Center Stage – Training and Development
By Carl Meyers, Director of Training & Org Development
June 11, 2021
Our industry is continually evolving, and our team members need tools and guidance at their fingertips to help them navigate these changes successfully, Davidson Academy provided by SAP Litmos is our answer to these demands.
We selected SAP Litmos as it is a top-rated cloud-based learning management system that delivers training, onboarding, and personal development content through cutting edge delivery methods such as a best-in-class UI/UX across all user roles, mobile friendly learning content and video assessments where learners can record themselves and get feedback from experts within the organization. Our partnership with SAP Litmos also gives us immediate access to a robust course library covering topics from safety & compliance through hospitality skills, and beyond into developmental topics such as leadership, business acumen, and even software tools. To be concise, we feel that the best team in hospitality deserves the best platforms in hospitality to master their roles and grow their careers with us.
We intend to utilize this platform to enable our team members to learn “in the flow of work”, delivering content where our teams perform their tasks. We’re breaking the chain that currently requires our team to sit in front of a computer for hours. Following the deployment of this new learning system we will be systematically deploying digital onboarding programs across all management roles in each of our verticals. These tools are quickly accessible right from a mobile device and will reduce our reliance on the webinars and redundant processes associated to our current onboarding approach.
Our rollout approach will be multi-phased over the course of several months and through the end of 2021.
• Phase 1 will see us launching Davidson Academy with a primary focus on sustaining our current compliance training requirements that are in place today with newer, more engaging content and more individualized learning paths versus a “one size fits all” approach we’ve used historically. We anticipate this occurring in June, following some beta testing.
• Phase 2 will see us transitioning our focus to deploying curated learning pathways around common topics within our industry that can be used in conjunction with personal development plans and career mapping. We will also begin the deployment of digital onboarding for steering team members within this phase – starting with the GM & HR onboarding plans. We are targeting an August deployment of these resources.
• Phase 3 our focus will be on development and deployment of additional onboarding plans for other leadership roles within our hotels with a goal that an onboarding guide exists for leaders in every discipline. This will likely span into early 2022 with onboarding plans being deployed as they exit the development cycle.
Davidson Academy will reduce ramp up time for leaders as they join the organization, streamline processes, create consistency in shift-to-shift execution, and foster a culture of learning within the organization. Ultimately, we will be able to deliver greater performance across key areas of the business driving value for our owners and sustaining our “people first” culture.