Measuring training effectiveness: a case study of the palace hotel, Dubai

Abstract

Business organizations nowadays may have the money and the resources to succeed but their people may not be ready to work professionally. It doesn't matter how many office buildings and production facilities the organization has, without proper Human Resource management, the business will fail. This is most relevant in the hospitality sector which is a labor intensive industry, highly reliant on well-trained employees. Different trainings, seminars and workshops are very popular in all businesses fields. Business organizations, such as hotels, are investing money in their personnel. It needs saying that such investments yield positive results, however one can talk about positive results only in case these trainings are professionally organized and efficiently conducted and evaluated. Taking into account the above said, training sessions must be evaluated to measure their effectiveness. The thesis will highlight this issue and will examine whether the effectiveness of training programs can be measurable. The case study will be conducted in one of the luxurious hotels of Dubai, The Palace Hotel - The Old Town. The aim is to experience what happens after a training program is conducted. First, if universal practices of training evaluation are used, how much practical and valid they are? And second what is the limit that the evaluators reach and how can the researcher upgrade the evaluation process to a new level? To be able to arrive to a conclusion, a thorough analysis is conducted based on interviews, training evaluation analysis reports and financial sheets whose results will be utilized to answer the researcher's questions. The analysis will be compiled in the five levels process which mostly fits the objective of this research study. This five levels process will be the quantitative approach for understanding how training effectiveness can be measured in The Palace Hotel. At the end of the study, the researcher will be able to come up with recommendations to direct business organizations, specifically in the lodging industry, on how to conduct effective training programs.