InterContinental Hotels Group

Using Stream LXP to gather insight into culture, leadership, the future of work and the wellbeing of colleagues.

About

InterContinental Hotels Group plc, (IHG Hotels & Resorts) is a multinational hospitality company headquartered in Buckinghamshire, England.

350,000
United Kingdom
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Background

InterContinental Hotels Group plc, (IHG Hotels & Resorts) is a multinational hospitality company headquartered in Buckinghamshire, England. It operates a family of 17 trusted hotel brands including Holiday Inn® and the luxury, InterContinental® resorts, providing more than 884,000 rooms globally for over 150 million guests each year. 

IHG has been using Learning Pool’s Stream LXP for many years, for the delivery of its ‘Brilliant Conversations’ MOOC for first-level leaders, sharing of best practices within teams, and other short-term learning interventions. It is also used for the delivery of Learning Summits, such as the WorkLife Summit which took place during the pandemic in 2020, when staff moved to home working. 

Following the upheaval that the pandemic brought on working practices, IHG was keen to understand what was happening within the business from a leadership and cultural perspective, particularly around wellbeing and the future of work. They looked to design a programme that would give them this insight. 

The Solution

1,000 IHG colleagues from the corporate offices were invited to a Next Thinking hackathon; a 3-day event where insight was gathered and used to inform future strategies around topics such as Culture and Leadership, the Future of Flexible Working, and Wellbeing.  

Using Stream LXP as the platform for the hackathon, the company looked to engage staff in an immersive environment and regularly survey them to gain qualitative and quantitative data to inform the business. Using Stream Authoring within the LXP, the team was able to create a range of content types, such as multiple-choice questions and videos, and publish these alongside open comments. 

The multiple sources of data were then validated, combined, and fed into Stream Data Cloud, Learning Pool’s Learning Record Store. Dashboards were created with graphical outputs to make analysis simple and transparent. As Stream Data Cloud was the vehicle for capturing the comments and text responses it allowed IHG to delve more deeply into the personal experience of their staff, enabling them to make informed decisions around their unique scenario. 

They also incorporated Microsoft forms and embedded these into the platform to get greater insights across the 3-days.  

IHG’s aim was to understand what the business would need to do to have the culture it aspired to. What would they need to change? What might they do differently? What would the leadership team need in order to deliver the aspired experience to all employees?

The hackathon also addressed their recently launched global approach to flexible working and what they needed to do to make that a success. What support was needed from the leadership team and to fully understand the practical aspects of returning to the office or moving to a hybrid work structure? 

The final part of the puzzle was around wellbeing and understanding what employees were facing. What needed to improve from a culture, policy, and practice perspective? What the business needed to do to upskill managers to enact the wellbeing commitments the organisation had made. 

The sessions were supported by a number of e-coaches; members of HR staff from all around the world, who were put in place to investigate and probe and to make sure the root causes of any issues were uncovered and those practical solutions were addressed.

The Response

Around 400 colleagues took part in the hackathon and we were really pleased with the really high level of quality conversations and the rich dialogue that took place. Participants were thoughtful and intentional when sharing their experiences. Using Authoring within Stream LXP really allowed us to add extra value to the experience, as previously we could only have one piece of content with comments alongside, but this allowed us to have a much more immersive and interactive experience, combining many different sorts of learning elements into one piece of content and allowing users to engage around it. The whole experience has allowed us to collate important data to inform several of our strategic initiatives to better support the business moving forward.

Lianne Coriette
Global Director, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Wellbeing, Future of Work

Results

The hackathon resulted in over 4,500 comments being collected through Stream LXP and these were mapped across key themes so the results and relevant action could be interpreted.

The hackathon informed several areas moving forward including:

  • Informing IHG corporate leadership development programmes & strategy by knowing how their leaders were perceived and the skills needed for the future.
  • Informing process & behavioural changes across the organisation by understanding what slows down their growth ambitions, helping them to get to the root cause of issues.
  • Informing leadership conversations, education & training materials, as well as office engagement activities by hearing colleagues’ concerns and opportunities relating to returning to the office & adopting hybrid working.
  • Plus, it informed their wellbeing initiatives & strategy by offering a pulse check on how people were feeling and where they need support.

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