Staff Training: Social Media a Growing Trend
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Hotel Industry Trends, Hotel News, Hotel Technology, Hotel Training, Social Media, Trending Topics
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Resources are once again being invested into staff training after a financial squeeze in training funds of late. However, there is trend for more innovative online staff training methods using social media. Phil Benson investigates.
New investment into staff training is prompting new ideas. There is an emerging trend for companies shifting to online solutions to meet their staff training requirements. A growth in online hospitality training programmes allows hoteliers to not only offer their employees the chance to develop themselves personally, but also to learn new skills that will improve the levels of customer service that guests will receive.
The importance of training hotel staff is obvious. Making sure employees know how best to fulfil their duties, how to use any new technology or how to offer the highest standards of customer service will all help to boost the reputation of the business, whilst also making it a more profitable hotel. Training is also something that makes staff members feel more valued and confident in their work, which will in turn boost their levels of loyalty to the work team and the company.
Staff Training Goes Social
With the emergence of social media as a powerful communication tool, it is now beginning to be accepted more in the business world as an important tool for marketing, sales … and now workplace training opportunities.
Social media is far more than just Facebook and Twitter – it also encompasses blogs, podcasts, video and photo-sharing sites.
Social media is likely to feature as a companion to the traditional forms of employee training, such as workshops led by facilitators or even eLearning. Research suggests that someone’s own life experience is a rich learning resource and being able to share these experiences with others learners through online communities makes the learning process more enriching. Social media allows people to share their thoughts and experiences, and it this involvement is essential for social media to function.
There are so many tools and resources that social media covers, that the number of training scenarios are many. For example, with the availability of social media tools to train an audience of 50 employees on a new or revised hotel policy, it means that every resource needed can be available, including instructor led training, eLearning software and social media.
Interactive Staff Training
The emergence of these new resources will allow training sessions to be more interactive and can be a simple as a blog that poses thought provoking questions about the subject or learning experience, whilst offering a platform for employees to share their opinions or just to sound off.
Using clips from popular video hosting sites can be used as another inexpensive or free training tool, which will make sessions far more interesting then simply having to listen to an instructor at the front of the room.
Once viewed as being a distraction in the workplace, social media now features in many of our lives everyday and it is right that there is a trend for it to start being used as an instructive tool for training hotel staff. The future training tool possibilities are only likely to increase as social media evolves and develops further.
