The Company
Holiday Inn Express is a franchise company of 1,450 hotels, part of the InterContinental Hotels Group. Developing a curriculum to serve – and appeal to – a wide employee base with limited time and training budgets would require an innovative, personalized solution.
The Business Need
At Holiday Inn Express, training had always been geared toward management and conducted in a traditional classroom setting. The company wanted to widen this training to create a consistent brand offering, supported by a consistent customer experience.
Individual hotels had previously handled training of line-level employees. Holiday Inn Express leadership wanted training that would help the franchise community to understand the brand strategy and positioning. Leaders also wanted to make the training easy to access 24×7, convenient, and entail little or no expense to the hotels, so that people would actually want to use it.
The Solution
Since this training was not mandatory, Holiday Inn Express needed to design an engaging, compelling curriculum delivery system to train people in delivering the Holiday Inn Express brand experience.
Holiday Inn Express had successfully worked with Root in 2003 and 2004 on traditional Learning Map® modules when repositioning themselves as a corporate identity on a global level. There was a partnership in creating electronic learning modules to fit Holiday Inn Express’s vision of a “Smart Service University” and craft very tactical, operations-based training for line-level staff. Root worked with the Holiday Inn Express team to develop, organize, and optimize the content for the modules as well. There were many benefits of delivering training through e-learning modules. They’re easy to update, modular, and accessible at all hotels. They’re self-paced and can be used in English or in Spanish. Best of all, the training is consistent across all user groups.
A unique element about these modules: They’re scenario-based, so learners can go through the same module many times and always learn something new. Rather than a right-or-wrong training approach, this learning was interactive, so people learned more.
Also, the modules incorporated 3D technology and innovative design to create an engaging, immersive learning environment.
Implementation
“Smart Service University” was launched at a franchisee conference, with substantial support from Root. Root created electronically delivered “teasers” in advance to drive traffic to the learning sites, and provided onsite technology support.
In the field, the training was implemented through an intranet system already in place, where hotels access needed information. Since hotels were already familiar with the system, when the training component was added they were already comfortable with accessing the modules.
Results
The feedback from the training was “fantastic,” says Hannah Kahn, brand manager for Holiday Inn Express. “Hotels were excited to have something available 24×7 to fit random times for training. Also, it was free, which was something new for them, and it was offered in Spanish as well as English.”
Holiday Inn Express has begun to track the impact of the training in two ways. First, they track the number of hits on the intranet training modules. There are about 300,000 employees, and within the first year, there were more than four million hits on the site. Most lasted 40 minutes or longer, so it’s likely that these involve experiencing the modules. Also, guest surveys are being analyzed to see if customer service is reported as better in hotels whose employees are actually using the training. “It’s still preliminary,” says Kahn, “but we do notice an upturn in improvement scores.”
Holiday Inn Express credits their partnership with Root as one of the keys to success in this project. Kahn says, “Working with Root is so collaborative. It’s really about producing the best product. We feel free to be open and innovative and work with each other to push boundaries. Being innovative is so important in today’s environment, because everything changes so fast and technology offers so many things.”
Kahn found that these customized e-learning tools gave Holiday Inn Express a competitive advantage because no other company in its segment has comparable training tools.
What’s Next?
Next steps include moving into management skills, because, for most general managers, this is their first leadership role. Holiday Inn Express is working on ways to expand general managers’ skill set and therefore build stronger teams so they can run better hotels.