HRMG 4202 Week 7 Training Delivery Plan Example

Delivering the Host Training at Larkfield Hotels Decision by Decision: On Each Hotel's Own Kiosks, Four Spaced Sessions, Peer Coaches and the Afternoon Lull, Each Weighed Against the Cheaper Option

Student Name

Walden University

HRMG 4202: Human Resource Development and Change

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Delivering the Host Training at Larkfield Hotels Decision by Decision: On Each Hotel's Own Kiosks, Four Spaced Sessions, Peer Coaches and the Afternoon Lull, Each Weighed Against the Cheaper Option

How the Plan Is Organized

The four-session design for Larkfield's 34 hosts, spread across seven composite hotels whose lobbies lost their counters in the spring, now needs a delivery plan. This plan takes four decisions in turn: where training happens, how sessions are spaced, who delivers them and when. Each decision is set against the cheaper option the group's finance manager would propose, with what that option would save and what it would give up. The plan accepts the cheaper option where it genuinely suffices.

Decision 1: On Each Hotel's Own Kiosks

Training will run at each hotel, using that hotel's kiosks, tablets and doors. The cheaper option is a single workshop for all 34 hosts at the group's office in Columbus, which would save coach travel of about 20 hours across the rollout. It would give up something essential. The seven hotels run two kiosk models, installed in different years, and the service screens differ: the reset for an encoding error takes three steps on the newer model and five on the older. A workshop on one model would teach some hosts the wrong reset. Training at each hotel also lets session 4 happen on the real lobby floor, which a central room cannot provide. Salas et al. (2012) note that transfer is strongest when the training setting resembles the work setting; here the resemblance is exact.

Decision 2: Four Short Sessions, Spaced Over Three Weeks

Each session will last 45 minutes, spaced across three weeks: sessions 1 and 2 in the first week, session 3 in the second and session 4 in the third. The cheaper option is a single three-hour block, which would save coach travel between visits. A single block would give up retention. Cepeda et al. (2006) reviewed hundreds of experiments and found that practice spread across sessions is remembered better than the same practice massed into one, with longer gaps helping for longer retention. Hosts who learn the encoding reset once may meet the error only every few days; spaced practice makes it likelier they remember the steps when it happens. Short sessions also fit the lull described below, which a three-hour block would not.

Decision 3: Peer Coaches Who Have Handled Stalls

Two hosts from the three hotels that changed first in March will deliver every session, each paid a coaching rate for the hours involved. The cheaper option is a session delivered by the kiosk vendor's trainer, which is included in the contract at no extra cost. The vendor trainer knows the software well but has never worked a hotel lobby during an evening peak. The peer coaches have cleared these errors with real guests waiting and have approached stalled guests hundreds of times; they can answer the question every host asks, "What do I say when I walk up?" Their credibility also matters for the resistance the change has met: hosts are more likely to accept a method from a colleague who has used it than from an outsider. The plan does use the vendor trainer for one thing, a two-hour briefing for the coaches on the service screens of both kiosk models, where the vendor's knowledge is genuinely better.

Decision 4: The Afternoon Lull

Sessions will run from 1:15 p.m. to 2 p.m., the quietest period in the lobby, after app checkouts finish and before arrivals begin. The cheaper option is running sessions on hosts' days off with overtime pay, which would avoid any floor coverage question but cost time and a half and ask hosts to come in on a rest day. In the lull, one host can cover the floor while the others train, so no hotel goes unstaffed and no one is paid overtime. Grossman and Salas (2011) identify an organization's visible support for training, including making time for it during work, as an influence on whether skills transfer.

Where the Cheaper Option Wins

After session 4, hosts will get a five-minute video refresher on their tablets in week five, showing the three fixes again. The more expensive option, a fifth in-person session, would add little: by then hosts will have practiced each fix several times and used them on the floor. The refresher costs nothing beyond the time to record it.

Cost in Staff Hours

In total, the plan uses about 102 coach hours and 102 host hours (34 hosts at three hours each), plus two hours of vendor time. That is more than the cheapest possible plan, but each added hour buys something the evidence suggests the training needs (Noe, 2020).

Table 1

Delivery Decisions Against the Cheaper Option

Composite organization; 34 hosts across seven hotels.

References

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

Grossman, R., & Salas, E. (2011). The transfer of training: What really matters. International Journal of Training and Development, 15(2), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2011.00373.x

Noe, R. A. (2020). Employee training and development (8th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kraiger, K., & Smith-Jentsch, K. A. (2012). The science of training and development in organizations: What matters in practice. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(2), 74-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612436661