Michelle L. McDonald optimizes the performance of people in small to medium-sized businesses, aligning their people development strategy with organizational goals to improve customer service. With over 20 years of experience encompassing being an HR Consultant and Operational Manager across various sectors in the Caribbean, including Tourism, Government, and Financial Services, Michelle has honed her skills in:
• Organisational Design & Strategic HR Planning: Expertise in restructuring organizations, developing strategic HR plans, and budgeting.
• Learning & Development: Proficient in creating and delivering training programmes to enhance workforce capabilities.
• Leadership & Emotional Intelligence: Strong leadership skills with a focus on emotional intelligence and effective communication.
• Performance Management & Work Planning: Skilled in developing performance management systems, job descriptions, and work plans.
• Recruitment & Onboarding: Extensive experience in recruitment, selection, and onboarding processes.
• Business Acumen: Business acumen developed from various roles.
Career Highlights
As HR Manager at one of Grenada’s leading financial institutions, Michelle led various projects including service transformation, organisational redesign, job evaluation, and revision to the Collective Labour Agreement.
Prior to that, Michelle was HR Consultant at Grenada Investment Development Corporation (GIDC) and was instrumental in implementing the World Bank Group’s recommendations for organizational restructuring, setting up and operationalizing the Human Resources sub-unit, and managing recruitment and selection processes. She improved recruitment, onboarding, and offboarding systems, created new positions, developed job profiles and managed multiple staff roles. Michelle also provided technical assistance during union negotiations, as well as implemented service standards and employee learning and development programmes. One such programme was a strategic partnership with St George’s University to deliver a certificate programme at GIDC, which was the first time the university was delivering a certificate course offsite.
During her tenure at Spice Island Beach Resort spanning 12 years. Michelle recruited, developed, and continuously trained employees in customer service excellence, contributing to the resort being awarded the AAA Five Diamond rating in 2016, the first hotel to achieve that standard in Grenada.
She has delivered training sessions in customer service excellence, train-the-trainer and leadership in her native Jamaica, as well as in Trinidad, St Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Grenada, where she is currently based. Equally comfortable in the classroom as in the workplace, Michelle has lectured at tertiary level in England, Jamaica as well as in Grenada. She has also taught Tourism to Primary School students in Grenada.
Propelling organisations and people to optimise performance, Michelle will:
• assess clients’ needs relative to their vision, strategic goals and service philosophy;
• conduct audits of operations, service delivery and human resource systems to identify gaps;
• deliver customised training and business solutions to optimise performance at the organisational, departmental and individual levels; and
• support business owners in recruitment, change management and performance improvement interventions.
Academic and Professional Achievements
A CTO scholarship allowed Michelle to pursue a Master’s degree in Tourism & Hospitality Education at the highly ranked University of Surrey in England. She was awarded a distinction and subsequently, was published in an academic journal and a Tourism textbook. Earlier in her HR career, she completed studies in Advanced Human Resource Development at the University of the West Indies. Michelle was Invited to serve on the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO) Human Resource Council, the Tourism & Hospitality Advisory Committee of the T. A. Marryshow Community College (TAMCC), and the Alumni Association of the UWI’s Centre for Hotel & Tourism Management.
Michelle has used her extensive operational management experience to improve business processes, thus enabling greater efficiencies and enhancing the customer experience. She has the distinction of winning the ‘Department of the Year’ award twice at the same organization in two different departments, a testament to her leadership and emotional intelligence skills.
Personal Interests
Michelle is multi-faceted. She has combined her love of cricket, with writing. Her in-depth interviews with West Indies cricketers between 2003 and 2015 published on a leading cricket website and later on her own Cricket Interviews website, were legendary. She is social media and tech-savvy, having created the Cricket Interviews website, this WordPress website and a personal blog.
