InterContinental Hotels Group: Developing Hospitality

InterContinental Hotels Group’s (IHG) business strategy is simple but ambitious: It aims to grow its competitive advantage through increased customer loyalty to its brands; deliver strong, sustainable financial performance; and acquire, develop and retain talent to support its growth. IHG’s leadership recognizes the pivotal role the learning and development function plays in realizing these goals. Therefore, learning’s priorities are tied to the company’s business strategies, and all initiatives are designed to support them.

IHG senior leadership realized six years ago that meeting the company’s goals would mean doing things differently within L&D. IHG has devoted human and financial resources to learning, streamlining global processes and programs and broadening its focus from a resource-based view to a more holistic approach with differentiated development opportunities for its people.

Within this overall shift, IHG’s key initiatives have included: creating a mandatory senior leadership program; incorporating action-learning projects and strategic task force assignments; enhancing use of internal and external coaching; introducing a comprehensive learning management system that hosts an extensive range of Web-based learning opportunities; a social network directed toward senior leaders; and implementation of a global, online performance management system.

As IHG implements various learning strategies across its global employee population of 110,000, results from its annual employee engagement survey help to gauge progress. The engagement survey is deployed online each spring to every corporate employee, asking a variety of questions, and responses generally rate in the high 90th percentile. The learning function can add specific questions relevant to particular strategies implemented in a given year. A second survey is fielded in the fall as a follow-up. The results allow IHG to track shifts in employee satisfaction and attitudes on a short-term basis that may result from implementation of various learning events, as well as assess the impact of long-term strategies.

In 2011, IHG introduced a global on-boarding program as a requirement for new corporate and hotel-level employees to ensure that each individual receives the same information and orientation experience. This approach leverages technology to support a new employee from the moment the offer letter is signed through the first nine months of employment.