Many businesses baulk at spending money on training. Why? Because many people believe “If I train them up, then they leave for a better job”. Better to apply Richard Branson’s philosophy “Train people well enough so they can leave you, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”.

I have been in training for a very long time and the value in training is many fold – improving performance of your staff, improving performance of your business, staff who are trained feel more valued by their employer, trained staff require less supervision and productivity usually increases.

Hospitality (and other sectors) is currently experiencing a massive shortage of available talent – both skilled and unskilled. And when you find someone with a pulse and a willingness to join your team, they are often new to the industry or poorly trained, if at all.

People often call training ‘Learning and Development’, so what is the right descriptor and by association, the right approach? Training is one element of Learning and Development (just as advertising is only one element of marketing), so my counsel is to talk Learning and Development (L&D) with staff, colleagues and the directors on your board. If you are open to it, you really do learn something new every day.

As a lifelong learner, involved for over 30 years in training delivery I believe learning and development includes training for skills, mentoring, identifying the beneficial outcomes you seek, and importantly providing opportunities for staff to step up to new challenges in a supportive environment.

What then is the best approach to Learning and Development for your organisation? Logically after the decision to commit to improving the organisation through L&D, there is a process to follow –

   X     Conduct a Training Needs analysis

   X     Allocate a budget

   X     Research the best provider(s)

   X     Deliver the training (Learning and Development)

   X     Measure the outcomes

Conduct a Training Needs analysis

Step one is to identify where the areas of learning need exist. This is best done with a couple of approaches – Diversity/Skill matrix to identify the specific skills required in the organisation and a Training Needs analysis, to confirm the areas where the upskilling, education and improvement are most needed.

Remember, this is important for not just the staff, but also for the board of your organisation. The staff training may focus on operational skills and abilities, however there is enormous merit in also assessing the Governance skills and abilities of the board.

Deloitte created a very good Diversity/Skills Matrix, (which we adopted at ClubsNSW) and which I continue to advocate:

   X     Staff skills matrix to cover the operational areas of food and beverage, gaming, wagering, functions, administration, finance, marketing, social media and so on

   X     Board skills matrix to cover the governance and oversight areas of finance, legal, strategy, technology, organisational management and others

Once you are aware of the skills incumbent in your team, then you follow through with the Training Needs Analysis –

   X     Identify the task to be done

   X     Identify the skills and experience required to effectively execute the task

   X     Assess the gap between the available skill versus the required skill level

   X     Identify the training required

   X     Measure the outcomes

Once this is done, you will know how many of your staff require training, what specific training they need to raise their skill levels and be able to prioritise the key skills needed to be taught first.

The skills that will most beneficially impact your business - Mission critical skills – are the ones you must address first. These are skills that will materially lift the organisation’s performance and hopefully increase turnover and profit. The more proficient your team is, the greater the productivity, which should drive increased profit. Having more competent efficient staff, potentially rostered more effectively, will reduce overhead costs, thus providing the opportunity for greater profit from the same operations.

Allocate a budget

Once you know the scope of the training required – the number of staff involved, the number of training programs required and the timeframe to deliver, you can start to plot a budget.

Depending on the size of your organisation, and the total number of staff you have, you may need to stage the training due to budget constraints. I always advocate that if your budget is $10,000 for L&D that could pay for 10 staff to do a $1000 course or 50 staff to do a $200 course. And bringing a trainer in house (to your venue) rather than sending individuals out to courses, can often reduce the delivery cost as well.

If your budget doesn’t extend to investing in 100 percent of your staff each year, then again focus on the most productive training for the key areas of the business, to generate maximum return on investment. If you can upskill a third of your staff each year, then in 3 years they will all have had some training. Interestingly, once you start investing in training and developing your staff, the increased productivity will usually lead to improved profitability, which in turn increases your capacity to pay for L&D courses for staff.

Those of us old enough to remember the Training Guarantee Levy of the Hawke Government, which ran from 1990 – 1994, will understand the intent was to get companies to pay 1.5 percent of their payroll (for companies who paid more than $225,000 in payroll) on training their staff. So a company with a payroll of $500,000 was required to spend $7,500 on training their staff, whilst a company paying $1 million in payroll would need to spend $15,000.

Applying the same formula today, an organisation with a turnover of $2 million and a wages to turnover ratio of 30 percent ($600,000 payroll) would logically look to spend $9,000 which might equate to $500 per staff member if they had 18 staff. Not an unreasonable amount of money to invest in the employees and the business.

Research the best provider(s)

There are a million and one training providers out there, including TAFE NSW (Australia’s largest Registered Training Organisation [RTO]), Group Training Organisations [GTO] and non-accredited training providers. Some organisations are large enough to justify creating an in-house training organisation (Accredited or non-accredited) to provide the requisite training to their staff, at the standard they dictate and a cost that they control.

Industry specific RTOs abound for hospitality, so accredited training – from Certificate II through to Advanced Diploma level – can be delivered to those wanting a recognised qualification, in commercial cookery, hospitality management and many other areas. RTOs, GTOs and independent trainer(s) can all deliver non-accredited training, which provides the skill and knowledge but not a certified qualification. Often this is more than sufficient to achieve the upskilling for your team.

Do your research and identify the best trainer(s) or training provider(s) to deliver the quality training you want to boost your team’s skills and effectiveness. Referrals or recommendations from trusted sources are the best way to do this, as looking at online ratings for organisations can be manipulated by the provider themselves (super favourable ratings) or their opposition (super bad ratings).

Your industry association will often be able to confidently refer you to provider(s) knowing the quality of service and knowledge they can deliver. Reputations are key here, however bear in mind the following pitfalls can occur –

   X     Great training provider but lousy individual trainer, or

   X     Great individual trainer but lousy training provider

Once you have identified the best individual or organisation, book them in so you have a set time and place for your staff to learn and develop.

Deliver the training (Learning and Development)

Once you have completed the steps above, you are ready to schedule and implement the learning and development program for your team. In our industry, with casuals, permanent part-timers and full time employees, it can often be difficult to roster time to attend the training sessions. Shift work plays havoc here and staff invariably want payment for when they attend training of any sort, particularly if it is not during their normal rostered shift.

So work with the person doing the rosters to see how best to roster staff and attend the training (especially if it is being held on site), to ensure you are still covering all your shifts and busy periods. It goes without saying you should aim to schedule training for quiet trade periods – e.g. early in the week and in the morning, before the venue gets really busy. If you have a really functional, cohesive and collegiate team, then schedule anyone any time that suits. If on the other hand, you have a dysfunctional team, look at scheduling potential conflicting staff with each other, so that they understand you are all getting the same training and as a result, they may just work better together.

Measure the outcomes

Make sure you identify the desired outcomes from the training and set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for staff to demonstrate their improved skill and capacity in the workplace. Duty Managers, Supervisors and Team Leaders will all be needed to keep monitoring and providing mentoring assistance to the employees to help embed the learnings into their actual daily work performance.

Management should set a target for Return on Investment (ROI) to measure if you got some ‘bang for your bucks’! And remember to make your staff feel like an integral part of the team, so once you train them they stay with you to repay your investment in them. 

For further guidance or assistance with the Learning and Development plans for your organisation, contact Ron Browne on 0414 633 423 or ron@extrapreneurservices.com.au