Radisson Edwardian Case Study

Company

Radisson Edwardian Hotels

Business Sector

Hospitality

Employees

2,189

Region

London

Company profile

Radisson Edwardian Hotels is a collection of luxury 5-star hotels with its main concentration of properties in central London.

The skills challenge

Radisson Edwardian Hotels has always been enthusiastic about training. The group is determined to give its staff opportunities to improve their skills and gain recognised qualifications, increasing their chances for promotion.

As a major employer with staff spread across 13 properties, Radisson Edwardian Hotels has diverse training needs. Training providers often approach the group offering their services, but People Development Director Omar Ismail wanted a single source of training expertise to help Radisson Edwardian make the most of its training efforts. That's why the group chose to work with Train to Gain.

How Train to Gain helped

Through Train to Gain, Omar met Jayne Raftery, a skills broker and Director with special expertise in the needs of larger employers. She helped Radisson Edwardian to form a deeper relationship with one of their current training providers, hospitality experts Straight A Training, who began work to embed National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) into existing internal training programmes.

Omar and Jayne organised Train to Gain roadshows at the hotels to get the staff on board with the training scheme. The roadshows were a great success. "We've been very impressed with the enthusiasm of the staff in taking up the skills training options available to them," says Jayne.

Within months, 15 members of staff completed NVQs in Customer Service, Professional Cooking and Management. For one staff member, an NVQ was an instant path to promotion from kitchen porter to a front office position.

Omar is delighted with the training programme and optimistic about the future. "We have a large number of staff to get to NVQ Level 2 and that's a huge task," he says, "but we're getting there."

Business benefits of the training

The new training programme at Radisson Edwardian Hotels is well suited to the needs of a large employer and delivers a range of business benefits.

• Skilled, confident staff - well able to provide a 5-star standard service.
• Increased motivation - staff are enthused by the opportunity to gain recognised qualifications.
• An innovative future - a deeper relationship with a training provider paves the way for flexible and innovative training to meet future needs..

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