EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR AKROMA PLAZA HOTEL

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Akroma Plaza Hotel has had to step up its service delivery efforts to be able to adequately deliver on its core mandate of service delivery as a hospitality establishment. The purpose of this project is to aid the hotel in the provision of unparalleled service delivery in the face of increasing customer expectations by proposing a structured employee training and development strategy. Ghana’s hospitality industry has been described as one of the major emerging markets in Africa and the atmosphere of the country encourages its development with a relatively conducive political atmosphere. However, aside being plagued with utility shortages and taxes, the industry faces the issue of a poorly qualified pool of labour, from which all hospitality establishments must recruit personnel. Located in Takoradi in Ghana’s Western Region, Akroma Plaza Hotel is one not excluded from this issue as it strives to attain heights in hospitality. Results of a needs assessment conducted on the establishment showed that employees were aware of their high-paced working environment and how uniquely work is carried out at Akroma Plaza Hotel. Accordingly, they felt training was extremely necessary. Although other issues such as inventory management and staff motivation were raised, it was recommended that a training and development strategy be proposed in the hopes that it would help curb some of the issues. Literature reviewed ascertained that training and developing employees resulted in reduced business costs and increased motivation of employees. The proposed solution is a two-part training and development strategy based on the works of Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart and Wright (1994) and Noe (2010). Limitations of the project included distance barriers and it was recommended that an inventory management system be developed