INTRODUCTION
Personal professional development is crucial for every employee working within the business in order to develop and improve their own skills and knowledge to achieve success in the future. The report will cover approaches to self-managed learning and ways in which lifelong learning in personal and professional contexts could be encouraged along with benefits. In addition, evaluation of your own current skills and competencies, development needs and opportunities to meet your current and future defined needs will be covered. Finally, the report will cover document development activities, development plan, solutions to work-based problems regarding employee turnover.
TASK 1
1.1 Approaches to self-managed learning
Self-managed learning:
There are different approaches to self-managed learning such as strategic, collaborative, consensual, motivational and autonomous learning. The Travelodge Hotel in London has a well and strategic development programs for their employees. Kolb's model of learning is also a significant approach towards self-managed learning.
Reflection on the action: It happens many times when employees observe from their experiences after things happen that helps to learn from those things (King, 2014).
- What happened?
- What could be improved?
- How things can be experienced?
Reflection in action: Employees realize their mistakes and try to learn from them which helps to make changes that are even better for situations.
- What I noticed?
- How can I improve?
Critical self-reflection: It is the most powerful critical self-reflection which helps workers to understand themselves and increase knowledge as well as confidence. Self-reflection will help to determine strengths, weaknesses and improvement areas of workers at the workplace.
The two main approaches consensual and motivational learning will be suitable for the staff of Travelodge hotel.
- motivational learning: Motivation is a crucial aspect that helps to drive the performance of employees in any business. This will help staff of Travelodge hotel to choose their personal resources and objectives on which they want to associate learning effectively.
- consensual learning: Consensual learning will focus on the development and learning of staff members after their prior consent (Carpenter and Krutka, 2015). A particular development will help employees to acquire adequate knowledge. This will also provide comfort level and does not make learning obligatory.
1.2 Ways in which lifelong learning in personal and professional contexts could be encouraged at Travelodge hotel
Life long learning can be described as a concept that seeks consistent development in employees in both professional and personal context effectively. As a manager, encouraging staff towards lifelong learning will help to determine their interests and hobbies to acquire extra skills and competencies on those aspects.
- Self-directed learning: In this personal context, employees will take responsibility for their own initiatives, learning needs, identification of materials and human resources and implementing effective and appropriate learning without help of others.
- Continuing professional development: CPD is a process where the manager will try to develop and improve professional and personal qualities and skills of employees at workplace that helps to gain both formal and informal work experience (Agafonova, Bryukhova and Kaigorodov, 2015). It will also help to determine weaknesses and areas of improvement.
In order to encourage lifelong learning, manager is able to align self-managed learning with promotion and career growth in both personal and professional context effectively. Motivated employees are beneficial for business as they develop their current skills, knowledge and personal and professional goals to give better performance. The business should fulfil the legal elements of workers such as societal and psychological needs that they are the main part of hotel and work to achieve goals and objectives.
The job satisfaction factors should be addressed by Human Resource Department that helps to reduce dissatisfaction towards work and motivate employees in the firm. In addition to this, training and development programs should be organised by manager according to the needs in order to improve and develop current skills and knowledge of workers. The significance of lifelong learning will appreciate their line of interest and also encourage them to acquire new and effective skills in that particular sector by focusing on growth.
1.3 Benefits of self-managed learning
There are a lot of benefits for self-managed learning to an assistant manager and the Travel Lodge which are described below:
Compatibility: The compatibility of self-managed learning is not that easy with the workers as they choose their own learning courses (Girvan, Conneely and Tangney, 2016). It is also easily accommodative in the existing training programmes of Travelodge like JUMP and GEM. A perfect blend of self-managed learning and significance of training programmes would be ideal and effective for employees.
Identify 'A' members: Self-managed learning will help to determine effective and efficient employees within firm, which are committed towards their individual work in order to achieve goals and objectives. Employees who are pursuing extra skills and knowledge will help to accomplish business objectives.
Cost effective: Self-managed learning ensures that workers are learning new things at own pace. Somehow, this will reduce the cost of hiring professionals for training and development programmes. Apart from this, it is also initiated that self-managed learning is cost effective as well as useful for both manager and employees.
Transfer of learning: Employees choose their own interest of work in which it is expected that the learning acquired by workers can be easily transferred when they end up discharging their job roles and duties effectively (Dimmock, 2016).
For an example, positive feedbacks from other employees and manager during the survey will help to show effectiveness of self-managed learning in employees. In addition to this, achievements achieved by workers at workplace will also help to evaluate importance of self-managed learning.
TASK 2
2.1 Evaluation of own current skills and competencies
There are some essential roles and responsibilities managed by an assistant manager which can be done by effective skills and knowledge. As an Assistant Manager of Travel lodge hotel, it is my duty to plan and organise accommodation, management of financial and non-financial activities, promoting business, analysing the sales figures, recruitment and selection, meeting customer needs, address troubleshooting and ensuring safety and security of employees as well as customers.
These qualities are pursued by an effective, skilled and knowledgeable person.
Evaluating self-management: Evaluation of my management is will in line. According to my determination I must require some attributes as a manager to manage my time well in business. The working skills and good and some requirements are there for time management skills.
Leadership skills: A manager should be an effective leader that it helps to motivate and encourage employees and their work that helps to increase productivity and profitability. I use systematic and situational leadership mostly that helps me to manage my team and their work in Travel lodge hotel group (Cox, Bachkirova and Clutterbuck, 2014).
Personal and interpersonal skills: According to my evaluation, I agreed with my interpersonal and personal skills. I am good at communicating and interacting with customers as well as employees within firm. This will help to understand things better and also increases relationship with others which is beneficial for hotel.
Communicator: I am a good communicator and understand things better and also describe things related to work or management of hotel easily to everyone (Walker and Spendlove, 2018). I personally feel that I would to learn the aspects of training youth before being able to discharge my duties as a Hotel Manager completely.
2.2 Identifying my own development needs and the activities required to meet them
There are some personal drawbacks and deficiencies which include an effective understanding of business financial plans and activities and also inability to tackle the youth contingent of Travel lodge especially during the training and development session effectively. There are so many ways from which I am able to develop and improve my skills and knowledge in the mentioned avenues:
Behavioral and personally profiling: I have to learn to be cordial and sensitive towards consumers and workers at all times that it will help me to manage and control my attitude to young employees. Several exercises will be pursued by me to change my mental position and to develop at workplace (Lam, Kruger and Tennant, 2014). I will undertake these needs in order to gain my knowledge and improve my skills.
Supervision and management development: Seminars, conferences, e-modules and other ways such as reading motivational books will help me to improve my leadership skills as an assistant manager within the Travel lodge hotel group. I will also aim to improve my interpersonal skills to focus on collaboration activities with employees.
Business coaching: A session or coaching with a fully professional business coach will help my face-to-face confidence activities or telephonic in nature effectively. This will also help me to manage my financial budget and plans in the business. The coach will also provide information to become a leader become employees to manage their work and profitability for Travel lodge hotel group efficiently.
2.3 Development opportunities to meet your current and future defined needs
In order to become a successful manager in the future, there are a lot of considerable opportunities for me (Kennedy, 2016). As mentioned earlier, I have some drawbacks and biggest avenues in the field of managing budget and financial plans within Travel lodge hotel group. There are a lot of development opportunities and objectives are coming to become a successful hotel manager. I develop my competencies for the future needs of managing my attitude towards communicating with subordinates effectively. The financial management is also good just because of substantial knowledge in finance. It can be said that it is possible to earn post of manager in a hotel but it would require effective and considerable knowledge to manage the financial and non-financial activities to achieve objectives and goals.
Inside opportunities within Travel lodge hotel group include asking assistance and from other senior managers within firm to make extra interaction with youth continents to have a better understanding of their development programs and psyche (Chee, Mehrotra and Ong, 2015). In addition to this, there are a lot of opportunities outside as well such as development programs organised by managers based on learning and leadership sessions, behavioral and personality team building qualities and stories of a successful manager will help to create a motivational thinking. Live example of a successful entrepreneur and businessman present and experiences will also give some useful ideas to develop my own personality. This will help to me achieve accomplish success in my future of becoming a manager effectively. I will also aim to improve my interpersonal skills to focus on collaboration activities with employees. I will undertake these needs in order to gain my knowledge and improve my skills. With the help of fully professional business coach, my face-to-face confidence activities or telephonic in nature will improve.
2.4 Personal and professional development plan based on identified needs.
My professional and personal development plan will focus on the following aspects:
Stage 1. Analysis (What are my needed skills.?)
The stage of analysis deals with a personal analysis of skills that are required for competencies effectively. One of the most important factor that I realise that it should be improved is my management towards planning and budgeting activities. The problem is generated from childhood due to the lack of inherent weakness in numerical and figures. There are some other aspects which requires improvement such as inter-relationship and personal skills and to have a better attitude within Travel lodge hotel.
Stage 2. Setting objectives and goals (How I will develop my needed skills.?)
Setting goals and objectives is a stage where I deal with methods required to develop these needs (Johnson, Prescott and Lyon, 2017). There are a lot of ways such as consistent development through module based learning session, improvement of behavioural and profiling with team building modules effectively. In addition to this, Seminars, conferences, e-modules and other ways such as reading motivational books will help me to improve my leadership skills as an assistant manager within Travel lodge hotel group.
Stage 3. Personal objectives (when are you going to develop intended skills.?)
My aim will be to learn all the development and fundamental activities of managing financial and budget plans as per the discussion made in hotel. The post of manager in Travel lodge hotel is now my main concentration to set the next promotion criteria. The attitude and perception on the youth require changing as soon as possible in order to stand a chance of working here as company objectives and goals effectively.
TASK 3
3.1 Procedures and activities required to implement the development plan
There are different activities and procedures are involved in order to implement the plan developed as per the answer given above in 2.4.
Management development procedures: I will manage myself in different programs organised in management development programmes that are in ways like Seminars, conferences, e-modules etc. The focus will be on enhancing my interpersonal skills and knowledge (Cullingford, 2017).
Business coaching: The coaching of business refers to the detail training session of various aspects of management by a professional business leader or coach. The coach will also provide information to become a leader become employees to manage their work and profitability for Travel lodge hotel group efficiently. In addition to this, it will improve regular interaction with financial and budget plans.
Personality profiling: Shortcomings and deficiencies in the field of co existing and tackling with employees in the firm can be addressed by taking activity of personality profiling. This will help me to get attuned towards work ethics and psyche. This will also help me to manage and administer workers at workplace even better and effectively. By undertaking these activities, procedures and activities I am easily able to implement development plan which I prepared earlier.
3.2 Undertake and document development activities as planned
The development plan can be easily prepared and implemented successfully by carrying out all the activities discussed previously. Business coaching, management of development programs and personality profiling are the previous procedures. There are some additional activities as well such as module based learning session, team building modules etc. The different steps of implementation are described below:
Skill assessment: Conducting assessment will help to quantified drawbacks on the avenues of financial and budgeting issues (Pennington and Richards, 2016). This will be done by regular providing inputs towards different situations regarding finance and budget plan by business coach. The feedbacks provided by them will also help to determine amount of backwardness on particular topic.
Establishing development objectives: The purpose of development will help me to motivate and encourage towards missing skills and attributed required for the proper improvement and development within management of Travel Lodge hotel. It will also help to understand importance of different training and development programmes effectively. This will produce subjective results for myself to these programmes.
Monitoring and revision: When I was practising my skills and developing attributes, I subjected myself under effective monitoring of business coach and other teachers. The consent revision of amount learned and skill set development will also help to assess how well or bad I actually was. This will help me to meet my high standards and of management practices inside the business.
These are the three stages incorporated with all the development and training programmes in which I subjected myself under the coaching provided by professionals and programmes organised for training and development towards e-modules and module based learning.
3.3 Own learning against original aims and objectives set in the development plan
The aim and objective set in the development plan previous were to attain attributes regarding interpersonal and behavioural skills so that I can easily co-exist with employees in the firm to become effective manager that helps to lead and guide them. Understanding fundamental of budget and financial activities is one of the most important factor to make concentration on post of manager in Travel lodge hotel effectively (Warr Pedersen, 2017). Some aspects are covered by me with the help of self-managed learning which helps me to stay focused on learning by collaboration and communication activities. The idea behind this is to manage and control employees with young age within business in order to guide them towards right direction so that they can use their skills and knowledge to the right place efficiently. It will also help to develop my collaborative work ethics. It also brought changes in my attitudes, perception and perspective regarding how I approached people belonging to different backgrounds and age groups.
It will not only help me to cope up with youth contingent at hotel but also increase my competencies so I can apply in real life as well. I acquired autonomous learning also from self-managed learning effectively. According to my perception it is important to concentrate on factors which are related to the previous learnings in order to learn and develop on individual basis and independent way. Thus, my self-managed learning against original aims and objectives set for the development plan is managed effectively with various dynamics and individual learning.
3.4 Updating the development plan
According to the feedbacks and evaluation there are some updates in the development plan has been made.
The program towards personal profiling development has been undertaken along with self-managed learning through various aspects such as autonomous and collaborative learning helped me to improve and develop my own behavioural factors to the youth continent in business. I also think that now I am able to work with young employees within the firm with any kind of background or age group. The initiative result towards development and learning I received as a result of developmental programmes in which I subjected myself to. The business coach also take evaluation of my business financial and budget skills and provided feedback that this part is still not completely clear for me and still requires improvement. The professional advised me to attend seminars and session in a particular two weeks time period in order to come out of this aspect from the beginning (SKOVHOLT and Jennings, 2017). It can be said that allocation of budget is an integrated part of business environment and thus, I am now attaining a business coaching class in every two weeks regarding financial and budget allocation within firm. The aim of coach and teachers is to create awareness between students regarding their mistakes and faults in order to enhance decision making skills in them.
The approach will also help to improve quality of work in cognitive process such as organisation, categories, evaluate and analysis well and effectively. Reflection is a factor that helps to lead towards complete analysis of self improvisation and experience. The process will help me to understand different behaviour and reaction to situations that helps to increase knowledge of a particular person and provide chances to improvised.
TASK 4
4.1 Solutions to work-based problems regarding employee turnover and customer care at Paramount Travel Hotel Ilford
Work based problems are very common in business where individuals for a team in order to achieve desired goals and objectives. Every individual is different towards his skills, style and preferences. The current situation of Paramount Travel Hotel Ilford is not effective due to the high employees turnover rate.
Identification of problem: The first step is to understand and determine issues defining the exact problem within business. In this step employees will provide different reviews with various issues such as salary, work pressure, immediate senior and other things from which they are not able to pay attention towards work.
Classification of problems: it is important to differentiate real issues with the personal interest of workers in order to gather all the views. Ineffective working structure of business creating work pressure and getting employees demotivated. Thus, the real reason behind hat should be addressed.
Evaluation process: The positive and negative impact should be considered while making evaluation. For the very first, we cannot fire workers and recruits new one to make situations better. Training and development programmes is an effective way to make aware workers aware of their performance from the business point of view. The work structure also should be directed towards future activities of firm.
Selection: The possible solution should be selected and implemented within firm. The objectives based on realistic conditions and design towards delegation of responsibilities and duties which will help to provide positive performance from employees.
Measurement: The solution is needed to be monitored in a certain and regular time period to measure the effectiveness and outcomes. In case of positive results, it should be followed ad if its not than the process will start again from the beginning.
4.2 How to improve customer care at Paramount Travel Hotel
Communication is an effective method hat helps to share information from one to another and the receiver should provide feedback to understand effectiveness of message and process. The objective of communication process is to ensure customer should understand what they expect and improve customer satisfaction. The style of communication is affected by two aspects which are described below:
The customer care executive should be effective enough to communicate well with customers of the hotel. The emotion level associated with communication can also convince customers towards the hotel. In addition to this, e-mails and other online activities should be checked in regular interval after clarifying issues with appropriate department. The message should be clear and specific for any kind of queries forwarded by the customers. Employees should assist customers patiently and then provide them exact information they needed. The reviews provided by customers should be addressed well that these are the improvement areas for business.
For an example, if any customer is facing issues on booking online and also give certain reviews based on that. The employee should observe the issues and try to fix it. In addition to this, management should organise meetings in which they should demonstrate factors that are affecting business and also provide solution for same. Employees should participate in management activities and decision making to coordinate with manager and other members in hotel effectively.
4.3 Time-management strategies to reduce employee turnover and improve customer care at Paramount Travel Hotel
There are a lot of strategies available for Paramount Travel hotel in order to reduce the employee turnover rate so that the customer care can be improved effectively and efficiently. Here are some of them explained below:
Flexibility: The manager should be flexible enough to deal with every situation within business as this is a hotel business and a lot of situations regarding management arises. The manager should be flexible enough to deal with them.
Team engagement: The manager should be an effective leader so that he can provide the work according to the skills and knowledge of employees. This will help them to keep engage in work in order to do work properly and effectively.
Growth opportunities: The manager should provide growth opportunities to employees within firm in terms of providing challenging work to them. This will help to increase their abilities and will reduce the chances of leaving firm.
Encouraging work: The manager should appreciate work done by employees which will help to encourage them towards hard work. This will be beneficial for firm in order to enhance profitability and productivity.
Setting objectives: Setting objectives for employees is one of the most important work of manager that it is crucial for them to know what they are working for and how to achieve it effectively.
Thus, time management skills and manager qualities will help Paramount Travel hotel to reduce its high employee turnover rate which will also help to assist customers more effectively and efficiently.
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CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that there are different approaches to self-managed learning such as strategic, collaborative, consensual, motivational and autonomous learning. It is analyzed that as a manager, encouraging staff towards lifelong learning will help to determine their interests and hobbies to acquire extra skills and competencies on those aspects. There are so many ways from which I am able to develop and improve my skills and knowledge in the mentioned avenues. In addition, One of the most important factor that I realise that it should be improved is my management towards planning and budgeting activities. Work based problems are very common in business where individuals for a team in order to achieve desired goals and objectives. Communication is an effective method that helps to share information from one to another. Finally, there are a lot of strategies available for Paramount Travel hotel in order to reduce the employee turnover rate such as flexibility, motivation and setting objectives etc.