It was 1988 and CP Hotels had just invested $750 million in the bricks-and-mortar side of the business, updating its hotels nationwide. Management was confident that the newly renovated hotels would attract guests for a first stay, but bringing them back again would be the real ROI challenge.
To meet that challenge, CP management looked to its human capital and Carolyn Clark, the newly appointed vice-president, human resources. Human resources had become a strategic player at the boardroom level and now it was time to help the company achieve its overall goals. Clark knew that in the service-intensive hotel industry, people can provide a critical competitive advantage, so her strategic HR plan focused on the development of human capital.
Fast-forward to the present. CP Hotels is now Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Over the last three years, they have purchased Princess Hotels, merged with Fairmont Hotels and been spun off from their parent company as an independent publicly traded company. Since the merger they have continued under the Fairmont name for its international cache.
Throughout the changes, Clark has managed and shaped the strategic HR goals for the 30,000 employees of North America’s largest luxury hotel chain. “In our industry today, the competitive advantage is service delivery. People today want value for the money that they are spending, and they want great service. If they don’t get either, they won’t give you a second chance,” said Clark. “It all starts and ends with people. They are the heart, the soul and the spirit of our company.”
The hotel business is one in which an individual employee can make a difference in whether a guest returns for another stay – or recommends the hotel to friends. “You have to have people who are highly trained and service-oriented, and who are going to exceed our guests’ expectations. That’s going to create the guest loyalty which is going to deliver sustainable, profitable growth for our organization,” said Clark. “From a human resources perspective, it starts with selecting the best. The most important decision that we make within our company is who we hire.”
Four key principles
The key components are fundamental HR but Clark’s comprehensive integration of the plan is notable for both its thoroughness and her methodical approach. Her strategic HR plan is the foundation for how Fairmont developed a service culture that consistently delivers top service. It is based on four key principles: select the best; lead with the best; train and develop; recognize and reward.
1) Select the best
Working in tandem with the Gallup Organization’s human resource management and consulting department, Clark developed a selection process in 1988. By interviewing the best servers, reception agents and managers and clearly identifying what made them the best, they developed a structured interview whereby it was possible to identify recruits with a natural service orientation.
“We recognized that we had to be very strategic in terms of our human resources so that we could develop a highly trained service organization. We began with selecting the best,” said Clark. “We believed that we could train the technical skills — that’s the easy part. What we can’t train is the service orientation. We just can’t put people in the training program and say they are going to come out smiling if that is not inherent in them.”
The structured interview helps identify the talents and abilities inherent in each individual. Identifying a person’s natural talents and strengths and placing that person in a job that maximizes these talents and strengths leads to exceptional productivity.
“Essentially we wanted to put round pegs in round holes,” said Clark. “All too often, when you try to put a round peg in a square hole, you will have performance difficulties and absenteeism.”
2) Lead with the best
The investment in leadership development and training is just as important as the investment in hiring the best talent. The leadership development program at Fairmont focuses on internal development and promotion. Through this training, leaders are able to provide coaching, development and support to employees.
“Once we have hired the best, the best need great leadership. That is the most important part of retention,” said Clark. “Gallup recently did a study and found that people don’t quit their companies, they quit their leaders.”
3) Train and develop
The third principle of the Fairmont HR strategy is training and development. It starts with a comprehensive orientation program for new hires, and continues through its corporate-wide customized training program, Service Plus, and the inter-company Pathfinder career development program.
“Great talent needs to be nurtured and grown or it will leave the company,” said Clark. “More so today with Generation X. They need constant growth and development.”
4) Recognize and reward
“Talent needs recognition and reward or they will leave,” said Clark. “It’s the day-to-day recognition, saying thanks for a job well done.”
Clark cites another Gallup study of exit interviews of North American employees who had left companies within the first six months of employment. The subjects were asked simply, “Why did you leave the company?” In this particular survey, the number one reason was, “Because my boss never said thank you.”
One aspect of the Fairmont culture for recognition is “Bravograms,” a note of recognition from colleagues to thank someone in particular for a job well done, for example. Bravograms are posted in the staff cafeteria on a recognition wall for all to see.
Another aspect is the monthly and annual star employee recognition program. Within each hotel, the star employee of the year is selected and is rewarded with a stay for two at any Fairmont hotel in the world.
The secret to success
As Fairmont expands, the HR strategy is adopted into the new hotels. The secret to the success of the Fairmont service culture has been the focus and integration of all four aspects of the HR strategy.
“We didn’t just look at a selection strategy, we didn’t just look at a leadership strategy, we didn’t just look at a training strategy, we didn’t just decide to focus on recognition and reward,” said Clark. “It was totally integrated.
“We have a great workplace that starts with the hiring of talented employees and talented leaders,” said Clark. “Together they create a great workplace. That will create greater customer/guest loyalty, and that creates sustainable and profitable growth. It’s all integrated.”
Aligning cultures
As employers become more global and mergers and acquisitions become more prevalent in business, a critical success factor will be the merger of corporate cultures.
“If the merger or acquisition is going to fail, quite often it is because the cultures are not aligned,” stated Clark. “When we planned the mergers, we put a lot of thought into the human side of it. We asked, ‘What are the best practices that each company has to bring?’ and from that we moved forward.”
From the start of the merger project between Canadian Pacific, Princess and Fairmont, company-wide communication from the top down was a key component. Regular communiqués from the company president to management were shared throughout each hotel. Every employee was apprised of the stages of the merger. Following the merger, all employees still receive regular updates in terms of what is happening in the organization.
Senior management put several integration teams together that involved key people from the companies. An integration team was created for each department, such as sales, human resources and finance and accounting. The team studied best practices in the organizations and identified where new standards needed to be developed. This is how the new Fairmont code was created.
“We didn’t presume that either company had the best practices. We worked together to understand the systems and procedures and cultures of the companies, and together we developed the new culture,” said Clark.
Focus on values
“One of the first things our president did was meet with a group of key people from both companies to develop the mission, vision and set of values for the newly merged organization.”
From that meeting, senior management identified four key values: respect, integrity, teamwork and empowerment. Then to involve all employees, they had every hotel hold a values workshop. “We asked them to articulate what the four key values meant to them and to describe that in one or two sentences,” said Clark.
The hotel HR director and learning coach facilitated the workshops and then each of the 38 hotels sent their descriptions to Clark’s office. “What was incredible was the consistency in the feedback,” said Clark. “We took the feedback and used that as the description of our core values. All of our employees were very much involved in the new identity process. When we rolled out the final product, each employee could feel ownership of the values since they help create them.”
Clark cautions that the merging of cultures doesn’t happen overnight. There needs to be lots of communication.
The growth and development of the company has meant the same for HR as well. The international expansion alone has required learning about the cultures and HR practices of different countries. For example, Fairmont is in the midst of opening its first overseas hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Raising the talent bar
With the structured interview as the first step in an HR strategy to grow the business, there has been a continual focus on its evolution. As Fairmont grows and the vision of the company evolves, training, leadership and recruitment are retooled while staying true to the goal of the strategy.
“We have raised the talent bar in the company by changing the selection of questions as we have merged and grown,” said Clark. “We realize that people drive the performance capabilities of companies today.
HR branding
Like her professional peers in other organizations and industries, Clark is faced with a challenge of changing demographics in the workforce.
“We know today that there will be labour shortage until the year 2020. Companies are going to be competing for a dwindling talent pool,” said Clark. “Once we get through the current economic downturn, which we will, the war for talent will emerge once again.”
Clark is arming herself with the strategy of human resources branding.
“Just like in marketing, you have market segmentation. What are the needs, wants and values of your different customer segmentations? Then you put together packages to market to these different groups,” said Clark. “It’s not one size fits all. So too in HR in the future, it’s not one size fits all.”
Sought-after talent will want very clear responses to basic questions: “What are the compelling reasons that I should work for your company?” or “What are the compelling reasons why I should stay with your company?”
Part of the employee value proposition is to look at employee segmentation by age group. What people in their 20s want is entirely different from what people in their 50s want. Clark gives the example of hotels that are predominantly staffed by young people, employees in their 20s who indicate that benefits are nice to have, but they don’t place a high value on it. That is in contrast to, for example, employee groups in their 50s who place a much higher value on a benefits package.
“Look at your employees by segment and say, ‘What are the needs wants and values of our employees in these different segments?’ and then put together HR strategies, programs and plans that will meet the needs wants and values of those employee segment groups,” suggests Clark. “It’s all about the employee value proposition. It’s much more challenging than a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Network to learn
“I have been able to watch human resources grow as a profession and take a leadership role in companies,” said Clark. “It is important for an HR practitioner to create or enhance their value, it is important to not be inward looking or thinking.” She strongly recommends taking advantage of outside networking opportunities such as the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario (HRPAO), conferences and industry-specific HR organizations to stay current and to bring new ideas into the organization.
“I encourage our team to at least be part of one networking group, one professional association with their colleagues, either within our industry, or cross industry,” said Clark. “Sometimes I am amazed when I talk to people who don’t take advantage of all the networks and resources that are out there.”
HR talent must-haves
In Clark’s opinion, the most important attributes in an aspiring human resources practitioner are proactivity and forward-thinking.
“If technical knowledge wasn’t there, it could be learned and taught,” said Clark. “I would be looking for somebody that has a passion for the whole of human resources management, someone that’s going to be a great leader.”
Clark is firm in her belief that there is no substitute for personal growth and development through on-the-job learning. She recommends “implementing new systems, trying new things out. Sometimes you will succeed, sometimes you will fail, but the main thing is that you are moving forward. You are always constantly trying to raise the bar.
“There’s a great new book, The HR Scorecard: Linking People Strategy and Performance, which I highly recommend,” said Clark.
Clark’s passion for human resources is unmistakable.
“I have been with the company 27 years. That’s probably not usual today with most career paths,” said Clark. “I can honestly say that through the period of time I’ve been with the company, every day continues to be as exciting and challenging as the one before.
“There’s a saying that I live by: find a job that you love, and you will never have to work again,” she concludes. “Try to identify your passion and your area of interest in terms of industry sector or component of HR. Try to match your passion and strengths within an organization and then move forward.”
To meet that challenge, CP management looked to its human capital and Carolyn Clark, the newly appointed vice-president, human resources. Human resources had become a strategic player at the boardroom level and now it was time to help the company achieve its overall goals. Clark knew that in the service-intensive hotel industry, people can provide a critical competitive advantage, so her strategic HR plan focused on the development of human capital.
Fast-forward to the present. CP Hotels is now Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Over the last three years, they have purchased Princess Hotels, merged with Fairmont Hotels and been spun off from their parent company as an independent publicly traded company. Since the merger they have continued under the Fairmont name for its international cache.
Throughout the changes, Clark has managed and shaped the strategic HR goals for the 30,000 employees of North America’s largest luxury hotel chain. “In our industry today, the competitive advantage is service delivery. People today want value for the money that they are spending, and they want great service. If they don’t get either, they won’t give you a second chance,” said Clark. “It all starts and ends with people. They are the heart, the soul and the spirit of our company.”
The hotel business is one in which an individual employee can make a difference in whether a guest returns for another stay – or recommends the hotel to friends. “You have to have people who are highly trained and service-oriented, and who are going to exceed our guests’ expectations. That’s going to create the guest loyalty which is going to deliver sustainable, profitable growth for our organization,” said Clark. “From a human resources perspective, it starts with selecting the best. The most important decision that we make within our company is who we hire.”
Four key principles
The key components are fundamental HR but Clark’s comprehensive integration of the plan is notable for both its thoroughness and her methodical approach. Her strategic HR plan is the foundation for how Fairmont developed a service culture that consistently delivers top service. It is based on four key principles: select the best; lead with the best; train and develop; recognize and reward.
1) Select the best
Working in tandem with the Gallup Organization’s human resource management and consulting department, Clark developed a selection process in 1988. By interviewing the best servers, reception agents and managers and clearly identifying what made them the best, they developed a structured interview whereby it was possible to identify recruits with a natural service orientation.
“We recognized that we had to be very strategic in terms of our human resources so that we could develop a highly trained service organization. We began with selecting the best,” said Clark. “We believed that we could train the technical skills — that’s the easy part. What we can’t train is the service orientation. We just can’t put people in the training program and say they are going to come out smiling if that is not inherent in them.”
The structured interview helps identify the talents and abilities inherent in each individual. Identifying a person’s natural talents and strengths and placing that person in a job that maximizes these talents and strengths leads to exceptional productivity.
“Essentially we wanted to put round pegs in round holes,” said Clark. “All too often, when you try to put a round peg in a square hole, you will have performance difficulties and absenteeism.”
2) Lead with the best
The investment in leadership development and training is just as important as the investment in hiring the best talent. The leadership development program at Fairmont focuses on internal development and promotion. Through this training, leaders are able to provide coaching, development and support to employees.
“Once we have hired the best, the best need great leadership. That is the most important part of retention,” said Clark. “Gallup recently did a study and found that people don’t quit their companies, they quit their leaders.”
3) Train and develop
The third principle of the Fairmont HR strategy is training and development. It starts with a comprehensive orientation program for new hires, and continues through its corporate-wide customized training program, Service Plus, and the inter-company Pathfinder career development program.
“Great talent needs to be nurtured and grown or it will leave the company,” said Clark. “More so today with Generation X. They need constant growth and development.”
4) Recognize and reward
“Talent needs recognition and reward or they will leave,” said Clark. “It’s the day-to-day recognition, saying thanks for a job well done.”
Clark cites another Gallup study of exit interviews of North American employees who had left companies within the first six months of employment. The subjects were asked simply, “Why did you leave the company?” In this particular survey, the number one reason was, “Because my boss never said thank you.”
One aspect of the Fairmont culture for recognition is “Bravograms,” a note of recognition from colleagues to thank someone in particular for a job well done, for example. Bravograms are posted in the staff cafeteria on a recognition wall for all to see.
Another aspect is the monthly and annual star employee recognition program. Within each hotel, the star employee of the year is selected and is rewarded with a stay for two at any Fairmont hotel in the world.
The secret to success
As Fairmont expands, the HR strategy is adopted into the new hotels. The secret to the success of the Fairmont service culture has been the focus and integration of all four aspects of the HR strategy.
“We didn’t just look at a selection strategy, we didn’t just look at a leadership strategy, we didn’t just look at a training strategy, we didn’t just decide to focus on recognition and reward,” said Clark. “It was totally integrated.
“We have a great workplace that starts with the hiring of talented employees and talented leaders,” said Clark. “Together they create a great workplace. That will create greater customer/guest loyalty, and that creates sustainable and profitable growth. It’s all integrated.”
Aligning cultures
As employers become more global and mergers and acquisitions become more prevalent in business, a critical success factor will be the merger of corporate cultures.
“If the merger or acquisition is going to fail, quite often it is because the cultures are not aligned,” stated Clark. “When we planned the mergers, we put a lot of thought into the human side of it. We asked, ‘What are the best practices that each company has to bring?’ and from that we moved forward.”
From the start of the merger project between Canadian Pacific, Princess and Fairmont, company-wide communication from the top down was a key component. Regular communiqués from the company president to management were shared throughout each hotel. Every employee was apprised of the stages of the merger. Following the merger, all employees still receive regular updates in terms of what is happening in the organization.
Senior management put several integration teams together that involved key people from the companies. An integration team was created for each department, such as sales, human resources and finance and accounting. The team studied best practices in the organizations and identified where new standards needed to be developed. This is how the new Fairmont code was created.
“We didn’t presume that either company had the best practices. We worked together to understand the systems and procedures and cultures of the companies, and together we developed the new culture,” said Clark.
Focus on values
“One of the first things our president did was meet with a group of key people from both companies to develop the mission, vision and set of values for the newly merged organization.”
From that meeting, senior management identified four key values: respect, integrity, teamwork and empowerment. Then to involve all employees, they had every hotel hold a values workshop. “We asked them to articulate what the four key values meant to them and to describe that in one or two sentences,” said Clark.
The hotel HR director and learning coach facilitated the workshops and then each of the 38 hotels sent their descriptions to Clark’s office. “What was incredible was the consistency in the feedback,” said Clark. “We took the feedback and used that as the description of our core values. All of our employees were very much involved in the new identity process. When we rolled out the final product, each employee could feel ownership of the values since they help create them.”
Clark cautions that the merging of cultures doesn’t happen overnight. There needs to be lots of communication.
The growth and development of the company has meant the same for HR as well. The international expansion alone has required learning about the cultures and HR practices of different countries. For example, Fairmont is in the midst of opening its first overseas hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Raising the talent bar
With the structured interview as the first step in an HR strategy to grow the business, there has been a continual focus on its evolution. As Fairmont grows and the vision of the company evolves, training, leadership and recruitment are retooled while staying true to the goal of the strategy.
“We have raised the talent bar in the company by changing the selection of questions as we have merged and grown,” said Clark. “We realize that people drive the performance capabilities of companies today.
HR branding
Like her professional peers in other organizations and industries, Clark is faced with a challenge of changing demographics in the workforce.
“We know today that there will be labour shortage until the year 2020. Companies are going to be competing for a dwindling talent pool,” said Clark. “Once we get through the current economic downturn, which we will, the war for talent will emerge once again.”
Clark is arming herself with the strategy of human resources branding.
“Just like in marketing, you have market segmentation. What are the needs, wants and values of your different customer segmentations? Then you put together packages to market to these different groups,” said Clark. “It’s not one size fits all. So too in HR in the future, it’s not one size fits all.”
Sought-after talent will want very clear responses to basic questions: “What are the compelling reasons that I should work for your company?” or “What are the compelling reasons why I should stay with your company?”
Part of the employee value proposition is to look at employee segmentation by age group. What people in their 20s want is entirely different from what people in their 50s want. Clark gives the example of hotels that are predominantly staffed by young people, employees in their 20s who indicate that benefits are nice to have, but they don’t place a high value on it. That is in contrast to, for example, employee groups in their 50s who place a much higher value on a benefits package.
“Look at your employees by segment and say, ‘What are the needs wants and values of our employees in these different segments?’ and then put together HR strategies, programs and plans that will meet the needs wants and values of those employee segment groups,” suggests Clark. “It’s all about the employee value proposition. It’s much more challenging than a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Network to learn
“I have been able to watch human resources grow as a profession and take a leadership role in companies,” said Clark. “It is important for an HR practitioner to create or enhance their value, it is important to not be inward looking or thinking.” She strongly recommends taking advantage of outside networking opportunities such as the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario (HRPAO), conferences and industry-specific HR organizations to stay current and to bring new ideas into the organization.
“I encourage our team to at least be part of one networking group, one professional association with their colleagues, either within our industry, or cross industry,” said Clark. “Sometimes I am amazed when I talk to people who don’t take advantage of all the networks and resources that are out there.”
HR talent must-haves
In Clark’s opinion, the most important attributes in an aspiring human resources practitioner are proactivity and forward-thinking.
“If technical knowledge wasn’t there, it could be learned and taught,” said Clark. “I would be looking for somebody that has a passion for the whole of human resources management, someone that’s going to be a great leader.”
Clark is firm in her belief that there is no substitute for personal growth and development through on-the-job learning. She recommends “implementing new systems, trying new things out. Sometimes you will succeed, sometimes you will fail, but the main thing is that you are moving forward. You are always constantly trying to raise the bar.
“There’s a great new book, The HR Scorecard: Linking People Strategy and Performance, which I highly recommend,” said Clark.
Clark’s passion for human resources is unmistakable.
“I have been with the company 27 years. That’s probably not usual today with most career paths,” said Clark. “I can honestly say that through the period of time I’ve been with the company, every day continues to be as exciting and challenging as the one before.
“There’s a saying that I live by: find a job that you love, and you will never have to work again,” she concludes. “Try to identify your passion and your area of interest in terms of industry sector or component of HR. Try to match your passion and strengths within an organization and then move forward.”
