EHL Hospitality Business School has piloted a customised training programme designed to help companies address evolving talent needs across the entire organisational structure.
The pilot was conducted on its Lausanne campus in Switzerland, with Lausanne University Hospital, where the programme was designed to “infuse a mindset of hospitality and service in both technical and medical aspects, and to develop training courses for different teams”, revealed Stephane Haddad, academic director graduate school and senior lecturer with EHL in an interview with TTG Asia. Training for the hospital focused on conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and more.
This customised training programme is conceptualised and designed by a new division under Haddad’s remit.
He explained that the division was formed following a strong push from the school itself and growing demand from both hospitality and non-hospitality companies for customised, ongoing upskilling and reskilling programmes.
While the pilot was conducted on the other side of the globe, interest from Asian hospitality companies is strong. Haddad said there are ongoing discussions with a number of Singapore-based firms for similar, customised programmes, and these are likely to take off soon.
Haddad said for such training programmes to be successful, the company must make a longhual commitment to continued education. Breaking down the process of conceptualising the programme, Haddad explained that the EHL team would first work with the company to identify pain points, areas for improvements and required skills. Following the gap assessment, both EHL and the company will collaborate on the production of learning materials and standards used to address the gaps.
“Only after that comes training. And even so, training is not the end of the process,” said Haddad. “There needs to be ongoing assessment of that training, so that the whole organisation benefits and not just one department or segment of people.”
While this is a lengthy process, Haddad said most hospitality companies now acknowledge “this real need” for education investment.
Hospitality companies have emerged from the pandemic with an intense talent challenge that is aggravated by other industries fighting for the same profiles of people with valuable hospitality experience, he explained.
At the same time, companies are having to adapt to an altered employer/employee relationship, where leaders have to manage much younger employees who hold different views about their job. They expect a work environment that not only offers satisfactory compensation, but also flexible and agile working conditions, development opportunities with clear career pathways, as well as rapid progression.
Furthermore, there is a shortage of experienced staff, forcing some hospitality companies to “take in the first one who applies, even if he has no experience”. In such instances, access to immediate training is crucial.
Hospitality companies are also finding the need to catch up with digitalisation, as there is a “vast majority of people in this industry who are not digitally literate”, explained Haddad. Companies have to “upgrade” their staff to “match operating capability with the systems the companies want to deploy”.
Customised courses would range widely, from imparting digital knowledge to people management skills. Haddad shared that work is underway for a course on identifying, addressing and shifting toxic management.
Besides the customised training programme, EHL continues to offer standardised programmes that are more flexible to take on. These include a suite of online certificates for hard and soft hospitality skills, which employers can choose to fund for their staff.
Despite tourism challenges, two Sri Lankan hotel players have remained firm in their efforts to uplift local communities as they rebuild their business.
Homegrown Teardrop Hotels, which has seven hotels across the country, maintains at least nine community projects, according to Manoj Devaraj, group head – sales and marketing.
Each hotel has an adopted charity organisation, while the head office supports two others – Teardrop Care Centre for Children with Disabilities, where the company is the main sponsor for Volunteers to Assist Children with Disabilities’ Welimada centre, scheduled to open this year; and a collaboration with the Tea Leaf Trust, where the company provides employment opportunities for impoverished young people raised on tea estates as well as organises field trips and workshops to expose these youths to personal growth opportunities in the tourism industry.
The team at Fort Bazaar, a hotel set within the historic port city of Galle, supports Sambodiya Home with regular infrastructural refurbishment and maintenance.
Recalling the progress of the hotel’s work with Sambodiya Home, Devaraj said efforts initially were not structured. It took a partnership with Travelife in 2020 to realise that a guided approach was needed for work to be meaningful.
“Travelife also led us to scrutinise our use of resources and cut down on imported items,” added Devaraj. As a result, Teardrop Hotels has improved the conditions of its four fruit and vegetable gardens across the country so that more produce could be harvested for use in hotel kitchens. Today, 30 per cent of its fruit and vegetable supplies are from these gardens.
Seafood, meats and other ingredients are also obtained from local producers “as much as possible”.
Close to 85 per cent of ingredients used in Teardrop Hotels kitchens are now locally sourced – up from about 60 per cent pre-pandemic.
“We have even looked at how suppliers work with us,” he added. To encourage local producers to deliver orders more sustainably, the company supplied reusable, stackable crates.
“The pandemic and import disruptions made us realise that relying on local producers is more reliable, offers greater value, and enables us to support our own people,” Devaraj said.
The slow return of tourism business has not dampened the company’s community commitment. Devaraj said: “Some of them were initiated during the pandemic, and we continue to do whatever we can with the manpower and resources we currently have.”
Over at Shangri-La’s Hambantota Golf Resort & Spa, efforts have been ongoing the past three months to raise the digital literacy of the teachers at a local village school. The effort is a long-term investment to build a more tech-savvy pool of young people that the hotel and other businesses could eventually hire.
General manager Refhan Razeen told TTG Asia: “Tourism will return to Sri Lanka, and we need to be prepared for that. One way is to work on local human resources.”
Next on Razeen’s to-do list is the establishment of a hotel school in Hambantota, “which will give locals a chance for employment at both Shangri-La hotels here and in Colombo”.
He said the “plans are drawn up” and awaiting approval from the top.
Besides investing in education, the hotel will soon launch the Green Passport, a hotel-wide sustainability programme with a goal of 15 Rs – Respect, Rethink, Responsible, Resource, Restore, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Reclaim, Replace, Refill, Refocus, Recycle, Refuse and Reward.
Fleshing out the objectives of some of the Rs, he said Rethink would involve reviewing daily practices towards a sustainable future, while Restore would mean fixing damaged items so that they could continue to be used and not simply thrown away.
Razeen acknowledged that the Green Passport is “an ambitious project”, but it provides a clear structure for all staff to follow through on their sustainable journey.
A green champion will be appointed to lead topical efforts, such as water conservation, and come up with an action plan to bring ideas to fruition.
Razeen is hopeful that achievements could be used as case studies for other Shangri-La hotels as well as for local university students specialising in sustainability.
To further support the local community, Razeen is looking to engage a village near Yala to produce and supply the hotel with vegetables.
“This community is dependent on wildlife safari, which is seasonal. By having them grow and supply food to our hotel, they can earn income during the off-season,” he explained.