People's Stories | Tracy Notman

People from all over the world visit Skyline Rotorua to ride the luge or the gondolas each year. Keeping these people safe and ensuring they have a consistent, top-quality experience is key to the ongoing success of this busy tourism business.

Tracy Notman is the woman responsible for ensuring Skyline’s 90 staff (130 over summer) are up to standard in terms of their job skills and attitude to customer service. She is the organisation’s HR and Quality Manager. Her role includes overseeing workplace training, including the facilitation of relevant ATTTO qualifications.

Staff that come into the business, including staff employed for the peak season, are put through ATTTO’s Customer Experience Award.

Tracy says this is a big investment for Skyline, in terms of both registration fees and training time, but it sets the standard for service expectations for the busy summer season.

“It’s about what we get out of it,” she says. “We want them to think of every customer as a sale.”

The investment in training for seasonal staff is also a way to help encourage staff to return the following year. Tracy stays in touch with seasonal staff outside of the peak season, encouraging them to come back to Skyline over the summer.

Skyline also has three younger staff members currently working through the Modern Apprentice (MA) programme with ATTTO.

Staff interested in doing a Modern Apprenticeship apply to Tracy direct. She selects four to go through the programme each year – two from the food and beverage side of the business and two from the activities side (chairlifts/luge). The programme takes most trainees around 18 months to complete.

Tracy sees the MA programme as an investment in staff who have strong potential for promotion within the business.

“We also have two management trainees on site every year and they enrol in the Modern Apprenticeship program. At the end of their training program they are placed at a supervisory level - so what we look to do is to train them to keep the standard but also to promote them within the business.”

MA’s receive additional funding from Government through the Tertiary Education Commission, which means ATTTO will meet with trainees and their employers four times per year. But Tracy says she also makes the effort to meet with them regularly to make sure their learning is on track, and to offer any extra support.

“I have an open door policy. If anyone comes to my door I’ll stop what I’m doing and I’ll help them and they know that. I think that’s the only way it can work.”

Skyline has worked with ATTTO to benchmark its own training against nationally recognised qualifications, which makes it easier to ensure staff get certification without having to do a lot of extra training in-house.

As well as maintaining a high standard of customer service across the business Tracy says training is about giving staff opportunities and showing that the company is prepared to invest in their growth.

“A lot of people want to work for us because we offer qualifications,” she says.

Many of the Skyline team will not have done previous study or training and Tracy says it’s an honour to be able to hand over certificates to staff when they complete the qualifications.

“A lot of staff come to us and they want to do the formal training - and it’s a lot of work because it is assessment based training.

“They sometimes struggle with it but we push through it and we work together, and it's great seeing them being able to achieve something. I think they think, ‘Oh my god I never thought I was actually going to be able to do this!’”