a point where you really can define the direct benefits accruing from what you spend on training.

Yes, seeking to optimize the benefits from training is a difficult journey, but a worthwhile one, when you consider that doing so is good for your employees, your customers, your business and ultimately yourself.

Enda Larkin was born in Dublin, Ireland and has over twenty-five years experience in the hotel industry, having held a number of senior management positions in Ireland, UK and the US. He has also worked as an advisor for Failte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority in Ireland. In 1994 Mr. Larkin founded HTC Consulting (www.htc-consult.com) which specialises in supporting small and medium enterprises in hospitality and tourism. Through a comprehensive network of consultants, HTC offers a one-stop-shop for owners and managers in the industry and provides them with access to the same levels of expertise found in larger firms, but at a fraction of the cost. Mr. Larkin can be contacted at +41 (0) 22 700 8675 or info@htc-consult.com Extended Bio...

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