‘Blended Micro-skilling of Professionals is the future of the Hospitality Industry’ by Ms. Sonia Agarwal Bajaj

 By Ms. Sonia Agarwal Bajaj, Co-founder of Whiz League

The human capital crisis has never been more staggering in the hospitality industry. During COVID-19 millions of people were deployed to other industries. Each year, 22 million enroll in four-year programs to take on entry-level jobs at various hospitality entities. The post-COVID-era brings back a new wave of human capital joining the industry, to serve the tourists that are now traveling in large volumes. To retrain this human capital, the hospitality industry is undergoing heavy recruitment and training. Blended Micro-learning is the key solution to the problem at hand and the future of hospitality.

Here are 7 key training trends in the hospitality industry:

• Micro-Learning programs help train individuals for specific jobs at a rapid pace. Given the lack of a skilled workforce in the industry even before COVID, the industry has been known to train individuals on the job. It is estimated that it takes an individual almost 1 year to get ‘billable’, meaning they have acquired the skill-sets to do their job adequately. Micro-Learning programs will allow individuals to fast-track this journey in 2 weeks.
  Blended Learning: No online program can replace the on-the-job training that is required but there are some new age companies that are offering specific training material to elevate base level training and use human capital to add to the training and evaluate the impact on the ground.
• Standardized Base Level Training: Relying on human capital to train human capital results in inconsistency. Standardizing Base level training allows companies facing high attrition post-COVID to cope effectively. Some leading hospitality chains are facing up to 60-65% attrition at current times, making it impossible to follow traditional training methods.
• Multi-Media Training Partners: Training can no longer be a boring manual or a trainer speaking to a large classroom. The new age training companies such as Whiz League offer training programs that are HD quality with leading industry experts. These videos are HD quality and filled with graphics and music to make them more engaging.
• Assessment-Based Training: For any company that invests in training, it is key to track and assess the impact of training. Training companies now offer detailed assessment tools and some new age companies also auto-generate a detailed skill gap analysis for each individual.
• Vernacular Training: In order to make the training as effective as possible, the new training programs are available in popular vernacular languages to allow for tier II, and tier III penetration as well.
• Affordable Cloud Based Solutions: while cloud solutions have been there for over a decade, the answers were either too expensive or lacked vital assessment tools to allow companies to track their employee’s progress and training impact.

The learning and development (L&D) departments of the hospitality industry have been busy and robust to train the new workforce joining. The newer solutions make cloud training affordable, measurable, and effective. The main goal is to help make individuals elevate base-level training at a rapid speed at affordable prices. Fast-tracking base-level training allows companies to maintain customer service, follow basic industry practices, and even contribute to growth.