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Increasing hire quality
and optimizing talent management

with IHG

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Industry: Hospitality
Employees: 65,000+
Region: Greater China
Project timeline: 2017-Present
Key Words: :Multi-Module, Multi-Product Line Collaboration | Continuous Innovation | Glocal
Solution Components: Performance Management | Succession | Talent Review | LXP | Talent Marketplace

Project Challenges

InterContinental Hotels Group was founded in 1777. It has over 60 years of international hotel management experience and several internationally renowned hotel brands such as InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza Hotels, Holiday Inn Express, and Indigo.

As of April 30, 2020, IHG owned, managed, leased, or issued operating rights to a total of 6,103 hotels (411 in Greater China) with 878,521 hotel rooms (93,923 in Greater China) in nearly 110 countries and regions worldwide, making it the multinational hotel group with the largest number of hotels taken over in China.

As the fastest-growing region in the world, IHG Greater China is the most important region in the world in terms of new hotels, and in the context of the large differences in economic levels and service concepts between regions in China, the planning and layout of key positions are the most important to ensure a high degree of unity in its brand concept and control of high-quality service levels.

For the IHG human resources management department, the inventory of the current situation of talent in each key position, talent reserves, to achieve sustainable development of talent to supplement and cross-regional cross-brand talent information visibility, to rational planning of internal and external talent flow in an orderly manner, is its urgent need to solve the problem.

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Why aTalent

aTalent is dedicated to the field of performance and talent management. aTalent’s founding team comes from the world’s top HR system and management consulting vendors and has experience in product development and implementation delivery for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. aTalent is the only performance-focused talent management platform in China with the underlying data process connected.

As the most global and forward-thinking company in the HR SaaS industry, aTalent continues to upgrade and innovate its products. Last year, it launched China’s first internal talent marketplace (aTalent Talent Marketplace) to further empower the implementation of Intercontinental’s talent management concept.

IHG Greater China operates and manages over 400 hotels of different types, with a huge number of employees from the general manager level down to the basic service staff, and an extremely complex structure. aTalent Talent Management Platform is highly configurable and has a very fine management granularity, covering more than 70 configurable items for “Performance Plan” alone. It covers more than 70 configurable items, which deeply matches Intercontinental’s prudent talent management program.

At the same time, as a multinational hotel group with over 60 years of international hotel management experience, IHG’s internationalization concept is deeply rooted in all aspects of talent management. aTalent has rich experience in global cross-border project delivery, and its team of consultants is bilingual (80% of them have overseas working or studying backgrounds), which can better build a bridge for IHG’s project communication and coordination, assisting IHG’s local and international management to reach agreement on digital intelligence decisions. The three dimensions of the product, global compliance, and international team better match Intercontinental’s international brand concept and enable efficient and worry-free project management.

In addition, aTalent is based on the complex business needs and best practices of headquartered clients in various industries. It also helps to facilitate the integration of talent management across the whole domain, based on accurate data and a flexible management platform to help Intercontinental HR managers to make important decisions better. Customer Experience Comes First is the core of aTalent’s product design, insisting on optimizing user experience and minimizing system learning costs.

It is worth mentioning that aTalent has been the partner of IHG’s global HR management system many times, but IHG Greater China has always chosen to cooperate with aTalent, and both sides have mutual trust and win-win cooperation. During this period, aTalent has conducted more than 100 multinational workshops with dozens of different stakeholders from Intercontinental Group Headquarters, IHG Greater China HRCOE, HRBP, HRIS, IT, etc., listened to every business need of IHG, empowered every step of IHG’s talent management forward and development through the strength of continuous innovation.

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aTalent's exclusive solutions

Start with performance management, one step at a time

aTalent project implementation team worked with IHG headquarters, IHG Greater China IT department, and the HR department to sort out many different business processes of IHG through several workshops on HRIS interface, key position management, key position talent assessment, inventory, etc. Finally, different business processes were implemented in each module of aTalent Talent Management to ensure that they meet the actual business needs of IHG.

From Performance Management to Talent Review

Since the system went live, it has assisted in supporting talent review meetings for different functions in each region and provided support services for 400+ key hotel users. It is also designed to provide personalized operational guidance by automatically popping up a chatbot when an error is reported on the page, which greatly enhances the user experience.

From Performance Management to Succession Planning

aTalent Talent Management Platform provides succession nomination and succession analysis (including but not limited to individual employee experience, aspirations, and performance) to enable IHG HR department to make timely and optimal staffing decisions.

Increases internal talent mobility to reduce turnover through visible and transparent talent career plans (including mobility preferences). Multi-tiered grid structure with highly flexible and configurable talent management ratings to help IHG retain and develop the best talent.

From Performance Management to Learning &  Development

In terms of staff training, IHG headquarters has replaced different LMS systems before and after. aTalent has maintained long-term cooperation with many global leading vendors, so that aTalent LXP (aTalent Learning Experience Platform) can be seamlessly integrated with the digital platform of IHG headquarters.

At the same time, aTalent prioritizes the needs of IHG’s domestic users in terms of product design concepts, user habits, and data privacy and security, and deeply integrates and processes the international LMS system locally. For IHG China customers, we provide corporate WeChat integration, WeChat message notification, unique logo (landing page) of different brands, and other functions.

aTalent automatically matches and pushes courses for employees based on their different roles, positions, departments, regions, and hotel brands. The personalized course delivery system and convenient access to the learning platform greatly enhance the convenience and motivation of IHG employees.

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What are the

results & benefits

During the 5 years of cooperation, the number of IHG hotels in Greater China has increased from less than 200 to more than 400 and the number of system users has doubled. aTalent Talent Management Platform’s sophisticated architecture and flexible configurability have fully supported the huge changes in talent strategy and talent management. 

During this period, aTalent Talent Management Platform has helped IHG manage over 3,000 key job postings and successions in 400+ hotels, running close to 3,000+ key talent assessments each year, as well as horizontal talent reviews for over 10 key functions across all regions in China. The internal turnover rate of high-potential talent has gone from unaccountable when there was no system, to 9% in 2018, and then to 14% by 2021.

But the changes go far beyond that, as IHG is currently working on a new partnership with aTalent on its internal talent marketplace to further drive efficient internal talent mobility.

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“aTalent helped us to manage performance & succession of IHG Greater China Region 400+ hotels key positions.”

Gina Yue
Head of Talent,
Leadership Development and Learning
IHG Greater China

Visual Cheatsheet

The sophisticated architecture and flexible configurability of aTalent talent management platform fully supports the dramatic changes in talent strategy and talent management.

400+

Hotels in Greater China

3000+

Key Job Postings and Successions

3000+

Key Talent Assessment and Reviews

14%

High Potential Talent Internal Turnover Rate

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