Theme: Investing in Training Employees Actually Want
Imagine a world in which a company announces the next class of leadership training will be rolling out soon and employees are clamoring to get into it. A world in which “training” is not a dirty word met with eyerolls, apathy, and frustration of “losing an entire day”. But this is in fact no dream. It's actually a reality that existed at a place called Starwood Hotels.
One topic that struck me as I interviewed more than a dozen former Starwood employees was that almost all of them mentioned attending some sort of Starwood training as a highlight of their experience. Starwood was a company that truly invested in developing their employees and did so in a way where the employees clearly saw the benefits of participating in the training.
SIX SIGMA TRAINING
One of the most well regarded and unique trainings offered at Starwood was “Six Sigma Training”. Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement, historically used in the manufacturing industry to reduce defects. I first learned about Six Sigma in my undergraduate business operations class and it is often taught alongside case studies of companies like Toyota and lean manufacturing methods. Starwood became one of the first non-manufacturing companies to use the methodology. In particular, Starwood’s goals were to improve consistency of the customer experience across properties, enhance revenue and thus financial performance, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Stuart Birkwood, the former GM of the Le Meridien Abu Dhabi who spent time at several other properties throughout Europe and the Middle East at Starwood, was one of the many people who sought out and benefited from Six Sigma training. What was unique was that it was not a mandatory training nor a required certification in order to move up in the company. As we discussed before, Starwood had a relatively flat hierarchical structure from a cultural standpoint.
Rather, as Stuart described it, “The Senior leaders made it very clear that it wasn't that you must do it, but laid out that if you want to invest in yourself and hedge your bets to get to the next level, it would help you.”
The most successful trainings are those that have a clear goal and ROI for the attendee. This couldn’t have been more true about Six Sigma in that employees sought it out because it was a tool they could use to be better at their jobs and further accelerate their careers. Emily Chalk Battaglia worked at Starwood for 7 years before leaving to start her own corporate event planning company, East of Ellie. She talks about how being able to attend the Six Sigma training “changed my professional life”. She still uses those skills in her new career and is extremely grateful for the opportunity to have developed those skills. Skills she probably never would have been taught or given the opportunity to learn anywhere else.
But there is more that makes this training unique. The ideas behind Six Sigma were embedded in the culture at Starwood. Starwood was a highly innovative company and the concept of Six Sigma supported this innovative spirit by literally training employees on how to question the status quo, look for improvements, and roll out changes and improvements in a productive manner. Starwood didn’t just say they were innovative. Rather, they also put their money where their mouth was and trained employees in methods that would support a culture of innovation.
And if that wasn’t enough of a difference versus how other companies think about training and employee development, Starwood took Six Sigma even further. Six Sigma positions were created across the world to support on-property teams. For a hotel company that had a large percentage of franchise properties, it meant Starwood successfully convinced owners to invest in additional operational budget to pay for additional on-property resources to support this idea of innovation and continuous improvement.
All of this is to say that Starwood didn’t approach training as a one-and-done, “check-the-box”, activity. Rather it championed a philosophy (innovation and continuous improvement), developed a training program to teach that philosophy to employees, and then invested further resources to embed those employees and ethos into the day-to-day operations of the company. Where else do you see that level of commitment and follow through when it comes to training and development? And the fact that employees who went through Six Sigma training still talk about how it positively impacted their career, not just at Starwood, but also beyond, speaks volumes.
PRESENTATION TRAINING
Six Sigma wasn’t the only training that employees remember as positively impacting their career development. Another highly rated training program was a shorter Presentation Skills training that many junior team members remember fondly. The training program was actually led by the company that helped the senior executives at Starwood with their presentations. Dani, a former Starwood employee, remembers fondly being able to participate in this training and how it continued to shape her ability to communicate effectively and storytell in her career today as a marketing expert.
Noelle, former Associate Director of Sheraton Global Brand, also highlighted this training as an example of the investment Starwood made in its employees. She appreciated that the training was a live training, hosted by experts, and time was carved out specifically for people to fully engage in this training.
Many companies roll out training, but its the conversation and commitment to that training that speaks volumes to employees about the importance of the training. Is the time protected for the employees to actually go to the training or is there a guilt and multitasking happening during that time? The ability to fully immerse themselves in a training that was teaching them a valuable skill set was not lost on employees like Noelle.
NEW HIRE TRAINING
While Starwood made available some valuable skill development trainings, they also had their standard mandatory trainings like New Employee Onboarding Training. However, even these trainings were approached differently than other companies.
No one likes mandatory training, but there are ways to make these trainings more valuable and less oppressive in rolling them out. In doing so, Starwood avoided some of the common mistakes made where a corporate team creates a training for an on-property or franchise team. Leon Young, a former General Manager for several high profile hotels at Starwood throughout his tenure, appreciated that the onboarding training was developed with the properties unique needs in mind. It was clear that the training was developed by someone “who sat in your seat”.
One of the clearest examples of that consideration was in Starwood’s care in the timing of rolling out the trainings to properties. As Leon noted, “[The training] was rolled out with consideration that you were managing a whirlwind and so you wouldn't get a super mandatory [training] during peak season.” The simple act of not rolling out a training during a hotel’s peak season showed a care and understanding for the challenges the properties faced, which helped build trust between corporate and property teams. A lesson any organization or industry that has stores or franchises should emulate.
And in typical Starwood fashion, they took the training further to connect it back to the original intent and purpose of the training. The goal of the new hire training was to steep every employee, whether at a corporate office or on-property, in the culture and experience of the hotel product. Every employee should understand the customer experience so they can deliver the best customer experience. As a result, every new hire was gifted one free night at a Starwood property. Think about this for a second. Starwood treated staying at their properties as a necessary part of being able to do your job well, not as a special privilege only available to high ranking employees. And this is another example of approaching training from a fully integrated approach and not just an exercise in checking-the-box.
SUMMARY
We can learn a lot from Starwood’s approach to training and apply it to companies today. First and foremost, recognizing that investing in employee development is key to continuing to build a best-in-class employee pool. The trainings developed should provide important skills that reinforce the culture that the company wants to create. And the trainings should be rolled out in a way that ensures the learnings are absorbed, rather than trying to condense something down into the shortest time possible (90 min training anyone?). And when done correctly, you’ll create a culture where employees beg and plead to get accepted into training programs and keep using those skills long after they have left the company.
