Professional Identity and Practice Report for Business Leaders

This report delves into the significance of professional identity, focusing on its role in achieving career goals and fostering individual growth, using The Savoy Hotel as a case study. It explores the benefits of ongoing professional development for both employers and employees, emphasizing the acquisition of a skilled workforce, employee engagement, and up-to-date knowledge. The report examines the skills and competencies expected of key roles like Executive Chef and General Manager, highlighting both hard and soft skills essential for success. It also includes a self-assessment using personal skill audit and SWOT analysis, and discusses various learning theories and approaches such as Honey and Mumford, VAK, contingency, behavioral, and humanist approaches, used for professional development within the organization. The conclusion underscores the importance of professional identity in enhancing career prospects and overall organizational effectiveness.

Professional Identity
and Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK A...........................................................................................................................................1
P1 Key benefits of on going professional development for different stakeholders.....................1
P2 Skills and competencies expected by employer.....................................................................2
P3 Assessment of own abilities and skill for a specific job role..................................................3
P4 Range of different learning theories and approaches used for personal and professional
development.................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Professional identity is an element which is very important for all the individuals as it
help them to reach their long term career goals and attain growth. With the help of it they can
reach to the top of their career. Main aim of this report is to analyse importance of professional
identity for individuals (Cruess, Cruess and Steinert, 2016). The organisation which is selected
for this report is The Savoy Hotel which is mainly established in Strand, London, United
Kingdom. This report covers various topics such as importance of on going professional
development and self directed learning to enhance professional identity and career opportunities.
Apart from this, assessment of own skills, competences and the different learning and
development approaches are also covered under this assignment.
TASK A
P1 Key benefits of on going professional development for different stakeholders
Overview of the organisation: The Savoy Hotel is one of the largest hotels that are
established in United Kingdom and executing business successfully. It is partially owned by
Kingdom Holding and rest of the part is owned by FRHI and Katara. It has more than 260 hotels
which also includes suits. It was established in year 1889 (Overview of The Savoy Hotel, 2019).
On going professional development: It is a type of continuous development process
which helps to build skills within individuals and allow them to attain all their career goals so
that growth can be acquired by them. In The Savoy Hotel opportunities for on going professional
development are provided to the employees by employers as it helps to enhance their work
quality. There are various benefits of it for employees as well as employers all of them are as
follows:
Benefit for the employer: There are various benefits of professional development for
employers of The Savoy Hotel as it helps to enhance their work quality. All of them are as
follows:
 Skilled workforce- The on going professional development plan is beneficial for the
employers in getting the skilled workforce. It enables their functions and activities in an
effective manner. Such as in the The Savoy hotel, they get the skilled employees by this
plan.
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 Employee engagement- As well as the on going professional development plan helps in
engaging the employees into different activities. Like in the Savoy hotel their employees
are engaged in their multi-pal function with full confidence which benefits them.
 Up to date knowledge- Due to on going professional development plan, employees
enables with the deep knowledge about the different functions of organisation. Like in the
Savoy hotel, they take benefit of their employees knowledge about various aspects
(Cruess and others, 2015).
 Development opportunities- The on going professional development plan is also
beneficial in providing the development opportunities to the employees. Due to this
employees improves their skills, knowledge and capabilities which overall resulted in the
benefit to the companies. Such as in the Savoy hotel, their employees get the
development opportunities which help to the employers in achieving the goals and
objectives.
Benefits to employees: An ongoing professional development can be extremely
beneficial for an organisation's employees as it helps in ensuring that one's skills and
competencies are always in synchronization with the current standards of the industry they
operate in. In the context of given case scenario, employees of The Savoy are able to reap the
following benefits:
 Maintenance and enhancement of knowledge and skills in a professional context which is
important to keep one motivated towards the work as well as contributions they make at
the workplace.
 Inducing Self-assessed and directed approach in an attempt to improve themselves on a
continual basis to keep improving themselves.
 Increased job satisfaction for the employees as they get good opportunities for growth.
 Development of a better CV that is crucial to gain a much better employment opportunity
in the future (Dumas and Sanchez-Burks, 2015).
P2 Skills and competencies expected by employer
Every business, whether large or small, consists of a group of people that strive together
to achieve organisational goals as well as personal objectives in such a way that the two do not
clash. Hence, every employer has certain expectations from their subordinates in regards to skills
and competencies. In the context of given scenario, The Savoy Hotel employs a Executive Chef
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and Manager to look after different types of challenges arising at the workplace on a regular
basis. While the executive chef is responsible to look after the food and beverage section of the
hotel, its the manager's duty to look after the operations of the hotel altogether. Being a luxury
hotel, it is expected of the two to be passionate and creative towards their work (Mancini and
others, 2015).
In relation to the Executive Chef, Savoy expects that the individual shall apply a 'hands-
on approach' by providing coaching and guidance to their colleagues. Apart from this, they are
also expected to be an ambassador for hotel which would require the person to attend interviews
and provide cooking demonstrations for various media outlets. Hard Skills: For an executive chef, the main skill required is the technical knowledge
regarding various delicacies and cuisines as the hotel operates and serves on an
international scale. They need to have an experience of at-least five to six years in the
culinary industry with in-depth knowledge on cooking.
 Soft Skills: The soft skills here include extraordinary communication skills and etiquettes
as well as inter-personal skills which make them a great leader as well as a team-player.
On the other hand, a General Manager employed at Savoy is expected to have a wide
array of skills so as to effectively address any kind of adversity that may arise unannounced. For
this purpose, an individual is expected to possess following abilities: Hard Skills: Technical Knowledge in relation to different departments such as
Recruitment and Selection, Operations and Quality Deliverance among others so as to
enhance as well as ensure smooth working of the Hotel at all times.
 Soft Skills: Hereunder, the manager is expected to have communication, leadership and
team management skills with a zeal to take responsibility for their own actions.
In addition to aforementioned employer expectations, it is important for the both to have
exceptional problem-solving as well as people management skills.
P3 Assessment of own abilities and skill for a specific job role
It is very important for all the employees of the organisations to have some specific skills,
competencies and abilities to meet their career objectives according to their job role. I am willing
to work as a Head Chef in The Savoy Hotel and I am required to have some specific skills and
qualities in order to fulfil all the requirements of my job role. In order to analyse my abilities and
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skills I am required to use self evaluation models. Two different models are going to be used by
me which are as follows:
Personal skill audit: It is a method which guides individuals to critically evaluate their
own skills, abilities and competencies (Pennington and Richards, 2016). With the help of it I will
be able to evaluate all my strong and weak points. The skill audit of me for the job profile of
Head Chef is as follows:
Skills Good Average Bad
Communication ✓
Team player ✓
Interpersonal skills ✓
Knowledge of different
cuisines
✓
Cooking ✓
Personal SWOT analysis: It is a technique which guides individuals to assess their
strengths and weaknesses in order to analyse that they can reach to their career goals or not. With
the help of it I will be able to identify my own strengths and weaknesses. Personal SWOT is as
follows:
Strengths Weaknesses
 Good knowledge of different cuisine.
 Effecting skills to work in a team as a
leader.
 Bad communication.
 Weak cooking skills.
Opportunities Threats
 Guidance from superiors.
 Effective training from experienced
people.
 Weak skills may lead to low
opportunities for career growth.
 Inappropriate execution of business
operations.
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P4 Range of different learning theories and approaches used for personal and professional
development
Learning theories: There are various learning theories that are used by The Savoy Hotel
for the purpose of professional development. Some of them are as follows:
Honey and Mumford: It is a learning style theory which developed by the Peter Honey
and Alan Momford. Under this theory, they identify the 4 different types of learning styles or
preferences and it includes activist, theorist, pragmatist and reflector. For the better
understanding of this theories they develop a questionnaires which includes the three useful
things. Become smarter to gain the opportunities in the best way, expand their brand value which
provide benefits and improve their learnings along with skills & process.
Visual Auditory Kinesthetic (VAK): It is the simple model which helps in explaining
the various learning styles. It includes the three main sensory receiver such as Visual, Auditory
and Kinesthetic. These elements helps the organization to identify that weather individual is
dominating or proffered to be learn new style. Their is no restriction to use only one theory,
learners can use all the three methods to enhance their knowledge which help the individual to
enhance their performance.
Learning approaches: There are various learning approaches that are used in The Savoy
Hotel. All of them are as follows:
Contingency: This approach of learning helps individuals to learn from the critical
situations that take place in professional environment and affect their ability to respond business
problems. It helps to develop professionally by deal with challenges (Moss, Gibson and
Dollarhide, 2014).
Behavioural: This approach depends upon behaviour of individuals which changes with
time and according to situations. It helps leaders of The Savoy Hotel to learn that they have to
change their nature according to the situation which take place at workplace in order to develop
professionally.
Humanist: This approach direct leaders to behave appropriately with all the subordinates
as they have right to be treated as humans. It is used in The Savoy Hotel for the purpose of
developing good human relations.
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CONCLUSION
From the above project report it has been concluded that professional identify is very
important for all the individuals as it helps them to reach their career goals. With the help of it
employees and employers both get benefited because it results in good growth opportunities,
skilled workforce etc.
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