Member Blog

Thought leadership from the brightest minds in hospitality training. Subscribe to our Training Flash E-Newsletter to get the latest articles right in your inbox.

8 Ways to Ensure Job Applicants Say “Yes” to Your Offer

You have a few qualified applicants for your open positions- so far so good! But how do you convert these fresh faces from candidates to new hires? Here are 8 ways you can increase the odds that they will say "yes" to your job offer.

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How the Principles of Coaching Youth Sports Apply to Learning Design

Whether you’re a youth sports coach, instructional designer, or someone who creates training for your organization, the same key principles can improve learning and retention. Here are my top tips for engaging and coaching learners of all ages, skill levels, and training objectives.

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Recruiting, Drafting, Coaching – Applying Fantasy Football Methods to Your Team for the “W”

As I went through the process of drafting my fantasy football team this year, I couldn’t help but think about how this applies to “drafting” and managing the teams in our restaurants and hotels. By applying some of the principles from fantasy sports to our "real world" hospitality teams, we can engage players with a diverse skillset to align on goals, drive results, and ultimately bring home the “W” for our teams and guests.

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He Said, He Said

If you can only go to one CHART conference per year, should it be winter or summer? The age-old debate has flared up again. Here is my perspective, advocating for the winter conference, while Gabe Hosler counters that the summer event would prove more valuable for attendees.

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Icebreakers Can Ease Social Anxiety, Engage Your Teams

Icebreakers are an underutilized tool, yet are so valuable to defeat social anxiety, warm up the group, and get everyone connected and engaged. Here are 7 of my go-to icebreakers that work every time.

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Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Familia

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th through October 15th), Denise Morales reflects on the true meaning of familia, and suggests hosting a fiesta featuring Latin American food and music. Recognize the contributions of Latinos and Hispanics to our American culture, and celebrate Hispanic traditions and values this Hispanic Heritage Month!

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Promoting from Within: 5 Tips from a Panel of Experts—Session Recap from CHART Austin

The panel discussion, Train the Future: Attracting and Upskilling Your Top Talent, presented at CHART Austin, focused on best practices for creating career growth opportunities for hourly team members in hotels and restaurants. Here are 5 tips to create a structure of upskilling and promoting team members from within, along with developing the culture to support attraction and retention of talent in the hospitality industry.

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Culture Reset: Strengthening Your Business from the Inside Out—Session Recap from CHART Austin

The breakout, Culture Reset: Strengthening Your Business from the Inside Out, was presented by Braxton Luzier at CHART Austin. Good culture drives engagement, performance, and retention, and is perceived by every guest who walks through the door. Here are the four phases of optimizing your restaurant's culture.

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5 Ways to Compete for Talent in the Gig Economy

As the hospitality industry continues to face staffing shortages, restaurants need to find ways to compete for talent against so-called "gig work." While gig work is appealing for its flexibility, there are substantial disadvantages as well. The opportunity for restaurants, then, is to find ways to mimic the advantages of gig work while also highlighting their own advantages over the gig economy. Here are five key ideas restaurants can implement to compete for talent in the gig economy.

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Corporate Training is Broken

A training revolution is required if we are to have any hope of reaching and engaging today’s workforce. Employers will have to revise both the content and delivery of their training programs to adapt to this new audience. Here are a few personal observations and proven best practices to help you overhaul your company's approach to training and development.

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Who Ya Gonna Call? 10 Sources for Finding Tech Vendors

One of the big challenges when it’s time for your team to make an investment in technology is to figure out who you should be considering as a vendor (and which companies you should avoid). Here are the 10 sources I use to efficiently develop my shortlist of tech suppliers.

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Understanding and Measuring Culture: Session Recap from CHART Austin

The breakout, Training Data Analytics: Measuring the Bottom Line Impact of a Good Company Culture, was presented by Carlo Cesario and Joe Wagner at CHART Austin. Participants took part in a hands-on exercise to identify ways to quantify and measure the impact of culture on their own organizations. Here are my key takeaways from this session.

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