Sandals Resorts International

Phillip Brown
Group Director, HR Training & Service Standards, Sandals Resorts International, Jamaica.

Speaking at the HR/training team briefing Sandals Montego Bay, 01 April, 2009.

A vision for GULL at Sandals Resorts International

‘To engage with an educational institution outside the work environment is difficult – you have to find the time and more importantly, you need to have the cash. GULL offers an affordable degree – when we turn the workplace into a business school. If you had to do the same programme at an external facility, you’d have to find the time – and you don’t have that time! The opportunity with GULL to ‘pay as you go’ at successive levels is phenomenal because the alternative (conventional education) requires a significant up-front investment. You may be paying off the loan for five years or more – long after you have hung the certificate on your office wall – so you need a good job to support it. GULL doesn’t operate like that – it offers a genuinely affordable, recognized degree.

Our role in HR and training is to facilitate the development of our team members so that they grow in confidence, realize who they are, how they contribute and how they can continue improving. GULL’s action learning process is drawing us closer together as we embark on this journey – it changes the lives of human beings. We are seeing transformed team members and they can’t keep it to themselves because they want others to experience this too. We are the custodians and champions for GULL in every resort – enabling and encouraging our team members to engage in lifelong, workplace learning.

The GULL process initiates and drives a cycle of professional growth - reflecting, reviewing, correcting and improving – using the experience from action learning to create a better future. Our team members work long and hard in our resorts … we will use action learning to find a different way. Our aim is to work smarter but not harder.’