BEST
PEOPLE &
TALENT
MANAGEMENT
PROGRAM
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 01
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT
MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
This Award will be attributed to a program that reveals the
deterrent nature of the human resources policy in terms of
recruitment, new employees integration, origins diversity,
career development, performance assessment, motivation
of the personnel, company spirit…The program will be
assessed according to three complementary criteria:
1. The process or project’s deterrent nature for the benefit
of the staff
2. Originality of the actions taken and partnerships
contracted with training organizations or other partners
3. Measurable efficiency regarding the staff’s loyalty,
personnel turnover and advancement to senior positions
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 02
WHO WE ARE
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is the world’s largest hotel group with
almost 4,500 hotels and 330,000+ extraordinary people working across more
than 100 countries
• Directly responsible for c.110,000 people (corporate offices, owned and
managed hotels)
• Our franchised hotels are responsible for their own people – c. 220,000
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 02
OUR CHALLENGE
• For Global HR to create and deliver the strategy, tools,
processes and mechanisms to move the business towards its
objective of becoming one of the world’s great companies
• To achieve this and become one of the world’s great
companies, all of our 330,000 people have a part to play
• However, only one-third of hotel employees (c.110,000) are
directly influenced by the Global HR Team. IHG’s franchise
model added scale to the challenge
• The owners of thousands of IHG franchised hotels and their
c.220,000 employees traditionally went their own way
• The Global HR Team’s success in reaching the talented
franchise hotel employees over whom they had no direct
control, would depend on showing success in leading IHG’s
strategy to deal with the industry challenges of low retention
rates and the need for talented recruits to make our ambitious
growth strategy work: we open on average one hotel every
day
• Central to this growth is the recruitment, development and
retention of up to 260,000 talented people that live our brands
to staff new hotels over the next three years
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 02
OUR SOLUTION
• In a sector with high people turnover and generic skillsets, our
Global HR Team developed a distinctive ‘employee offer’ and
set of corporate values to attract and keep the best talent
It was innovative because…
• It became clear to the CEO and IHG’s Executive Vice
President (EVP) of Global HR that Global HR needed to tackle
deep strategic issues that normally fall outside HR’s remit
• This ranged from creating buy-in to IHG’s strategy and vision,
rolling out a compelling employer brand and embedding a
Balanced Scorecard (The IHG Wheel), to leading business re-
design - ‘the way the work works’ – which effectively re-
designed how the organization works with itself
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 03
OBJECTIVE OF THE
INITIATIVE
To create and deliver the strategy, tools, processes and
mechanisms to move the business towards its objective of
becoming one of the world’s great companies
• Introduced by Andy Cosslett, former IHG CEO; Tracy Robbins, Executive Vice President (EVP) of Global Human Resources; IHG Executive Leadership Team
• The strategy targeted every one of our c.330,000 employees and leaders working in our hotels and offices
• Developed and implemented from 2006 to 2011
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 03
SCOPE AND ADVANTAGES
• Identifying priorities. The Global HR Team carried out 70 in-
depth interviews with managers across the organization, to
surface issues in how IHG worked that were barriers to high
performance
• The Global HR Team became enmeshed in all aspects of
the business. This helped to lead the design and rollout of the
vision, employer values and brand, new ways of working, new
brand standards, and a new structure for the ‘flow’ of work
through the organization
• HR partnered with IHG’s ‘brand teams’. This helped to
simplify our brand stories and cascade the vision to our people
• The biggest hotel brand ‘refresh’ in the world. Global HR
created and rolled out branded ‘service delivery’ training for
3,000 Holiday Inns as an essential part of a $1 billion ‘refresh’ of
that brand. 96% of participants rated the training as excellent
• Delivered the talent pipeline required to meet the growth
plans. We’re opening one hotel every day with the right talent.
This included setting up over 10 hospitality training academies
in Greater China
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 04
IMPLEMENTATION AND
CONTROL
• There are HR people in all of our hotels that work closely with
our hotel General Managers to ensure implementation of
initiatives
• Regional HR Business Partners are established to connect
hotels to corporate offices and the work we do in HR
• The Programme Office was also established to help join things
up across all business activities. It is sponsored by Tracy
Robbins, EVP Global Human Resources
• The Programme Office is responsible for planning,
coordinating, reviewing and, where there is no natural owner,
leading, a wide range of projects designed to help the whole
business bring our brands to life for our guests and people
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 05
INFORMATION
How are employees informed about this initiative?
• The internal communications function is managed by Global
Human Resources and campaigns are integrated
• IHG’s communication strategy is to deliver simple and
consistent two-way communications
• Employee engagement and talent retention are a fundamental
part of the communications strategy
• We work together to ensure communications for all HR
business initiatives, such as the People Tools and the
Celebrate Service Week communication, are timely, engaging
and effective (see supporting materials)
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 05
STAFF RESPONSE
• Impressive impact: Our franchise hotel leaders were so
impressed with what IHG’s Global HR team was doing to
improve performance in its own hotels, they asked for the HR
tools to be rolled out to them, too – which they had never done
before
• Engagement: Up 22% since 2007. Award-winning Employer
Brand engages and involves talent at all levels. Key measures
out-perform the sector average by double digits – 18% to 19%
above the sector average, typically
• Changed behaviour: Over 3,000 hotels took part in Celebrate
Service week in 2010 and again in 2011, a joint initiative with
franchise owners that recognises and thanks our talent and led
to the widespread adoption by franchisees of IHG’s core
service values, and the ‘branded people tools’ that deliver
them. 98% of pilot hotels said they would use and recommend
the new People Tools, a set of practical guides and templates
to help us hire, train, involve and recognise new talent in a way
that is right for each of our brands
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 06
RESULTS • IHG’s new ‘Ways of Working’, led by the Global HR Team,
replaced the uncoordinated way that new initiatives – from
marketing to IT – were released to hotels
• Right skills for leaders: Re-defined leadership competencies
for our highest talent that more closely match business need
• Strategy delivery: Every employee now knows IHG’s core
purpose is to create Great Hotels Guests Love – a unifying
common purpose - and how to use IHG’s Balanced Scorecard
• Recruitment & retention: We met our challenging recruitment
targets, including setting up our own hospitality training
academies in Greater China, our largest growth market, to
create a pipeline of 87,000 new talented recruits per year for
that country
• New online ihg.jobs career profile tool: We saw 62,000
people register their profile in 2010 when it launched, we now
have 94,000 profiles in our global talent pool, helping us to
target the right opportunity to the right talent
• Business results: Guest satisfaction and revenue growth
increased in line with employee engagement scores. Research
shows the latter drives the former two figures. Both guest
satisfaction and revenue growth measured 4% higher in
rebranded Holiday Inns than non-rebranded ones
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 06
IMPACT
HR now drives the business
• What IHG people and hotel owners in the franchise community
say about HR has changed
• It is now seen as a valued business partner supporting the
business in developing talent that will deliver on its strategy
• This is a direct result of the Global HR Team’s success in
bringing corporate and operational leaders and the front line
together around IHG’s people agenda and using that agenda to
drive improvements in how IHG works and in its business
results
• In recognition of the critical role this people strategy had in
developing talent to support our ambitious growth plans, Tracy
Robbins, EVP Global Human Resources, was given additional
accountability for Group Operations Support, and this year was
promoted to the IHG Board
“The approach that IHG has taken to creating brand champions is something
that we want in our franchise hotels”
Bill DeForrest, Chairman of IHG’s association of hotel owners.
“HR initiatives around
employee engagement
are giving IHG a very
distinctive culture and
profile. Engagement
scores are well up and
our owners are
remarking on the
quality of the
programmes we have
put in place.”
Andy Cosslett, 2010 CEO IHG
BEST PEOPLE & TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 07
PROGRAM PERSISTENCE
• In this industry, we are as much a people business, as we are
a hotel business
• IHG continues to sign more deals into our pipeline than any of
our competitors
• In order to satisfy this growth we need to recruit another
260,000 talented people in the next three years, so our people
strategy will continue to lie at the heart of our plans
• The success of our people journey so far has helped to ensure
that buy-in is secured with the executive leadership team, IHG
Board and franchised hotel leaders for our 2012-2014 people
strategy