Lessons From Leaders: Improve engagement by putting people first

As a worldwide group with over 5,000 hotels, including the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn brands, it’s understandable that IHG would expect or even accept some process discrepancies. However, after experiencing inconsistencies in their hiring approach, they took the decision to streamline and standardize recruitment using Lumesse.

Since the program launched, IHG have removed the burden on their IT support team, successfully launched new recruitment processes and measurably increased awareness of the change. And while these outcomes were enabled by specific actions and the ADOPT platform, Siobhan Thomas, their Global Talent Acquisition Director, believes their overall people-first mentality proved to be just as crucial.

“Really and truly what we were doing was homing in on the true human characteristic of ‘what’s in it for me’.”

With a background in optimizing and implementing talent acquisition programs and tools at several world-renowned organizations, including Sky, Taleo and Credit Suisse, Siobhan’s track record speaks for itself. And when it comes to software change programs, she feels too many are guilty of solving the noise vs solving the need. From her experience, the key to success lies in knowing what you are solving and who for, rather than just being seduced by technology.

According to Siobhan, “a lot of organizations think that they can pull in a new technology and get really carried away with implementation […] but what we say is think about the value proposition into your group”. So, with IHG’s goals clear, and hiring managers, candidates and recruiters identified as their audience, this is exactly what her team did.

By taking this approach, they were able to shape their program, applications and measurement around their people, rather than the other way around. While this may seem like an obvious point, after firsthand experience within several organizations, including a software vendor, Siobhan believes it is often overlooked.

She feels “a lot of out-of-the-box or SaaS solutions will tell you, or try to sell to you, that they can solve for all audiences at one time. I’ve tried it, I’ve worked for them, and they simply can’t.“ So, while this one-size-fits-all claim may be accurate in terms of functionality and UX, a world-class software change program will think deeper about its audience and their motivations.

“What you have to do is really take a group of people and home in on them, and decide what level of the organization you want to solve for”

The key lesson from Siobhan’s talk is that even if the software involved in your program is proven to be user-friendly and universally effective, it’s important to focus on your specific user groups and their goals. You’ll drive digital adoption in a more reliable, meaningful way if you keep the people who will be using your software at the front of your mind and regularly ask ‘what’s in it for them?’

Going into a change program with a people-first mentality is an excellent start, but Siobhan has more to share on how this is delivered successfully at IHG. Watch her full track talk from 2019’s UNLEASH Paris conference to learn more about how IHG work out a real value proposition for new software and why new functionality can’t be labelled as a gain for user groups without knowledge of their pain-points.

For this and more exclusive lessons from leaders, visit the Adoption Track.