Member Blog

The day is fast approaching when the hospitality training community will descend upon Seattle for CHART. Trainers often feel stuck in a thankless task of checking the box when really they hope their content is making an impact on their learners’ careers. So you’re probably excited to be in a room with 200 other people who think about the same things you do.

Did you know the average attention span for a person is now just 8 seconds ... which is less than that of a goldfish! Because of this, the need to alter our training to engage our learners and improve retention is critical.

Food safety is a hot topic in the news lately, and many restaurants are looking for ways to quickly shore up their food safety training programs. E-learning is an ideal solution for managing food safety training programs, and it has many advantages over both traditional classroom training and on-the-job training. Let’s take a look at some of the top ways that e-learning is more effective for food safety training.

In my former CEO position, I was always looking at the bottom line and what our return on investment would be when an individual would attend a CHART conference or any industry event. Here’s a concrete plan for how to convince your executives that the CHART conference is a MUST attend for you:

Let’s face it; sometimes eating out is scary, especially with the recent increase in foodborne illness outbreaks mentioned throughout every media and social media outlet. The two most highly-discussed outbreaks to date are E.coli and Norovirus. As I received the latest daily news blast from my favorite industry news outlet, I started to think about how this recent increase of outbreaks could affect our industry as a whole.

As the Program Director for Cafe Reconcile, I witness daily the benefits to taking the time and searching for ways to hire the 20% who normally get passed over. During #CHARTNOLA, a group of attendees volunteered and saw first-hand the impact our organization has on those who struggle to get hired.

n preparation for the upcoming release of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” I decided to re-watch the original three movies in the series. Even though I had seen them many times in the past, I felt like a refresher was necessary as it had been at least a decade since I had viewed “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi.”

As a longtime CHART member and presenter, I’d like to share my Top Ten Reasons to attend CHART’s T3 Conference in Seattle this February…

The new year is just around the corner and many hotel training departments are considering what training programs they are going to offer in 2016. We will look at our companies’ analytical data including revenue, operational performance and guest feedback. A needs analysis will be completed and we will determine what core competencies need to be focused on to create training programs to fill the performance gaps.

You see our enthusiastic caring at our conferences, read our sharing through our blogs posts and Ask My Peers replies, and learn with us at RTFs, but do you know how your board helps CHART grow year round?

Hospitality trainers come from a variety of backgrounds: Operations expert repositioned into a training role, educator who has made the shift to corporate training, or student of organizational development and learning entering the job market, to name a common few. Whatever skills a trainer has in his or her toolkit when the job begins may be sufficient for the initial role, but will likely not be enough to grow into an effective trainer, learning strategist and strategic business partner in the company. Here are some of my favorite practical tips for personal development from great mentors that helped me build my skills along my path as a hospitality trainer:

Social anxiety is real and is a growing issue; especially with the younger generation. It is not something that goes away; but one can learn to control it. Although during my CHART Talks session, my palms were sweating and my heart was racing, I have taken steps to overcome my fears of public speaking. .