Eden Hotel Collection supports its employees with a variety of employee recognition schemes in order to share successes and be known as a great place to work.
The organisation employs more than 425 staff across its head office in Stratford-upon-Avon and five UK hotels, which include The Arden Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon, The Greenway Hotel and Spa in Cheltenham, Brockencote Hall Hotel in Kidderminster, Mallory Court Hotel and Spa in Leamington, and Bovey Castle in Devon.
Last year, it held its first ‘A Celebration of Our People’ event, which included awards for long-service, Employee of the Year, a Spirit of Eden accolade for an employee who embodies its heart, team, honest and spirit values, and recognising those who completed qualifications. In doing so, the organisation aimed to enable employees to share and celebrate their successes with their peers, while also receiving monetary prizes such as retail and restaurant vouchers.
On 23 January, it also launched an app-based recognition programme called The Happy Hub. This includes peer-to-peer recognition via e-cards to thank a colleague or celebrate an occasion such as a birthday; instant rewards in the form of a £5 to £10 gift card from managers; general manager awards of up to £50 to recognise outstanding contributions, an employee-of-the-month award per hotel and head office in the form of a Sunday lunch or a paid day-off; and long-service recognition.
The organisation recognises that the greatest buy-in with The Happy Hub would come from full-team involvement, explains Lisa Redding, group people director at Eden Hotel Collection. In order to achieve this, it established a working group made up of a range of employees to map out and provide feedback on what they would like to see, as well as an employee competition to name the programme.
“We wanted to involve everyone, and key to its success was a celebratory roadshow at each of our properties to launch the scheme,” she says. “This was attended by employees at all levels to explain what the scheme is, our approach, and what it means. This included managers sessions to really help ensure full team engagement to drive a culture of recognition.”
Eden Hotel Collection’s previous recognition scheme was a card-based system that it did not think was very visible. When planning The Happy Hub, the employer wanted a digital scheme that was inclusive to all of its employees regardless of their position. An app-based model was modern and appealing to its employee age demographic, which mainly comprises 18-38-year-olds.
It was designed around each of the four chemicals of happiness: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, to ensure employees sending or receiving recognition feel at least one of these. The thinking behind this idea was that positive happy hormones are key to employees performing at their best.
As a hospitality business, the organisation believes exceptional service comes from engaged and happy teams, and the bedrock of its values and ethos is to show the same care for its staff as it shows its guests.
“Hospitality can sometimes wrongly be perceived as a stop-gap career, with low pay and benefits and limited career prospects. We are challenging that with a transformative people-first approach that champions positivity against the backdrop of what is understandably a fast-paced, demanding environment. Traditionally, hospitality has had a high turnover, but our employee retention rates have increased 26% over the past two years and are at an all-time high,” Redding concludes.