RED Academy is Red Roof Inn Inc.’s learning management system (LMS), which launched in August 2014. RED Academy has been welcomed and embraced by the organization because it not only addressed many business goals but is also a pragmatic, easy-to-use, one-stop shop for the Inns. Prior to RED Academy, Red Roof Inn content was housed in many locations, including Sharepoint, shared corporate drives, e-mail, and desktops. New franchisees didn’t know where to go to get information, and Red Roof veterans were never sure if they had the most up-to-date version of what they needed.
Program Details
Each new employee hired at the Inn level is automatically enrolled in RED Academy as part of their orientation. New employees go through Red Roof’s standard training program, which guides them through each day of their training and directs them to required training documents, videos, and quizzes. Throughout their career with Red Roof, they will complete ongoing training on new initiatives, compliance, quality and service standards, and development assigned by their managers.
Managers are required to attend two weeks of management training. All reading assignments, online activities, forms, quizzes, videos, and final examination are housed and tracked on RED Academy. Integrating RED into the Management Training program has been invaluable. The organization has been able to eliminate the manual grading of homework and quizzes, reduce the size of training manuals, and have one location for Corporate Managed and Franchise properties to go to for the most up-to-date material. And it is all tracked.
RED Academy has saved the company money by eliminating the need for home-based employees all over the U.S. to come to Columbus, OH, for mandatory compliance and diversity training through the use of online resources on these topics.
Red Roof values professional and personal development. Every employee is expected to achieve a minimum of 20 continuing education hours each year. RED is critical in building this culture of continuing education because it is the tracking mechanism for all of the training; it also houses all of Red Roof’s recorded Webinars, custom videos, e-learning modules, and off-the-self content provided by the company’s vendor. All of the tracking was built in a hierarchy to report on training by topic, region, position, corporate, and franchise.
Results
RED Academy has allowed Red Roof Inn to better correlate training initiatives with business metrics such as customer service scores, turnover, and increased revenue. The organization has realized improved retention, including retaining eight additional general managers (GMs), 116 Inn-level employees, and 39 call center employees over the prior year. RED Academy also has shown a return on investment in reducing the Manager in Training program by two days.
