De Vere Hotels
Customer & Employee Engagement Research
Opportunity
MSB worked closely with the senior management team at De Vere Hotels to create an employee culture that was more engaged and rewarding.
Approach
Our work included both employee and customer research.
In the first instance, focus groups were held with employees at all levels across the hotel network in order to establish the issues that mattered to them. The feedback from these focus groups became the foundations for real change within each hotel, and was also used to design a regular, quantitative employee survey to test the progress made on key issues.
The feedback from MSB’s employee research helped local managers to formulate action plans to improve employee engagement and the workplace culture in which they operated. Changes introduced as a result of MSB’s report and recommendations included:
- development of new training opportunities
- improvement in internal communication
- increased awareness of the expectations of customers
- enhancements to the way managers led their teams
Impact
Over a three year period, MSB helped De Vere Hotels to improve their level of employee engagement from just 40% to over 90%. The annual employee survey, designed and implemented using the feedback from MSB employee focus groups, was – from that point onwards - always followed by a range of employee focus groups which helped managers to solve key issues raised in the main survey.
The Chief Executive and Directors received regular reports on progress both from the employee focus groups and local managers’ action plans from across the organisation.