Training Articles

I recently had lunch with a friend and co-worker at a popular Denver-area sports bar. I remember the occasion well because that’s the day I had a “Garbage Burger” for the very first time. The experience forever changed the way I think about the connection between service, selling and repeat business.

In Atlanta, Michael White was one of our CHARTtalks presenters. He shared statistics on the growing number of technology options and the consumers who are more accepting of using technology. In fact, other industries, such as gas stations and banks are automated so it's time for restaurants to embrace this trend.

None of us want to become obsolete. In Atlanta, I challenged everyone to find one training program to focus on. Find a new route and put emphasis on collaborative learning. Your training must evolve. Break away from tradition and integrate social and informal learning into your training.

Welcome to 2015, everyone! To celebrate the New Year, I thought I would provide a list of 15 ways that you can transform your year by learning, sharing, growing, and caring with CHART during the next twelve months:

How are you living your life? Are you safe & comfortable? At the Atlanta conference, I encouraged attendees to Get Uncomfortable! I suggested they Raise a Brow and Be Bold.

Napa, California, is known for many things. Most people, of course, think of it as the source of the most spectacular wines produced in North America. Its dry, temperate climate and the unique diversity of its soil provide the perfect setting for growing many different varieties of grapes, and as a result the valley has become the home to over 400 different wineries.

In Atlanta, I shared why it's important that your employees, who are your best brand ambassadors, are happy and like their job. It's key that you create a sense of community and engagement. By focusing on your core values, by making them happy and engaging them; you will achieve success.

Promoting an associate to a managerial role or filling a long-vacant leadership position is always exciting, especially for those of us in training and development. We are happy to have a key position filled, and sometimes we make assumptions about what the incumbent may or may not have in their supervisory toolkit. Specifically, we may believe these new managers inherently know how to interview job candidates.

Recently I had the opportunity to tour a winery in Napa, not far from the upcoming CHART 89th Hospitality Training conference. I couldn’t help but notice a similarity in all of the intricacies to wine making compared to training and developing employees. Wine makers will tell you there are endless ways of creating wine and all deliver product of varying degrees of quality.

For many CHART members, including myself, the highlight of our recent 88th Hospitality Training Conference was the release of the 2014 Trends in Hospitality Training & Development Study. The survey that provided the results for this study was conducted earlier this summer by data-reporting firm TDn2K, one of CHART’s Silver Sponsors, and it covered a wide variety of topics such as e-learning, employee orientations, and training budget distributions.

Someone yelling at you is actually a good thing. This is just one of the lessons I shared in Atlanta as part of my CHART Talks presentation. Watch my video (less than 10 minutes) for my 9 Lessons to Improve Life and Leadership. Some of these lessons include those I learned from my mom, fellow CHART members, and even Charlie Brown!

It's an understatement to say that the e-learning landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. When DiscoverLink first started in 2002, the number one barrier our clients faced in starting an e-learning program was the technology infrastructure. Most restaurants did not have computing platforms in-store, and even fewer had internet connectivity. In fact, in order to get our business going in the early days, we often had to set up our clients' stores with desktop computers and satellite connections!