Executive Housekeeping Today - February 2008 - (Page 14) Training Foreign-Born Workers at Your Facility As we all know, being an executive housekeeper is a difficult job. You must train and educate employees, organize budgets, keep up-to-date on the best products and procedures—the list could go on and on. Couple this with the fact that many housekeeping employees are from a variety of countries all around the world, and it makes the tasks of standardizing, training, and communicating even more difficult as a manager in any type of facility. Luckily, with the help of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses, buddy systems, and video/photo/computer training aids, housekeeping departments around the globe are finding it much easier to communicate with a by Laura M. DiGiulio, Editor each other, come together as a cohesive unit, and even feel at home. ESL, Buddy Systems, and Training Aids In order to improve communication and the quality of cleanliness within your department, ESL classes can be taught by a teaching professional or by a staff member at your facility. Although teaching the classes in-house is less expensive, you have to make sure that the staff member teaching the class is motivated and has time to focus on it. “My department sponsors a weekly ESL class for staff that utilizes an outside-hired profes- sional ESL educator,” says Jeff McGee, Director of Housekeeping at the University of Maryland. His 70-plus staff includes members from Barbados, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, Eritrea, Germany, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Japan, Laos, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vietnam. “Staff that attends ESL is selected by each area supervisor by utilizing an ‘ability criteria worksheet.’ The selected staff are then graded and evaluated as they attend the class and advance through Foreign-born workers from the University of Maryland pose with their outside-hired professional ESL educator (pictured front) at last year’s ESL graduation. 4 Executive Housekeeping Today/February 2008
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