Page 102 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 2: EMPOWER THROUGH TRUST

C Training the Talented D

While selection at Ritz-Carlton is a rigorous process of identify-
ing committed service professionals, individuals come to the
company with varying levels of technical skill and backgrounds
both inside and outside the hospitality industry. New staff mem-
bers are assigned learning coaches who train and certify them on
the core competencies of their jobs.
Mandy Holloway, senior director of global learning at Ritz-
Carlton, observes, “We take training and learning very seriously.
We focus on the design of learning, measured competency, and
whether the skills learned are truly being delivered to the cus-
tomer. We are on a journey right now where we’re evolving from
a training organization into a learning environment. We under-
stand very clearly that 70 percent of learning realistically is on the
job. This feeds through to operational certification, making sure
that within the employees’ first 21 days, they are certified within
their jobs, in alignment with the Gold Standards for the hotel.
We have great tools like online training modules and detailed op-
erational manuals that help facilitate that certification process.
Those tools also are in alignment so that we can analyze opera-
tional skills acquisition against the results of mystery shopper and
customer engagement surveys. In essence, secret shoppers are
looking for the exact criteria that staff members are certified to
meet. As such, we’re not doing training for the sake of training.”
By way of example, Mandy adds, “Let’s assume that all mem-
bers of the front desk staff have worked with a learning coach
and have achieved certification from that coach on the core com-
petencies of their job by the twenty-first day of their employ-
ment. Let’s also assume that problems are being detected either
by mystery shoppers or from guest surveys that the front desk
staff is not consistently confirming the guests’ length of stay dur-
ing the check-in process. Even though the employees were
at one time proficient and certified at that skill, the customer
feedback affords the opportunity for what we call ‘just-in-time

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