Voices of the Future - Justin Chow, BBA Global Hospitality Management student at Les Roches.
About Justin: " I am currently a student graduating from Bachelor of Business Administration program at Les Roches Global Hospitality Education in Switzerland. As a Chinese American who grew up in an international atmosphere, took multiple leadership roles in different areas, I fall quickly and deeply in love with the idea of being a Servant Leader, which motivated me to enter this remarkable industry."
EP proudly provides a platform for the thoughts and voices of the future leaders of the Hospitality industry.
How can L&D support hotels in navigating to a sustainable future?
We have all spent some time with “the iPad kids”; my little cousin is undoubtedly one of them and this irritates me at every family get together. The children of the current period are unduly dependent on electronics, neglect the importance of social interaction, and may even refuse to leave the house. Parents, the issue lies with the quickly shifting values rather than your own.
However, have you wondered what the hospitality industry will look like in the future when iPad kids dominate the show? And how can Learning & Development (L&D) have a positive impact on today and tomorrow’s generation? American Poet Robert Frost, during the era of the lost generation, once remarked: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence”.
This serves the same function of L&D in the hotel sector. Employee training and development are vital given the unique characteristics of the hotel industry, such as diverse demographics and volatile labour turnover, as well as the existing perception of the hospitality industry as having low pay, long and unsociable hours. Then you have potential autocratic management styles, which can potentially result in reluctance and lack of professionalism.
L&D becomes a managerial tool for hotels to increase employee loyalty, cultivate positive attitudes and problem-solving skills in real-world situations, and the retention of capital resources leading to improved job performance and increased corporate appeal while strengthening hotel brand prestige.
For current and future hospitality workers, L&D programs focusing on sustainability are nonetheless the most important topic for all size of firms. Throughout the past few years, the hospitality industry has experienced the globally influential impact of climate change, economic reconstruction and political instability challenging consistent supply chains. Each of these ongoing sustainability issues respectively represents the three aspects of the 3Ps – Planet, Profit, and People. Although corporate sustainability initiatives have been widely claimed and marketed by businesses, the authenticity and results are often questionable. With appropriate employee education and L&D programs, hoteliers will be more confident in adapting through the global fluctuation and navigate towards a sustainable future.
After determining the training needs of current generations fitting to the rapidly changing social values and generational ideals, it is important to develop more appropriate delivery. A report on traditional L&D performance shows that 68% of workers want to be able to learn at their own pace, and a further 84% of learners prefer self-directed learning. Integrating innovative technologies such as micro-learning or “hybrid” learning fully utilises the fragmented available time of the employees while personalising the learning experience. The benefits of using these tools eventually maximises efficiency, lowers cost and enhances effectiveness while fitting the generational need only to fast and interesting things.
With the erratic global environment, it is hard to say exactly what the hospitality industry will become. However, with targeted training need and the right delivery tool, corporates will be able to establish a bottom-up sustainability mindset – creating an unconscious intuition of what, when and how to do the right thing.