There’s no better sense for HR professionals than seeing the success of a well-used and well-received employee program. In fact, you don’t feel that good unless the program also benefits your company’s revenue.
This is the case with Hilton employee travel programs. The perk, called Go Hilton, is a worker’s favorite and brings millions of dollars in revenue each year.
With Go Hilton, employees and their friends and family can stay on Hilton’s property due to sudden discounted fees. Team members’ fees include up to 40 nights a year, with the majority of hotels selling for tier prices ranging from $40 to $80 per night. Friends and Family Rates will give you 70 nights a year at 50% off the highest rate available.
“Traveling is central to our work,” Lora Lawler, vice president of Total Rewards and HR Technology at Hilton, told HR Brew. “We have this unique opportunity to use our travel and establishment purposes to really attract team members.”
However, the perks were not always loved. In fact, it was a source of great dissatisfaction before the revamped 10 years ago.
Belos is loved.The original team member travel program urged consistent workers’ criticism in Hilton’s annual internal survey.
“Every year, this was the biggest complaint that team members were talking about,” Rick Morrow, senior director of the Go Hilton program, who led the program’s modifications, told HR Brew.
The biggest headache was finding room availability difficult. The system relied on hotel management to add vacant rooms to the platform. This, according to Morrow, often did not happen. If employees are able to book a room, they will need to provide written documentation showing which hotel they are staying at and how long they have been staying, and they will need to sign off by their manager. The worker forgets the documents and turns his back to the hotel.
In 2016, Hilton introduced the Go Hilton program. It features a new booking site and system to find room availability. This process was made entirely electronically and discarded the paper documents.
To resolve the lack of room issues, Morrow’s team focused the process of adding availability to the platform. We worked with the Hilton commercial team to create an occupancy forecasting model. Hilton’s booking system includes occupancy and expected historical data for each hotel. Using this data, this model calculates the rooms that are most likely to be unsold during periods when they are not busy.
Accept evolution.Perks are not treated as a “set it and forget it” strategy. Lawler’s and Morrow teams are making changes to the program and rely primarily on employee feedback via annual surveys.
“We’re always looking at ways to improve our programs, and we’re still not at perfect,” Roller said.
For example, when they first introduced the program, the annual allocation of both team member fees and friend and family fees was set at 30 nights each. Early Feedback employees say that as the fees for friends and family are being used up quickly, Hilton expanded these rates to 70 nights a year, and this year, following similar feedback, it expanded its team member allocation to 40 nights.
Hilton also introduced a long-term tenure program. There, team members who had been at Hilton for over ten years earned fees for lifelong friends and family, and 20 years later earned fees for lifelong team members. That specific offering will increase employee retention.
“I don’t know how many times I can tell you. I’ve heard someone say it… they’re thinking about whether they’re retired or moving forward. They say, “No, no, I’ve been stuck for another year or two because I want those team member rates to go on for a lifetime,” Moreau said. “That’s how you keep good people.”
Win-win.Since the improvements, more than 35.8 million rooms have been booked via Go Hilton. The perks have also proven to be a successful revenue for Hilton. Since its reintroduction, Go Hilton has generated nearly $3 billion in revenue. Last year he was the most successful, earning almost $550 million.
For other HR leaders who want to implement successful revenue-raising talent programs, Lawler recommends offering a product or offering worthwhile for team members.
“The key to going to Hilton is that it works for our business as well as for the team members and employees,” Lawler said. “I either worked elsewhere or potentially elsewhere. [I’ve thought] Well, they need to have a discounted version of your name, and you know they won’t. So I encourage HR leaders to become creative and think about interesting ways to do it. ”
This report was written by Paige McGlauflin And it was It was originally published by HR Brew.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
