Travelodge Employability Skills: Enhancing Performance and Teamwork

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes employability skills and performance at Travelodge.

Employability Skills
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................5
1.1–Develop a set of own responsibilities and performance objectives......................................5
1.3 Make recommendations for improvement.............................................................................7
1.4 Review how motivational techniques can be used to improve the quality of
performance.................................................................................................................................8
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................9
2.1 Develop solutions to work-based problems. You need to develop solutions to at least two
work-based problems identified during your work experience or in your role as a manager at
Travelodge Hotel.........................................................................................................................9
2.2 Communicate in a variety of styles and appropriate manner at various levels. You need
for example to write a formal letter to the senior management of the hotel to inform them
about the problem and a memo to all staff................................................................................11
2.3 Identify effective time-management strategies concerning the work-based experience or
your role as a manager at Travelodge. Present your evidence as a written report to your line
manager......................................................................................................................................14
Task 3.............................................................................................................................................15
3.1 Explain the roles people play in a team and how they can work together to achieve shared
goals...........................................................................................................................................15
3.2 Analyse team dynamics.......................................................................................................16
3.3 Suggest alternative ways to complete tasks and achieve team goals...................................16
Task 4.............................................................................................................................................18
4.1 Evaluate tools and methods for developing solutions to problems.....................................18
4.2 Develop an appropriate strategy for resolving the problem of labour turnover in an
organisation of your choice.......................................................................................................19
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4.3 Evaluate the potential impact on the business of implementing the strategy......................20
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................22
Reference List................................................................................................................................23
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Introduction
To understand the concept and importance of employability skills, it is also imperative to
understand the concepts of “What is employability and why is it so important?” According to
Moss, (2018), employability is the individual’s ability to attain employment using their set of
skills, which includes interpersonal skills, knowledge, and understanding of the concepts
required for the job. There exist mainly three significant factors on which employability is highly
dependent for an individual, these are attitude, knowledge and skills. Employability skills as
defined by Collet et al.,(2015), is a collaboration of individual attributes along with their
knowledge which is also transferable and makes the individuals employable. To take an example
from the Travel and Tourism Industry, Marriott has enlisted good communication skills,
analytical thinking for problem solving, adaptable and flexible to changes as the skills that they
look for as an employer while recruiting for the brand.
Tsai, (2017) states that for a Travel and Tourism employer it is imperative to look for these skills
as being an employee of this industry, there is a lot of challenging situations where the employee
needs to not only use their analytical powers but also have to use their interpersonal skills to
persuade the guests. This helps in spreading the right word of mouth for the brand, which is very
important in today’s competitive market. This report thus will be an analytical discussion about
determining own set of responsibilities and motivational theories for enhancing individual
performance level along with critically examining the various concepts on developing
interpersonal skills. This also will act as an individual awareness of their strengths and
weaknesses while performing in a team and thus developing strategies to address these problems.
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Task 1
1.1–Develop a set of own responsibilities and performance objectives
According to Marrch.org (2019), personal responsibility can be defined as the ideas, which an
individual chooses as an instigating reason for their job responsibilities or course of actions. It is
when an individual is capable of taking ownership for their work while using their analytical
capacities as a problem solver. For a detailed description, personal responsibility is about taking
ownership which gains means that one should be accountable for all the actions related to the job
role. Hence it can be easily deduced from the above discussion that personal responsibility or
own responsibility is essential especially for the Travel and Tourism as there is a lot of
challenging situations which requires analytical and out of the box thinking. Through own
responsibilities, an individual can develop qualities like adaptability, flexibility, better decision-
making powers and helps in career planning. Also, ATL - The Education Union (2019) has
mentioned that through personal responsibility, an individual also able to set and analyse
performance objectives which are a set of objectives or parameters set to evaluate the quality of
own performance by identifying the strengths and weakness. Besides, once there is a clear idea
about an individual's performance, it is easier to enhance personal performance as well.
In this essay, I will be sharing my experiences and thoughts regarding working as a manager at
Travelodge. Travelodge UK is a private company who majorly operates in the hospitality
industry. It is the second largest brand in the budget hotel sector and third biggest hotel chain in
the UK. The organisation has almost 32, 600 bedrooms in all its hotels (Travelodge, 2019). My
list of responsibilities at work is enlisted below:
Name- Paul Brandon
Job Title- Manager
Department Name- Front Office
My responsibilities- As a front office manager, my responsibility was to train and manage all
the front office staffs while ensuring that the front desk officials provide professional and
friendly services to the guests. Besides, I was responsible for making sure that the guests are
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satisfied with the services provided. I was also responsible for arranging the staff schedules
along with making a bridge between the General Manager and the staffs. I was given the
responsibility to check the grooming standards for the front office staffs as well as the front
office is the first point of contact between the guest and the hotel and is thus a very critical and
vital point.
Skills required for the job- Being a manager in the front office, I have to see that my guests are
appropriately welcomed and assisted in the front office lobby. I am also supposed to make sure
that all their issues and concerns are well taken care of by my team. Besides, I am responsible for
making sure of the wellbeing and motivation of my staffs. The critical skills required for my job
role are solid leadership skills to be motivated all the time. It will motivate the staff working
under me, diplomatic and useful communication skill set to persuade the guests now of crisis,
multitasking to be able to make the best use of my time and ability to work under pressure.
Reporting Officer- General Manager, Front Office
Job Duration- 9 months
Learning style- Visual, Auditory, reading and writing
Effectiveness in the job- As a manager or front office, I am performing all my duties very
effectively. Even though I have experience in working as front office staff, working as a manager
is a new role for me, and thus sometimes, I am little naïve in accomplishing my objectives.
However, with the proper guidance from my seniors in Travelodge, I have been able to
overcome many issues in this span of 9 months.
1.2 –Evaluate own effectiveness against defined objectives
As an employer, Travelodge has the following objectives to measure employee performance:
 The employee must be aware of the current situations in the business and thus must be
prompt in handling any critical situation.
 The employee must be very active in communication skills as being a Travel and
Tourism professional, and communication is a mandatory part of an individual's
grooming.
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 The employee must much be organised in planning and time management in daily
operations of the company along with being a team player.
 Employees must be having strong ethics of profession/business and must be well aware
of their rights and responsibilities.
Using these objectives, the company has developed a 360-degree performance appraisal system
where not only the employees self-evaluate their performance but also the subordinates, and the
supervisors evaluate the employee's performance. When as an employee, I self-evaluate myself, I
can set my personal goals and objectives which are needed to be achieved by me. These goals are
mostly based on the objectives and goals of the organisation, and hence, when I can meet my
own set of goals, I am indirectly meeting the organisational goals only thus helping the
organisation, Travelodge to grow. For this self-evaluation, I have done performance appraisal as
this has helped me as a manager to improve my productivity and maximise my effectiveness in
all aspects of the organisation right from staffing and development to production and customer
handling/services.
For this performance appraisal, I first identified my strengths which were great communication
skills and grooming standards while my weaknesses where analytical skills. After identifying
these, I made a paired comparison with my colleagues, thus developed an MBO (Management by
objectives) with my reporting manager, and thus started to work on it before the evaluation.
Besides, a structured training for developing the analytical skills of managers is arranged.
1.3 Make recommendations for improvement
 As a manager, I noticed in many instances that there was wrong pricing done for the
rooms, which led to a lot of confusion and issues among the front office, sales and
accounts team. This also developed a level of frustration and distrust among the guests
leading to losses. As a manager, thus I would like to take out time to cross-check every
price in the spreadsheet before it is uploaded to the system in order avoid such issues in
future.
 The front office is the main point of contact for any customer, and thus the staff handling
the front office must be well groomed in the most professional way. As a manager, I have
noticed that the laundry department of the hotel has not been very particular about the
cleanliness of the uniforms. So, I will be arranging a special meeting once a week with
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the housekeeping manager to discuss the issues and also personally check the quality of
the uniforms once they are cleaned in the laundry.
 Front office staff also needs to be most professional in attitude with the maximum
politeness to the guests. As I have observed, some of the trainees and staff had been
reluctant while addressing the guests or their issues. I would thus like to take out time to
arrange for soft skills training and evaluation every month to keep track of the
development of the front office staff.
1.4 Review how motivational techniques can be used to improve the quality of
performance
According to (Mikkelsen et al., 2017), motivation can be defined as the process, which accounts
for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining an
organisational goal. By motivating the staffs, following are the advantages:
 Helps in creating a healthy work environment for the employees
 Gives more employee retention power to the organisation
 Lesser absenteeism leading to more productivity for the organisation
 Helps in self-achievement and growth of the employees
 Helps the employees to be more innovative and creative in their job roles
 Creates higher productivity for the organisation which means more profits
 Develops a better reputation of the brand in the market leading to better industrial
relations
As a manager, I will use Maslow's hierarchy theory and Herzberg’s two-factor theory for
motivating the staffs of my department. Using Maslow's theory, I will be able to identify the
needs of the staffs in my department and thus arrange them in the hierarchy of priority. Thus,
after the identification, I will try to develop strategies to meet their basic needs of food, health,
fresh air, etc. I will make sure that they get timely offs to take their meals and the quality of food
is well maintained by discussing it with the food and beverage department manager. I will also
try to schedule their duties in such a way, that employees in my team can maintain their work-
life balance. This will help them in getting motivated to perform better. Once this is done, I will
apply the Herzberg theory and try to incorporate motivating factors like bonus, appraisals,
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rewards, pieces of training for personal growth, etc. to pull out the best potentials of the
employees.
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Task 2
2.1 Develop solutions to work-based problems. You need to develop solutions to at least two
work-based problems identified during your work experience or in your role as a manager
at Travelodge Hotel
Solutions to problems at the workplace
Problems are bound to arise at the workplace, but the management or the concerned authority
must have the experience and knowledge to solve the problems at the workplace. Problem
solving also involves addressing the problem and then defining the pattern of the problem.
Problem solving at work is a skill, which is unique in itself, and I associated with every
workplace. Problem solving involves identifying the problems and offering the most suitable
option to provide a solution (Schön, 2017). The management of every organisation tries hard to
find out different suitable and apt solutions to problems.
Some workplace related problems are as follows:
Communication-related problems
The main problem, which has to be looked after and addressed, is the communication problem,
which exists within the functioning of the various employees of the Travelodge Hotel. There are
some missing links in the communication between the management or the managing head and
the employees of the hotel. Employees feel uneasiness in communicating with the employees of
the hotel (Meacham et al., 2017). Probably, the employees lack the correct medium to share their
valuable feedback, ideas, plans, or thoughts with the authorities of the Travelodge Hotel.
Therefore, the concerned managers have to provide the required independence and comfort level
with their employees so that they can share their opinions and feelings with the management.
The management must conduct interactive sessions and arrange for a feedback platform which
will help them to maintain a committed and a dedicated workforce within the organisation.
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Methods of Recruitment and selection
The different methods of recruitment and selection in the Travelodge Hotel being executed were
not of high quality (Chibili, 2017). The job specifications and the assignment of job roles were
not done systematically by the HR department within the organisation. This resulted in
hampering the business operations of the organisation as their services were disrupted. This, in
turn, resulted in recording low performances in making business profits by the hotel. The HR
department changed and was revamped because of the debacle. This led to a good quality
performance by the hotel from then on.
Problem solving methods
The problems can be solved by following their steps:
Step 1: Identifying the problem
Step 2: Exploring the problem issue and carrying out research
Step 3. Setting up of goals with the help of various approaches or models of how to solve
the problems.
Different tools to solve the problems are:
1. The Pride Model- The Pride Model is followed to solve the problems (Denzin, 2017). It
involves the problem solving, research to be done, identification of the problems, decision, and
doing the work and evaluation of the problem arising at the workplace.
2. The Six-Step problem solving Model- This model helps to follow the six necessary steps,
which will provide a specific solution to the problem. It involves defining the problem,
determining the specific cause of the problem, developing alternative options of dealing with the
problems, selection of the solution and implementation of the solution, which will give the last
result.
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2.2 Communicate in a variety of styles and appropriate manner at various levels. You
need for example to write a formal letter to the senior management of the hotel to inform
them about the problem and a memo to all staff
The necessity of communication at the workplace
Proper communication is required at the workplace so that the employees can work in a free and
independent way and share their opinions with the management (Hajroet al.,2017). The
management requires creating different media through which the employees can communicate
freely with the managers and express themselves adequately. Proper work conditions are
maintained if the communication is done smoothly within the organisation. Any
miscommunication hampers the execution of business operations within the organisation.
Methods or styles of communication
Different methods of communication can be followed within the organisation such as:
Team meetings
The managers can hold meetings of the various members and employees and involve them in
sharing their opinions freely and independently (Wheelen et al., 2017). This method or tool of
communication will help to address the various strategies of the organisation to a large group.
Communicating through e-mails
Communicating through e-mails is the fastest way of communication available by which the
management can reach out to a large number of employees with any critical information or
pointing out the mistakes of the employees.
Interaction through one on one session
The interaction of the management with the employees by sitting in front of each other helps as
the communication occurs immediately and the queries can be solved on the spot (Gee, 2018).
This helps the employees to tell about the problems they are facing directly to the manager. This
helps in sorting out many problems.
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