A Challenging Week

This week has presented some unexpected challenges. First of all, there have been some changes at the Wigwam. This week the management made the tough decision to lay off quite a few employees. This included people from many different departments and it came as a complete shock to everyone. Some of the employees that were laid off had been there for over 20 years! Most of them were salaried managers whose positions have now been completely eliminated for the time being. I know in this tough economy it isn’t out of the ordinary to have lay offs, but I guess somehow I didn’t think it had come to that point at the Wigwam because we have had an extremely busy January. Apparently the rest of the year is not looking as promising.

These layoffs are going to have a huge impact on the front desk. We lost our Front Desk Manager, which leaves us with two supervisors and our Director of Rooms. This is going to put a lot more strain on those three people. Many of the Front Desk and PBX Agents have already expressed their concerns about losing a leader. They are worried that the support that they need won’t be there. Hopefully in my role as the Front Desk Trainer I can provide some of the support that they will be looking for.

We had another challenge present itself mid-week. We have had a group called Case IH staying with us all month long. They sell large farm equipment so we have a few multi-million dollar pieces of farm equipment stationed on our front lawn. This totally changes the look of the resort because it is the first thing you notice when you drive into the property. All month long, however, Case IH has been the only big group on property so this hasn’t been a big deal. Well this week that all changed. We had another group, Insight Communications, that brought 102 people to our resort for their annual meeting. Apparently they were not aware that there was going to be farm equipment on the front lawn and when the group contacts arrived, they flipped out (understandably). Luckily for us, we had a couple of days before the rest of the group arrived so we were able to come up with a solution. We decided to do a “satellite” registration desk. We pre-made all of the packets and keys for the arriving group members and set up a temporary registration desk at a scenic location on property. The buses coming from the airport dropped off the group members to this location. This meant that they did not drive through the front of the property, allowing us to prevent the group members from seeing the farm equipment. Obviously they will see the equipment if they walk around the property, but at least it wasn’t their first impression. And today one of the group contacts told me that she has heard from many of her group members that they felt like VIPs because we created a registration desk just for them. Talk about a complete turn around!

My New Roles

This week I began my new role as an intern at the Wigwam Golf Resort and Spa. I have been working there for the past three years so the location isn’t new to me, but my role has completely now completely changed. Up to this point I have been a front desk agent. Now I am doing two jobs- Front Desk Trainer and Executive Meeting Specialist.

The Front Desk Trainer role isn’t too far off from what I have been doing, but it is going to require quite a bit more work. I will be in charge of training all new Front Desk Agents and PBX Operators, as well as scheduling and conducting continuous training for the current employees. In addition, I will be creating a training manual for the two positions. This will be a binder with step by step instructions for just about every thing that we do at the Front Desk or in PBX. This is going to be a huge undertaking! I am very glad that I will have the opportunity to create it, though, because I have been pushing for some sort of training manual ever since I started three years ago.

The Executive Meeting Specialist role will be completely new to me. In this role I will be the liaison between the group contacts or meeting planners and the resort. I will spend my day checking meeting rooms and function space to make sure they are set properly, communicating with the group contacts to make sure they are satisfied, and solving any problems that arise. Basically I will be there to make sure all meetings and functions go smoothly and help wherever I am needed. I am very excited about this role because it will allow me to see how things are run “behind the scenes.” Right now I have a very general idea of what each department does (i.e. banquets, set up, audio visual) but in this role I will be working very closely with these departments so I hope to gain a better understanding of them. Eventually I think I would enjoy working in the Catering or Convention Services department and I think this experience will definitely be helpful.

This week I have spent most of my time learning about my new roles and what all will be expected of me. I’m just barely beginning what will be an exciting 14 weeks and I can’t wait to dive right in!