In his four months as a server at the Broadmoor, Clifford Cecil has been able to draw an unlikely comparison between his hotel and another Colorado Springs institution.

"I'm in the Air Force, and we do some intense training,” Cecil says. “I’ve worked on space operations, satellites, and missiles. It was really a shock to me how intense and detail-oriented the training here is.”

Cecil is talking about a program that goes beyond the usual first few weeks of food and beverage orientation. The Broadmoor offers as many as ten training classes a day, five days a week, all year long to its employees.

“I thought I would do my training, and that would be it. But I’m learning something every single day,” Cecil says.

BROADMOOR BASICS
The Broadmoor has been a Mobil Five-Star hotel since 1961 and a AAA Five-Diamond property since 1977, the longest run for both awards simultaneously in North America.

It has been a vacation stop for presidents, dignitaries, movie stars, musicians, and moguls for more than 89 years.

It recently won three Wine Spectator awards and boasts a restaurant that Esquire magazine called “The Best New Design” of 2006.

But ask anyone working there how this success is sustained, and they’ll point to one thing.

“It’s a matter of ongoing training. Some hotels do a great job, but what I’ve observed is the training is done on the front end, and the follow-up is not there,” says Craig Reed, director of food and beverage, the Broadmoor.

TRAINING WHEELS IN MOTION
At many hotels, human resources is often on the sharp end of a pair of scissors when it comes to budgets. That results in training programs that are limited to new-employee orientation and the occasional “change in brand standards” classes when new management takes over.

At the Broadmoor, five-star and five-diamond ratings can be traced to a true financial and logistical commitment to HR.

“If one of our department heads gets a call from either our CFO or president and says, ‘Can you tell me why you’re over budget?’ All they have to say is, ‘I did this many hours of staff training,’ and that’s fine,” says Danielle Roberts, director of training, the Broadmoor. “It’s a matter of understanding that there is an ROI on it. Sixty percent of our guests are repeat guests. That means they know what to expect and they’re coming back for more.”

Going beyond orientation also means having a full-time food and beverage training coordinator who develops, tweaks, and executes more than two dozen classes throughout the year.

“Anything that touches food or beverage in the hotel is my focus,” says Erica Murphy, food and beverage training manager, the Broadmoor. “I do everything from convention services to banquets, room service, back-of the-house, front-of-the-house, all of the restaurants, golf cart attendants, pool attendants, coffee shops, and more.”

SETTING COURSE
With a full-time food and beverage training coordinator setting the agenda, the Broadmoor has a daily cycle of food and beverage-focused classes held Monday through Friday during the year.

While most are mandatory for new hires during orientation, existing employees are expected to regularly take additional courses, which helps to reinforce the award-winning standards throughout the property.

A typical Thursday on the training calendar might look like this:

• Coffee and Tea Service (11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M.)
• Beverage Orientation (12:00 P.M.–1:30 P.M.)
• Knife Safety (1:00 P.M.–2:00 P.M.)
• Seat and Greet (2:00 P.M.–3:00 P.M.)
• InfoGenesis [point-of-sale software] (3:00 P.M.–4:00 P.M.)
• Kitchen Equipment Training (3:00 P.M.–4:30 P.M.)
• English as a Second Language (4:30 P.M.–6:00 P.M.)

“We just had a chef who left for a while and came back, and he’s going through the same classes now as someone who’s brand new to the industry,” says Murphy.

The courses aren’t limited to staff. Food and beverage management has ongoing training all year long as well. These classes for management include:

• Preventing Harassment for Managers and Supervisor
• Selecting Exceptional People
• Emergency Procedures Training
• Conflict Resolution for Managers and Supervisors
• Staffing and Scheduling
• Financial Reporting
• Understanding Employment Law

During a busy season, there is always the risk of disrupting the flow of regular hotel business when staff and management must take time out to attend classes. But those at the Broadmoor say schedules are always changed to accommodate training.

“The Mobil Five-Stars and AAA Five- Diamonds are not Hall of Fame awards. You have to earn it every day, so there must be constant awareness,” says Reed. “We discipline ourselves to schedule these classes, and they’re mandatory.”

A TEAM EFFORT
To create and execute a daily multipleclass schedule like the Broadmoor’s requires a time commitment many hotels won’t afford their HR departments.

“On average, it takes about eight hours of preparation for every hour of facilitation time,” Roberts says.

It’s not just HR’s responsibility at the Broadmoor, though. Course creation can involve the input of staff supervisors, like the chefs and food and beverage management.

“The knife safety and kitchen training classes, for example, all came from the chefs,” says Murphy. “They said, ‘We want to lower injury rates and instill a more standardized set of knowledge in the kitchen.’ So I said to them, ‘What are the top ten things you want people to know when they come into your kitchens?’ And we took it from there.”

SELECTIVELY SEARCHING
An extensive course curriculum and full backing from management are only part of the training equation at the Broadmoor. Having the patience to find and hire the right employees is another key ingredient to their success.

“You can teach a chicken to climb a tree, but wouldn’t it be easier to hire a squirrel?” says Roberts. She says the extra effort to find the perfect fit results in a highly trainable and focused staff, which drives the circular success of better service, happier guests, return business, and industry awards for the property. “Only about 25 percent of our applicants are even passed on to a second interview, so we already set the bar really high.”

“We hire as much on personality, a positive attitude, and how they are going to fit into our team as we do on their previous experience,” Reed says.

GLOBAL GATHERING
Because application standards are tight at the Broadmoor, those who do the hiring are expected to look far beyond a stack of résumés for the right person.

“I steal from competition every single time I go out to eat if it’s worth it,” says Roberts. “I’ve got business cards ready and I say, ‘Come and talk to me.’”

“We have to be creative with how we recruit talent,” says Murphy. “We will travel throughout the world to get them here in order for us to operate on this level.”

Global recruitment is the job of David Driscoll, assistant director of food and beverage. For the past eight years, he’s taken two and a half months from September through November to visit schools worldwide where the right candidates might be discovered.

“We go to Argentina, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, England, Scotland, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Croatia,” says Driscoll. “We travel to all these countries where we’ve made connections directly with colleges. We don’t go to career fairs or present ourselves as just another booth at a convention.”

“I know we’re doing well with it because most kids stay the 18 months that our program lets them stay here,” he adds.

The regular influx of international employees in food and beverage has resulted in a two-day course focusing solely on proper pronunciation of culinary terminology. The goal is to ensure consistency when communicating with the customer and front and back of the house about menu items and kitchen equipment.

“They know what an eggplant is in their country, for example. But they may call it aubergine,” says Murphy. “When you get into a kitchen and time is tight and someone asks where the speed rack of eggplants is, there’s confusion because of a language barrier. So it’s really helpful for them to understand.”

REPETITION AND RECOGNITION
There is one language everyone at the Broadmoor is expected to speak fluently: Mobil and AAA service standards. The Broadmoor incorporates those, as well as their own service standards, into a two-day program called Keeping the Stars.

“We’re running a marathon, and it’s about the distance,” says Roberts. “So we talk about the focus it takes for us to earn and keep those awards.”

For food and beverage employees, the training is further refined into a program called Five Stars of Food and Beverage. In class, employees receive a foundation of Mobil, AAA, and Broadmoor food and beverage service standards, like knowing that a cocktail should be served within five minutes after a guest orders one while seated at a table, or that a diner should be checked on two to three minutes after a dish is served to them.

The Broadmoor then expands that information into daily reminders during pre-shift meetings, which they call their Quest for Excellence.

The training coordinator provides managers with a standard per day, such as: “Never appear hurried, even if you are very busy.” During preshift, the manager points out an employee who recently performed that standard correctly.

“I think the big thing is the daily repetition,” says Roberts. “It’s not something they’re only going to hear once.”

SELLING IT
Even with a structured, yet flexible, training curriculum, there is always the chance some employees could be skeptical and not buy into the program.

“You have to sell it. Just like our recruitment team sells the position, we’re selling the need for service,” says Roberts. “We can’t be those HR people who come around and play hip-hip-hooray. You have to show employees what that framework looks like, and you have to do it every day.”

Part of “selling it” includes showing employees examples of how they won’t make as many tips or additional money in the future if service standards aren’t met. The connection to their wallets usually makes an impression.

“If you have not set your own standards,” says Reed, “employees will set theirs, and you’re going to have a group of employees who will take shortcuts.”

NO FINISH LINE
Food and beverage stability at the top—Reed has been at the Broadmoor for 16 years, Executive Chef Siegfried Eisenberger for 15 years, and Driscoll for 22 years—along with a firmly established culture, lets the Broadmoor send a clear training signal to employees.

“The downfall of a lot of organizations is often that standards come and go with different management,” Reed says.

That signal is loud and clear to Cecil, who will go through more than 250 hours of training in his first year at the Broadmoor, including a rotation through every position in the Penrose Room restaurant to understand how they all fit together to keep the operation running properly.

“You’re trained so much and so often that it’s just second nature. I don’t even worry about it anymore,” says Cecil. “It’s simple because of all the training.”