'Everything we do is done by people, so our people are the heart of everything we do'
This article was produced in partnership with Wagestream.
At the 2022 HR Awards, Accor was announced as the winner of the Employer of Choice award in the category of 1,000+ employees. Wagestream, a financial wellbeing app who presented the award and also one of the benefits Accor offers its employees, spoke to Sarah Derry, CEO of Asia Pacific at Accor, to understand why employee experience is so important and what she’s currently focused on.
Accor was also recognized as one of the Best Companies to Work for in Australia. Read the full article in 5-Star Employers special report.
Why is employee experience so important to Accor?
Everything we do is done by people, so our people are the heart of everything we do. That means we want to help them develop with us, we want to embrace a culture that is really inclusive and we want to make sure that people have the opportunities they need. It’s about respecting the individuals that work for us. This is an exciting time to be in hospitality as we’re in a rebound phase, therefore our culture is everything to us. It’s so important to have this culture embedded in the organisation.
Accor focuses on all aspects of wellbeing, physical, mental and financial, is that one of the things that you feel separates Accor as an employer of choice?
Our holistic view of wellbeing is a big part of our success. At Accor we’ve got a program called Heartist which is our organisational culture philosophy and really this is about bringing your whole self to work. As part of this we have a number of principles, the first one is that everyone craves belonging and the second is that people want the real deal.
These sorts of things are really important to us. We want our staff to be able to be themselves as that creates the best environment. We want everyone to have strong personal wellbeing and that covers physical, mental and financial areas of their lives.
You’ve implemented a range of initiatives like Heartist, same-day hiring and Wagestream, how do you decide what to roll out and what has the response been like?
It’s been a really positive response from our team. If I take the example of the work your way initiative that we introduced, that actually came out of conversations I had when visiting hotels. I was visiting hotels in far north Queensland and noticed there was a real need for us to meet our people where they’re at. This means understanding what their needs are and then fitting to them, not the other way around.
The same-day hiring initiative also came out of those discussions. Hotels were facing challenges finding people. It was actually our process that was holding our hotels back and it was really unnecessary. We were putting all these barriers up that were preventing people joining us so we needed to remove those barriers.
It comes down to the fact that the best initiatives come from our people. So it’s important to listen and get feedback before designing and implementing things that really fit the needs of our people.
How do you evaluate the success of the initiatives you implement?
It’s so important to evaluate the success of your initiatives because sometimes you do need to change them over time. To do this we look at everything from engagement surveys to team feedback and focus sessions, take-up of initiatives and also impact on broader metrics like overall retention.
What are your plans for further improving employee experience moving forward?
We are always evolving our strategy. The number one thing we’ll continue to do is keep putting people right at the front of our decision making. The second thing is continuing to invest in our people. We want to start looking into more personalised benefits for our team, things that matter to them as individuals.
Another thing we’re looking to do is use the partnerships that we have to extend our reach. We want to see how we can implement partnerships with educational institutions and tourism organisations to find and develop talent. The focus is really on how we attract and keep great talent by making sure people have really rewarding careers at Accor.
