Taleo Corporation (NASDAQ: TLEO) the global leader of SaaS-based Talent Management solutions, is heralding the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) as the front runner in global talent mobility, as the leading global hotel company looks to recruit 400,000 people over the next four years.
Promoting IHG as an example of best practice, Taleo is calling for employers to ensure that they have the ‘talent intelligence’ to mobilise and deploy their existing staff, rather than relying wholly on external recruitment drives. As the economic crisis continues to put financial pressure on companies of all sizes, an in-depth understanding of the skills and career aspirations of existing staff allows businesses to minimise recruiting and onboarding costs, while still filling the roles needed to support their objectives.
Already responsible for 4,500 hotels and 666,000 hotel rooms around the world, IHG is opening new locations at an average of one a day around the world. IHG boasts the industry’s largest hotel development pipeline, currently progressing 1,100 hotels (more than 180,000 rooms). This rapid expansion has created the positive challenge of ensuring that IHG has the right people in place to manage the growth, and over the next four years, the Group plans to hire around 400,000 people. By implementing Taleo Recruiting, IHG has the talent intelligence able to source, assess, hire and onboard the best talent.
“We need people who are brand aware – what we call ‘brand-hearted’ – who can deliver our vision to our customers and our team so that our hotels are successful,” says Claire Guberg, IHG’s Global Talent Systems Manager. “We believe that the best way of getting that level of awareness is to look internally for the key positions that we need around the globe. Taleo’s software allows us to create a pool of people that we can search to find out where in the world they would like to work, and within which functions, helping us to quickly check we’re approaching the right people when it comes to new opportunities.”
One of the primary ways that IHG helps drive internal mobility is with its biannual Careers Week. This event encourages existing IHG personnel – no matter their level or job function – to go into the Taleo system and create a profile. IHG’s Career Week makes a significant impact in collating the information they need to successfully manage their internal talent. The most recent event, held in September, saw 5,000 people across 89 countries create a profile – the highest number yet. IHG also found that increasing numbers of their staff would be comfortable applying for an internal opportunity and know how to do this.
In real terms, this is delivering a significant impact on the success of IHG’s internal mobility program. Internal hires of general manager vacancies have increased to 84 percent from 61 percent in 2010, supported by an increase from 10 percent to 26 percent for corporate roles and 7 percent to 8 percent for hotel vacancies.
Jason Blessing, Executive Vice President at Taleo, says, “IHG is one of the best examples of an organization using talent intelligence to drive talent mobility. They have put in place the processes and technology to ensure that managers are truly able to recruit from a global internal talent pool. The returns that the company has enjoyed as a result, in terms of reduced recruitment costs, better brand awareness and loyalty among employees and overall increases in productivity and profitability, are absolutely remarkable.”
Claire Guberg concludes, “In order to achieve business growth on the kind of scale that we’re looking at, you can’t handle the recruitment process manually – it would jeopardise the quality of the process and the candidate experience. Taleo Recruiting allows us to spend less time on managing the processes and more time being dynamic and proactive in how we recruit.”
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