Staff Engagement: Understanding the Value of Your Brand

Tasked with spearheading the Global Human Resources development function for Accor’s 300+ Luxury & Upscale hotels and resorts around the world, Dirk-Jan Rijks has made an Ambassador Program and modern leadership the hallmarks of a new-style staff engagement initiative. In an interview with SSON’s Barbara Hodge, he sheds light on some of the HR projects and company branded programs he has initiated to develop talent "Always believe in the talent available in each location, and engage the people in the hotels to be successful through empathic leadership!" Dirk-Jan Rijks, Vice President Global Human Resources, Service & Attitude for Luxury & Upscale Brands at Accor In a market that is a fast growing as Asia’s, one of the key concerns for CEOs is attracting and retaining the talent needed to support business expansion. For this, boards are relying on capable and proactive HR leaders – someone like Dirk-Jan Rijks, who combines the natural cultural affinity of a Dutchman with an immensely broad and blue chip resume, and possesses the kind of practical experience you just cannot learn any other way. Previously the VP of HR for Sofitel’s APAC region, Rijks has leveraged that experience to turn around the financial fortunes of this top hospitality brand, and at the same time launch an employee engagement strategy that has paid strong dividends. Six years ago, Sofitel Luxury hotels was showing a loss across its Asia Pacific operations – the result of the global crisis as well as the tough competitive environment it faced in Asia. Last year, by contrast, the operations showed a profit of €22 million. Underpinning this reversal was a comprehensive HR transformation that focused on recruiting and retaining the best talents, while also training and empowering these talents to drive up the all-important guest satisfaction ratios. One of the initiatives Rijks introduced, as part of a global HR project group, was the Sofitel Ambassador Program, which supports Sofitel’s culture as exemplified by the French hotel chain’s "Life is magnifique" slogan. The Ambassador program embeds Sofitel’s luxury culture into an employee's lifecycle starting with an induction into the "Magnifique" journey on day one, where each employee is issued a Sofitel passport and launched into an ongoing training program covering attitude, standards, empowerment, upselling skills – all the characteristics that support an excellent customer experience, and thereby promoting preference and loyalty. Along this journey, ambassadors collect stamps and visas for each completed session until their passport is full and they emerge as accredited Ambassadors. The program presents a clever twist on the travel and hospitality industry (the passport), and provides a clear career path to guide an employee's lifecycle – as well as the fact that employees are called Ambassadors. And it's had an impact. Success in China Within China, where turnover is notoriously high, employee churn has dropped by 6% from 48% at its high, to 42% this year. At the same time, guest satisfaction within China, Sofitel’s toughest market, has risen by 3% and now approximates the average for the Pacific region – an impressive achievement for this market. Regular Ambassador Engagement, or opinion, surveys track scores that have risen to 91% last year (a 3% year on year rise). These results place Sofitel firmly in the "best in class" category, according to the Hay Group, with some of the highest scores in the Asia-Pacific region. This "reversal of fortunes", explains Rijks, proves the value of leveraging a brand-specific engagement. It also marks a challenge to him today, as he is being tasked with integrating Sofitel’s brand back into the Accor Group, and reproducing the successes he has achieved across the group’s eight other brands. While Rijks concedes that the synergies for leveraging elements that are common to all brands make economic sense – he lists IT services, Finance, or the group loyalty card as examples – other aspects of service directly impact a guest’s experience and are more sensitive to specific brand identity. "The challenge is in identifying which is which", he says. As Sofitel is integrated into Accor’s core group, Rijks’ concern is that he retains enough of an identity for his staff to buy into, so that the achievements of the past six years are maintained. "Accor’s management team has seen the impact that a quality focus and our customer-service focused Ambassador program has had on our financial performance. The challenge going forward will be to leverage this understanding. At the same time, we need to build a more agile business by removing unnecessary layers that slow down the decision-making processes, introducing a modern leadership style and apply the best practices of Sofitel and replicate for other brands," explains Rijks. While Asia is generally characterized by its formal culture, which extends into the work environment, HR leaders have recognized that in order to attract and retain today’s more demanding clients, it's necessary to introduce a modern day approach to leadership. This means increased transparency, explaining why decisions are made, showing empathy in dealing with staff, and above all: a personal touch. For Rijks, this means a handwritten note mailed to senior managers congratulating them on a new posting, for example. He makes it a point to add a personal touch where he can: "A simple gesture goes a long way – I’ve had people show me a note I had written them pinned by their desk, on occasion." Defining modern leadership Some key leadership strategies that organizations like the Accor Group are implementing include the following: Training. The group is making it a priority to extend its training to middle managers, particularly on leadership, presentation, and communication skills. Getting closer to the market. Top leaders regularly sit down with younger generation in what's called "reverse mentoring". From the CEO and downwards, these one-to-one informal meetings present an opportunity for the older generation to find out how the younger generation makes decisions, how it purchases goods, its expectations for work life balance, how their ambitions are defined, why they move jobs, and even how they leverage Facebook! The point is to filter greater understanding of the current generation of staff and customers to an older generation of leaders. Cultural sensitivity. For foreigners posted to Asia, it's not always easy to understand the discrete nuances of regional cultures. Not losing composure, not showing displeasure publicly, not embarrassing staff in front of peers, … these are crucially important issues in leading or working with a staff across Asia. Developing and maintaining cultural awareness is crucial. [eventpdf] Asia’s biggest challenge The number one challenge HR leaders like Rijks are facing across the Asian market is attrition, particularly in high growth markets like China, where the hospitality industry faces churn rates of 40% on average. For a high touch, customer service based industry that ratio is simply too big, and it creates a cost. By way of benchmark, Rijks quotes the 18-20% attrition rate that the Ritz-Carlton has achieved in Shanghai. "That is our benchmark," he says. "I know we can get there." It's leadership that will make the difference, he says. All companies should be doing a lot more than they are to develop their middle manager’s leadership skills. In fast moving markets like Asia, people are being promoted quickly on the basis of technical skills but they are simply not properly equipped to manage people. The cost of this to business is high, Rijks points out. Too high to sustain the kind of service that brands like Sofitel and Accor pride themselves on. A global career in HR – hospitality as a launch platform for an international life As varied and multi-dimensional as the hospitality industry is, even for its international standards the career of Dirk-Jan Rijks must be something of an exception. A true adventurer, he knew from the start that he wanted to travel, and "travel widely" so hotel management was a natural fit for this adventurous Dutchman. He lucked out early on, with internships at Disney in Florida, and a chain of hotels in French-speaking St. Martin, where he presciently worked on improving his language skills. Rijks subsequently "gave back" by returning to the Dutch hotel school he had graduated from, this time as an instructor, training upcoming talent and cutting his teeth on running the institute’s restaurant. It’s also where he recognized his passion for developing new talent. When he wanted to move on, he took a daring risk, one that was to launch a 13-year career with one of the world’s leading luxury brands. With limited experience a position within Hyatt group, especially as part of a team launching a 5 star hotel, might have been out of reach. Not in war-torn Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, in the mid-nineties, however. "Not many people were lining up for that job", he chuckles. To Rijks it was the opening he wanted, and led to an HR Director role "There was a lot of anxiety during those years, we were under curfew, and the hotel was constantly guarded," he recalls. And yet he would not swap that time for anything. Rijks helped set up the first 5 star hotel in the country, training a staff that had never experienced luxury branding and all it entailed: "They weren’t familiar with Amex, or even fax machines. We had to start at the beginning: how to serve wine, how to hold a plate … always meeting Hyatt’s 5 star standards". When his time was up, nearly four years later, a position in Jordan beckoned, as Director of HR and Training for the opening of a Grand Hyatt hotel. This coincided with a period when the second intifada exploded in Jerusalem. "It was a tough time for us, and affected the business tremendously," he says. "Shortly afterwards, the events of September 11 further shook the world and again our business and staff were impacted as fear and mistrust emerged. But we persevered". Rijks’s role soon expanded to include Israel and Egypt (bringing four additional hotels into scope), where he learned how to manage a range of cultures and nationalities, and keep them focused on the same thing: providing exceptional service to a discerning customer. The next step in Rijks's career was Moscow, where he managed the opening of the famous Park Hyatt, next to the Bolshoi Theater, in the heart of the city. It was a very successful and well run hotel, he explains, but it faced challenges of a different nature: high turnover from a series of non-native workers, as Muscovites preferred to patronize hotels rather than work in them. One of the things Rijks focused on there was to prove that there was a career – and a great one – within the hospitality industry. Today, 14 years later, he is proud of the fact that some of the first staff he hired are still there, now in leadership roles. The continuity this provides is crucial, he says. Dubai was Rijks’s next stop, where he spent two years managing a 600-strong staff representing 46 nationalities (again, most from overseas). "Dubai was a little unusual, in that all our staff, irrespective of grade, lived in the same ‘village’," he explains. "You effectively end up living with them 24 hours a day, and are responsible for flying them in, picking them up, and generally taking care of them from the moment they arrive at the airport." Apart from providing staff transportation and full living arrangements, Hyatt’s support included a full time doctor and 3 full time nurses onsite. "You have a much greater sense of responsibility in this kind of a situation, compared with the average HR leadership role," Rijks explains. He soon moved on to Cairo, to take on regional HR leadership for Egypt and manage a 700-room, 1,400 staff hotel – his largest posting to date. That also marked a ceiling of sorts for his career at Hyatt. At that stage his options narrowed, and that is when – by way of a stage with a Qatar-based hospitality owning company that managed a portfolio of hotel brands and where he enjoyed sitting on the "other side" of the negotiation table for a change, managing and learning about other brands and gaining insight into different cultures – he arrived at Sofitel. Sofitel, with its excellent brand name, attracted his attention when a position in Asia came up. As VP of Sofitel’s APAC region, initially based in Bangkok, which he loved, Rijks oversaw 42 hotels. Three years later the position was transferred to Singapore, as part of the integration of Sofitel into Accor, and he is now busy applying the successes he has achieved at Sofitel across Accor’s eight other brands (see main story). [Editor's note: If you like this content – please share it with your social media groups across Twitter and LinkedIn. Just use the buttons on the left of the page. Please also add any comments below, to contribute to this discussion.]

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