2015 Award Winners: Hilton Worldwide Ireland

Hilton Worldwide Ireland won Best Change Management Programme at the HR Leadership and Management Awards 2015. They were shortlisted for their innovative change management programme, ‘Select Leadership Certificate: New Ways of Working’. This initiative has seen dramatic improvements in employee work - life balance in what is typically an industry with very long working days.

Karen Healy, Training and Development Manager, Hilton Hotel Worldwide Ireland talks about their entry and their win.

Ordinarily when cost cutting and revenue generating discussions happen in any organisation it is all about the bottom line. "Ways of Working" was innovative as it considered the people who are tasked with implementing changes on a daily basis. It was simple in its approach as it considered the abilities of the managers and the culture in each hotel within our region.

Managing Change was seen to have negative connotations. The title ‘Positive transitions; Ways of Working (WOW)’ was adopted for this reason. The output for this learning initiative was to ensure the organisational goal of being as agile as possible when changes were imposed and as a cultures strived to reconsider and change work processes to be market leaders.

Team morale has certainly improved as a result of this Manager completing the training. It was great fun. The energy we have seen in work as a result of working a normal day and having work-life balance has been phenomenal.

We recently achieved 94% in our Global Team Member Opinion Survey, compared with 72% in 2013. Guest loyalty, one of our measures to identify how many guests have scored us 9 or 10/10, has gone up by 3.2%. Labour turnover has gone from 24% down to 16%.

The evaluation was extremely positive and the main lesson learnt was that we needed to run this leadership certificate with all for any new manager starting in the business.

As a result of our success we decided to enter the awards, to see how we stacked up against other change management programmes. There was a full time ‘change management’ organisation which was in our shortlisted category so we were not expecting the win at all! Our submission was a change management training intervention as part of an overall development strategy. We were thrilled to receive the recognition of all the hard work! It was a morale boost for the entire team here in Hilton Hotel Ireland.

The awards ceremony was well organised and gave participants the opportunity to network before and after the session. We got great insights into other companies’ HR and training practices which was great food for thought.

The event was excellent. It was well attended and completely different to normal corporate events. Attendees were energised and really interacted with each other to share best practices. I especially liked the follow up after the event detailing who won which award and why – crucial to learn how to improve for the future.

The main benefit for us was the press coverage following the awards. It was a platform for us to maximise publicity and media attention. Everyone likes a good news story.

We would definitely recommend entering the awards; it is excellent recognition of bespoke training interventions and a great opportunity to network with other industries and learn best practices.

As one of the most recognised name in the industry, Hilton Hotel Worldwide has hotels in more than 540 locations in 78 countries. Hilton provides an authentic and contemporary experience for their guests worldwide.

I’m looking forward to attending the HR Leadership and Management Awards 2016.

Hilton Hotel Worldwide Ireland:

Travelers all over the world have been saying, “Take me to the Hilton” for almost a century. Hilton Ireland has over 650 team members across 4 hotels. They see HR and people management as integral to their global success.