Last year the Antlers was the honored recipient of the Vail Valley Partnership’s Community Impact Award and then this year our own General Manager, Magdalena King won the Hospitality Professional of the Year. These awards are not just a reflection of the culture fostered at the Antlers, but also a refection of the dedication of Antlers employees. Many members of the Antlers team go home after a long day’s work to study math, read a book or do homework with the goal of bettering themselves and their community.
Several years ago Magdalena initiated a partnership with the Literacy Project and then subsequently with the Vail Library to provide the Antlers housekeeping team with the resources to be able to learn English and to be able to advance their education. Since then several members of the Antlers housekeeping team have gone on to earn their GED and all have been learning English and participating in a book club. Because of their dedication to these programs they were selected to receive leadership training through Voice of Adult Learners United to Educate (VALUEUSA). In May VALUEUSA brought instructors to the Antlers to provide our housekeeping team face-to-face training to help them become better leaders in the community. They learned critical thinking skills, organizational skills, priority setting and more.
Both the Antlers front desk team and maintenance team have followed lead in starting up book clubs. The front desk has read a handful of books and engineering just got started with their book club, having now completed reading and discussing the management style in “The One-Minute Manager.”
The cumulative effect of many different Antlers employee programs … book club, English classes, a financial education series presented in Spanish, and others … play an instrumental role in some of our staff’s decision to go back to school, get their GED and effectively change their lives forever.