Business Performance Toolkit for Hospitality

Red Roof Inn

With over 500 locations across 40 U.S. states, Red Roof Inn provides customers across the nation with affordable hotel accommodations without sacrificing comfort. Those 500 locations now serve millions of guests each year and employ almost 3,000 people.

In the past, weak data collection and reporting systems prevented Red Roof Inn’s HR team from identifying their top performers, analyzing turnover, and improving the employee experience. Without the ability to run business-specific reports, HR missed opportunities to provide senior management with data-driven insights. Reporting problems were compounded by a system that recorded every employee transfer between Red Roof entities as a termination, undermining statistics about employee tenure and development. In addition, valuable performance evaluation data was accessible only through imprecise, manual processes.

In January of 2016, Red Roof made the decision to upgrade to a unified HCM solution in order to address its business intelligence (BI) challenge. Red Roof’s view into its people is meaningful to the company at a corporate and individual level. For the first time, the company has insight into its employees’ work and compensation history, as well as the ability to track employee education, career interests, awards, certifications, and training.

"Real-time business intelligence has not only improved our ability to monitor employee turnover, but also to drill down into position specifics. This level of detail helps us learn from our top-performing groups and take action in areas with higher turnover,” says Leslie Fisher, vice president of HR and Training at Red Roof Inn. “We also have the capability for the first time to analyze groups of metrics together, such as quality scores, financial performance, and turnover. If we see a correlation between turnover and other key metrics, we can expect an investment in the employee experience to show returns in other areas of the business."

These new insights have positioned Red Roof’s HR as a key contributor to business strategy and have enhanced relationships between HR and the company’s senior leadership. Since implementing the new HCM solution, Fisher has been able to use turnover report details that include numbers, positions, and reasons to understand why turnover may be unexpectedly high in certain areas.

Fisher reports that several department leaders are using analysis from business intelligence now that they have gained the ability to evaluate groups of metrics together, such as quality scores and financial performance, to support the company’s growth.

National Aquarium

With more than 1.6 million visitors annually, the National Aquarium is Maryland’s leading tourist attraction. The mission of this not-for-profit organization is to "provide transforming experiences that encourage people to enjoy, respect, and protect the aquatic world."

Home to more than 17,000 creatures, the National Aquarium also acts as an educational resource and a leading force for environmental conservation along the Eastern Seaboard.

Changing the way HR had operated for many years was not easy for the National Aquarium, but company executives knew that greater HCM results would emerge by removing as many tactical activities as possible, moving processes online for more proficiency, and leveraging strategic business intelligence.

That jump to a more strategic HCM came about in 2009 when National Aquarium opted for a new cloud-based solution which empowered them to control expenses, transform its HR operations, and reduce risk related to compliance and litigation.

"My team can quickly and correctly address compliance needs and challenges. Workplace regulations are becoming more complex, but a leading people management solution makes it easy for our team," said Candace Osunsade, HR executive for the National Aquarium. With reliable, centralized, and secure information, as well as instant, configurable reporting, the HR team is well-positioned to reduce risk and vulnerability to legal issues and noncompliance.

"When it comes to optimal HCM, HR leaders need to understand how technology can minimize or eliminate the costs with paper processes and the associated inefficiencies,” said Osunsade. Because employee metrics are stored in one single, easy-to-manage platform that is available to the entire HR team, managers, and employees, the National Aquarium’s information accuracy has improved significantly. “When we evaluated our return on investment of the new HCM solution, including both hard- and soft-cost savings, we had a real ‘wow’ moment. In addition to controlling and cutting costs, we have revitalized HR as well as impacted our overall business."

To get a seat within the executive circle, Osunsade recommends HR practitioners leverage technology to automate processes, convert workforce metrics into business results, and establish credibility as corporate strategists. She also believes in the power of relationships with her HCM provider. “To prosper in today’s business environment, HR executives must focus on finding and trusting the right HCM business partner,” said Osunsade.

Alyeska Resort

Alyeska Resort is Alaska’s premier year-round destination. The resort’s proximity to Anchorage provides travelers with easy access to the destination’s summer and winter events, such as skiing, meetings, and weddings.

Prior to switching to a comprehensive cloud-based solution, the company was using separate systems for payroll and timekeeping, which were inaccessible to anyone outside accounting and payroll. Alyeska sought a comprehensive HCM solution that would enable managers to analyze and better understand seasonal labor patterns and control costs, and to improve people operations with role-based access for supervisors. Alyeska selected an all-in-one solution and went live in May 2014.

“Our tourist-based ski area resort is very labor intensive, and we took advantage of the business intelligence feature to cut our overtime costs,” said Mandy Hawes, vice president of finance for Alyeska. “We used business intelligence to track overtime costs by season, and with this data, we have been able take action and hire the right number of full-time employees. We also use BI to automatically deliver daily and weekly metrics to our managers so they can see their labor costs.”

Alyeska is also taking advantage of their provider’s own knowledgebase to extend their reporting capabilities for strategic planning. An internal forum allows users from anywhere in the world to share the innovative reports they have created. Alyeska leverages this knowledge sharing program to enhance their reports related to time management and compliance. Hawes reports that Alyeska is not only using the tool’s flexibility to enhance reporting, but also to substantially reduce managers’ administrative tasks.

“We built an integration with our resort point-of-sale system, so that the tool we use to track ski-school activities like lessons and training also populates the time record of our ski-school staff,” said Hawes. “Our ski-school manager was spending more than a day per week manually entering staff time into our old solution. With our point-of-sale (POS) system now automatically pushing this data into our solution, our managers can focus on our core business, using their time to supervise people and improve our services.”

According to Hawes, Alyeska’s ability to integrate with an industry-specific, third-party solution is just one way the resort is using the people management tool to improve people operations. Role-based access for managers has unlocked even more value throughout the organization.

“We’ve been thrilled to see what our managers can do without support from the HR team,” said Hawes. “In the past, a manager had to walk a piece of paper around and collect a number of signatures, and then the information had to be entered into a system by HR. Now, supervisors can initiate transfers or pay increases and the approval process is entirely automated. These efficiencies are a benefit not only to management, but also HR. Freed from managing a paper process, HR can direct more resources to talent acquisition strategies, a particularly important activity given our limited labor pool.”