About Cottrills
Centre Island - Awards and Recognition
Interview with Dee Keeley - Group Human Resources Manager
Centre Island is a private limited hotel company based in Liverpool with a portfolio of 9 internationally-branded properties. Founded in 1995, the Company has a sound reputation within the hotel industry for its high standards in both the quality of its products and its’ service excellence.
In a dynamic industry it has developed a reputation for leading-edge people management techniques; low staff turnover and brilliant, customer focused people.
Group Human Resources Manager, Dee Keeley, agreed to answer a few questions for us.
Q. What is the best thing about your job?
A: "Our great reputation, fantastic products and brilliant staff!"
Q. Why did you start your staff Award & Recognition programme?
A: "There were a few reasons –Centre Island has an ambition to be an Employer of Choice. If we’re to be successful in that aim then we have to use innovative methods of ‘turning our people on’- making sure they enjoy their work and have a stake in its success. We also wanted to move away from cash-based rewards which independent research has shown to be non-motivational, and finally we genuinely want to regularly recognise the contribution our people make to business success."
Q. How does it work?
A: "We have a range of Awards all of which are derived from our HR strategies. These include : Introduce a Friend - we know this is the best method of recruitment for us – so we ‘pay’ our own people to introduce someone they know will fit in; Ideas Implemented - we encourage our people to have input into the way we do things and suggest alternative or new methods of working: each month an Employee of the Month is voted for in each hotel and awarded points – this creates ‘role models’ within the company so that people know what behaviour the business values; we award those people who complete a full year without any absence – this is a huge issue in Hospitality - if people aren’t at their job then our customer service – our point of differentiation, could suffer; we also value longevity … we have Long Service Awards for 5 years and 10 years.
Finally we have ‘discretionary awards’ which are awarded to staff when we receive great customer feedback on their service, helpfulness, friendliness or knowledge."
Q. What did you hope to achieve?
A: "We wanted to send out a clear message that Centre Island does things differently. Traditionally in Hospitality there is lots of movement and high staff turnover. We wanted to achieve no more than 40% staff turnover; keep staff with us for longer and have them fully engage with the business while they’re working with us."
Q. How was it communicated?
A: "We developed a presentation to bring to life our ‘Employee Proposition’ which explained what the programme was about and how people could benefit from Awards & Recognition.
This was then presented to all the staff via the General Managers quarterly staff meetings, along with copies of the Centre Island branded catalogues. The programme now forms part of the Company Induction process."
Q. Did the scheme achieve its objectives?
A: "As a key element within our Retention strategy, the aim was not to save money, but rather to use the investment more effectively, more widely, more often and with motivational benefits.
In this respect, it has been very successful. Even though some of the awards can be of low value (in points) the sense of recognition remains high with a positive effect on personal and team performance.
Over 25% of staff at Centre Island have been with the company for more than 5 years and over 45% have service of more than 3 years.
35% of all our recruitment is now through ‘Introduce a Friend’ significantly reducing the costs of recruitment agencies, advertising and management time. In an industry with average staff turnover of over 70%, Centre Island recorded 38% in the last financial year."
Q. What has the feedback been from employees?
A: "From a doubtful start (the programme replaced cash based rewards!) we have demonstrated to staff that making regular awards for agreed behaviour or activities creates a ‘win-win’ situation.
They know what the company values and how they can benefit from the scheme. They also love the gifts – we’ve awarded over 100,000 points so far and had claims ranging from perfume, kitchen equipment and DIY tools to LCD TV’s."
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