How To Strengthen Your Workforce Through Student Work Experience
In the recent Better Work Action Plan, released by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, education and fit-for-purpose training was identified as a pillar for improving our tourism and hospitality workforce. In particular, the plan mentions a "stronger channel of communication between the industry itself and the education ecosystem" as a key action.
Go with Tourism recently spoke to Catherine Langdale, HR Manager for Chateau on the Park - DoubleTree Hilton in Christchurch, about their long-time connection with local tourism and hospitality schools, how it benefits them, and how other operators could easily follow suit…
Catherine, please tell us how Chateau on the Park works with education providers?
We’ve worked with a number of providers, for a number of years in all sorts of manners. We can offer any kind of work experience package by catering to any requirement from the school or student. For example, we can do a half-day, an observation experience, a week, a day a week for a term, or we employ part-time staff who are currently students.
Most notably, we offer a scholarship through Lincoln University. The Chateau on the Park Scholarship is offered to a student who demonstrates a commitment to the hotel industry and their studies associated with it. (Please see Chloe’s video below, who is the current scholarship winner).
How does work experience benefit students and businesses?
Students get an opportunity to see how everything works behind-the-scenes. Hotels can be seen as glamourous, so it’s a reality check when you realise how busy and operational they are. Through work experience, students get to have a taste of what our work is like and what happens across all the different departments.
There are a lot of advantages for the business for bringing on students for work experience or to hire graduates. It’s a wonderful opportunity to train someone exactly the way we want them to be. In a hospitality environment, what we really rely on is personality and reliability and then we can train the skills we need.
How do you welcome students onboard and manage them?
Onboarding students coming in for work experience does depend on how long they’re here for, for example, if they’re simply doing an “observational day” then we don’t need to onboard them as they’ll just be shadowing particular team members. However, if they’re here for a longer period of time then we’d cater their onboarding process depending on how “green” they are.
Typically, every work experience student is buddied up with a staff member to help guide their transition into the workplace. As HR, we’ll monitor their progress by checking in with their buddy, the manager they’re reporting to, or just chatting with them and seeing how they’re going. We just ensure the communications channels are always open.
At the end of the day, we like to treat them just like any other team member.
Should other tourism and hospitality businesses should offer work experience opportunities and what should their first step be?
It they can, they 100% should. We have an obligation to maintain a sustainable workforce in the industry. We seem to complain that we’re not getting the candidates we want, so we need to put the effort in to change this, which can be done by reaching out to your local tourism and hospitality schools and seeing how you can work together. You don’t have to commit to anything too big, you can cater work experiences packages however you like. It’s easy to just dip your toe in first.
What is your top tip for working with younger generations?
Be flexible. Particularly in hotels, we seem to have an old school way of thinking – that we need to work 100 hours a week – but new generations don’t want this. So, we need to be ready to adapt our working environment to suit the needs of our workers.