Holiday Inn 2008 Annual Report Download - page 23

BUSINESS REVIEW
Business review 21
IHG’s commitment to its people: Room to be yourself
In 2008, IHG focused on delivering Room to be yourself to employees.
People processes have been aligned to ensure that we can meet
the required set of standards and the key achievements over the
past year are outlined below.
Room to have a great start
IHG has developed and rolled out an online recruitment system
to attract and match candidates to job vacancies. Over 380,000 CVs
were posted to the site during the last year and nearly 8,000 people
were appointed as a result of their online applications. The site
has recently been developed to highlight a number of key roles,
including hotel general manager, to help us to recruit where
we have a particular need.
As a way of increasing recruitment from a variety of sources,
IHG has a number of employee referral schemes which encourage
employees to refer a contact as a potential employee. In the
Americas region, 42% of our vacant positions are filled through
referrals which is 10% greater than benchmark organisations
(source: Recruiting Roundtable/Corporate Executive Board).
Future plans to introduce a global scheme are under way and
will be launched during 2009.
Room to be involved
Great emphasis is placed on employee communication, particularly
on matters relating to the Group’s business and its performance.
Communication channels include global management conferences,
team meetings, informal briefings, in-house publications and
intranets. The Group has expanded the capability of the corporate
intranet site, ‘Merlin’, which now provides continuous access to
information about people, policies and news across all hotels,
corporate offices and reservations centres.
Regular employee feedback is obtained to ensure that IHG meets
expectations and delivers on its commitments. The Group conducts
a twice-yearly survey that measures employee opinion and
attitudes. This survey covers employees in owned and managed
hotels, corporate offices and reservations centres. We have not
reported the survey data on our joint venture partners.
Since the first survey in 2007 we have continued to achieve very
high response rates with over 90,000 employees participating in
the November 2008 survey.
2008 response rates 2007 response rates
Division/region %%
Americas hotels 89 81
EMEA hotels 86 83
Asia Pacific hotels 93 90
Corporate offices 88 77
Reservation centres 87 81
IHG’s key measure from the survey is the engagement index,
constructed from a set of questions which measure employee
advocacy, retention and effort. During 2008, IHG’s engagement index
improved by 3 percentage points to 68%. The survey also reported that
nine out of 10 people are proud to work for IHG and 87% of employees
would recommend IHG as a good place to work. This is 27 percentage
points higher than the external benchmark data (source: TNS).
The survey highlights that initiatives undertaken during the year
on Winning Ways and Room to be yourself are strongly correlated
to employee engagement.
Room to grow
To meet the demands of growth and to deliver IHG’s core purpose,
Great Hotels Guests Love, IHG continues to focus on attracting,
developing and retaining talent.
During 2008, a review of the Group’s 1,100 corporate managers
and hotel general managers was conducted to identify skills
required for the future and how to develop individuals. The outcome
was increased clarity around our talented individuals, their key
development needs and the ability to move these individuals into
the positions which will enable them to enhance their skills and
meet IHG’s key objectives.
In China, we have established a number of initiatives as part
of our focus on recruiting talented individuals to support the
anticipated number of openings over the next few years. We have
introduced a number of fast-track programmes aimed at bringing
in professionals from human resources and finance backgrounds
to support our growth plans. We have also developed the IHG
Academies in partnership with a number of educational bodies to
provide training to students to equip them with skills required by
the hotel industry. These Academies operate in 10 locations, are
supported by 24 partners in the region and, in October 2008, had
4,200 students enrolled on one of these programmes.
We have also developed plans for Academies in parts of Europe
and the Middle East. In conjunction with our franchisee in Panama,
we have opened a school to teach our employees the skills
required in all aspects of hotel management, particularly in areas
of skills shortage such as food and beverage management. We also
continue to provide an extensive range of training to our employees
including e-learning curricula from respected business schools
such as Cornell University in the US.
During the year, IHG continued to place importance on the growth
and development of its people in the owned and managed hotels,
and within its corporate and reservations offices, and ensured
training programmes were available to all of its employees. The
Group’s internal survey indicates that 82% of employees agree
that IHG delivers training to assist with their current roles.
In support of the ‘Holiday Inn refresh’ programme, IHG embarked
upon an intensive and comprehensive training programme entitled
‘Stay Real’ to ensure that all employees working in a Holiday Inn or
Holiday Inn Express hotel receive training to help them deliver the
service experience expected by guests. The programme of training
will last until December 2009 and, by the end of 2008, 74% of all
Holiday Inn hotels had received the training which continues to
receive excellent reviews from those attending.
We have leveraged technology by introducing a learning
management system to help employees find and book the training
and development they require. A number of online programmes have
been introduced to help people learn flexibly and develop their skills
in the workplace rather than attend courses in classrooms.
IHG has a number of development programmes in place to support
its managers in hotels and corporate offices to deliver Great Hotels
Guests Love. These include the assessment of individual potential
and capability, together with clarity on expectations and business-
related education. During 2008, 209 senior managers attended the
latest stage of IHG’s senior leadership programme, concentrating
on the role that leaders play in driving performance and results
through people.