Is it time to shape up your brand?

The battle for talent has forced hotels to improve their employer branding. Eileen Ang, director of human resources at W Singapore Sentosa Cove Hotel, asks whether you are leveraging on career development practices to boost your workforce.

The heightened competition for talent is causing hotels to shape their employer branding and better understand the motivations of the jobseekers.

Jobseekers are no longer seeking just a job, but are seeking opportunities to grow with the hotel. Therefore, it is imperative hotels ensure growth opportunities are available across all jobs levels.

With the war for talent, organisations need to take a proactive approach in identifying and grooming talent from within. Without the right people in key positions, organisations will face an uphill struggle to maintain their market share in their respective industry. Career development programmes are most effective when it is integrated with the organisation's training and development strategies.

To make this happen, the organisation must have a carefully curated career development system in place, one that is designed to meet its own unique business needs and requirements.

Career development is a vital part in any organisational strategy. A well-designed career management system not only benefits the organisation, but also the employees and managers as they get to establish effective communication with each other.

Other benefits include the continued development of employees in competencies required by the organisation to succeed, and increased employee engagement - a key driver of productivity, retention and performance.

One example of what we did in W Singapore Sentosa Cove hotel is the use of Starwood CAREERs system as a guide and tool to effectively develop talent.

Starwood Careers is a holistic and integrated talent management and development practice designed by Starwood's Asia Pacific Division, which aims to serve as the Asia Pacific's main platform to accelerate the growth of our talent pipeline.

This programme provides career development opportunities for our associates across all levels by embracing a proactive, inclusive and structured talent development approach. Such development structure also builds strong employer branding and loyalty through the consistent practices and "bubbling up" of talent across layers. It also creates a culture of continuous people development and organisational capability building.

Stephane Fabregoul, general manager of W Singapore, is one of the committed leaders who has successfully tapped into this programme. He is an example of how a leader should identify and groom individuals to be leaders in their own field today.

Prior to his recent posting to W Singapore, Stephane was general manager of the Westin Hyderabad Mindspace, and during his two year stint there he identified key managers and personally coached and mentored them by having regular one-to-one sessions with them, creating an individual competency development plan for them to embark on a self-directed development path in a systematic and planned manner.

As a talent developer, he has always ensured a transparent environment, allowing the team to grow with him. Some of the best practices that Stephane follows as a leader are weekly one-to-one sessions with all his direct reports, and skip level meetings for second level reports.

He also organises monthly "align and engage" interactions which stimulates strategic thinking, global environment consciousness and sensitivity there by building global leaders.

By actively identifying and developing candidates with the potential to undertake critical roles in relation to future business challenges and goals, Starwood has a ready pool of quality talent to advance to these challenging roles.

The holistic development that delivers critical development experiences also makes the movement of talent to new portfolios that are required to meet new challenges possible.

Overall, our talent bench strength is reinforced and is ready to deal with evolving business needs.