Quality and L&D Manager

JOB SUMMARY
The Quality and Learning & Development Manager is responsible for leading the property's quality assurance and learning strategy to drive exceptional guest experiences, employee engagement, and operational excellence. The role implements and oversees quality assurance processes, ensuring alignment with the company's mission, vision, brand standards, and customer expectations, while championing a culture of continuous improvement and change. Simultaneously, the position is responsible for identifying training and development needs, designing, delivering, and evaluating learning initiatives that enhance employee skills, performance, career growth, and organizational effectiveness. The role ensures that all learning and development activities are strategically linked to business objectives, quality standards, and service excellence goals, while fostering employee satisfaction, capability building, and a high-performance culture across the property.

CANDIDATE PROFILE  

Education and Experience

•    Tertiary Qualification from an accredited university in Human Resources, Hotel Management, Hospitality, Business Administration, or related major; 
•    2 years experience in management operations, learning and development, human resources or related professional area
•    Proficient in MS Office and Learning Management Systems (LMS); Familiarity with e-learning platforms and practices
•    Extensive experience and/or knowledge of hotel business and effective learning and development methods
•    Facilitation skills and experience with SDF processes - Knowledge of training design, development, and delivery
•    Excellent communication and presentation skills
•    Strong interpersonal skills
•    Experience with Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) & Annual Training Report (ATR) submission

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES
Managing Quality Assurance Goals 
•    Accountable for achieving and maintaining the property's Guest Satisfaction Score (GSS) at the established target level
•    Attends daily management meetings to give real time updates on hotel performance, address guest incidences and attends monthly department meetings to enhance quality training.
•    Presents and shares weekly analysis on defect trends, guest feedback and provides recommendations on focus areas.
•    Coordinates a weekly quality meeting focusing on guestVoice, top incidents, and business standard audits.
•    Records, tracks, and communicates the progress of quality related activities in the hotel to executive committee members, managers and associates.
•    Facilitates problem solving meetings to verify the systematic process is adhered to and quality tools are used, with the intent to achieve resolution. 
•    Facilitates process improvement teams, verifying use of the systematic processes, and improvement is achievable and measurable.
•    Immerses in operations to better understand issues/defects faced on the ground.
•    Drives several initiatives for business standard audits and guestvoice.
•    Conducts monthly audit to verify compliance with company and brand standards.
•    Makes and executes the necessary decisions to keep property moving forward toward achievement of goals.
•    Directs property quality efforts to address critical customer requirements.
•    Completes other reasonable duties as requested by leadership.

Managing the Guest Experience 
•    Reviews guest feedback with leadership team and verifies appropriate corrective action is taken.
•    Incorporates guest satisfaction as a component of departmental meetings with a focus on continuous improvement.
•    Stays visible and interfaces with customers on a regular basis to obtain feedback on quality of product, service levels, and overall satisfaction.
•    Supports operational leaders in the response and handling of guest feedback, problems, and complaints on various platforms (social media, TripAdvisor, etc.).

Administering Learning and Development
•    Promotes and informs employees about all training programs.
•    Displays leadership in guest hospitality, exemplifies excellent customer service and creates a positive atmosphere for guest relations.
•    Helps employees identify specific behaviors that will contribute to service excellence.
•    Uses effective training methods to ensure employees have a good understanding of guest satisfaction and can demonstrate guest satisfaction skills.
•    Meets with departmental trainers on a regular basis to support training efforts.
•    Observes service behaviors of employees and provides feedback to individuals and/or managers.
•    Oversee LPA performance, goal-setting, and development plans
•    Maintain DLZ (LMS) and ensures associates are assigned to the correct job function and AWR for learning interventions.
•    Track and monitor DLZ dashboard to highlight performance such as non participants, top performers, overdue and due soon.
•    Support Learning Bundle awareness and encourage enrollments in learning interventions.
•    Manage end to end Accelerate programme for the property.
•    Track and log all attendance registers, maintain training reports, filing and administration.

Evaluating Training Programs Effectiveness
•    Meets regularly with participants to assess progress and address concerns.
•    Partners with operational leaders to assess if employees demonstrate effective technical and leadership skills.
•    Reviews comment cards, guest satisfaction results and other data to identify areas of improvement.
•    Measures transfer of learning from training courses to the operation.

Developing and Executing Training Program Plans 
•    Ensures all training and development activities (department specific and general property training) are strategically linked to the organization’s mission and vision.
•    Identifies performance gaps and works with managers to develop and implement appropriate training interventions that improve employee and service performance.
•    Makes any necessary adjustments to training methodology and/or re-trains as appropriate.
•    Aligns current training and development programs to effectively impact key business indicators.
•    Establishes guidelines so employees understand expectations and parameters.
•    Drives brand values and philosophy in all training and development activities.

Managing Training Budgets
•    Participates in the development of the Training budget as required.
•    Manages budget in alignment with Human Resources and property financial goals.
•    Manages department controllable expenses to achieve or exceed budgeted goals.

Compliance:
•    Ensure all Learning & Development activities comply with BBBEE, Employment Equity and Skills Development legislation
•    Annual submission and monitoring of Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) & Annual Training Report (ATR).  
•    Ensure allocation and management of SETA funding for training interventions and Training Needs Assessment
•    Collaborate with leaders and employees to understand performance challenges and areas for development.
•    Ensure training has been rolled out as per BSA requirements and submit BSA pre-work for audit purposes. Work on shortcomings and remedy as required.

Stakeholder Collaboration:
•    Work closely with HR and management to align training initiatives with business strategies.
•    Foster strong working relationships with key stakeholders to ensure training objectives are met.
•    Manage end to end tertiary institute/school requests such as WIL placements, Job shadow, career fairs etc.
•    Present Learning and Development overview in Bi-monthly townhall, bi-monthly ARC meeting and in Departmental meetings.