Engagement is so much more than satisfaction and motivation. It grows stronger when an employee’s and the company’s stories intertwine. 

It is all about surpassing ourselves, excelling, and blazing a trail to success together.Today, this is our goal for our employees.

As our Group is reviewing its options to step up its performance and rolling out a new leadership model, employee engagement is naturally emerging as a key success factor. This is what prompted us to overhaul our engagement survey and to scale it up to the entire Group.

The goal is to measure employee engagement.

Our business is all about human contact, and it is an established fact that employee engagement and performance are closely linked. High engagement indexes and motivation levels influence performance indicators such as customer satisfaction, team productivity and sales.

The aim is therefore to constantly increase:

• Employee fulfilment
• Guest satisfaction
• Business performance
  

What we are doing already

At Accor, we run every year a new survey worldwide.

The goal: compile a full picture of the situation, to fine-tune our action plans.

This extensive survey provides a 360° view of our options to nurture employee engagement. It encompasses:

• Wellbeing;
• Social climate;
• Motivation;
• Pride in belonging;
• Equal opportunity;
• Accor’ position as a benchmark employer;
• Our employees’ perceptions of our vales from where they are standing.

1. THIS SURVEY COVERED ALL HEAD OFFICE AND HOTEL EMPLOYEES, EXCLUDING FRANCHISEES. IT IS ANONYMOUS AND CONFIDENTIAL.

What we plan to do for the future

We plan to mainstream this survey and use findings at every level in the organization, from the head offices to the hotels.

The goals:

• Compile an overview of the situation then track progress year after year;
• Openly publish survey results, including all necessary breakdowns (Group, country, brand, region, function, etc.);
• Identify pointers for progress and opportunities to increase engagement;
• Roll out operational action plans for each team based on survey findings;
• Support the new Talent & Culture strategy "TALENT & CULTURE" and new leadership model.

Because everything we do hinges on human contact. Because our hotel employees may work shifts, nights, holidays and weekends. Because happy employees keep customers happy. Because welcoming, serving and caring for customers is at the heart of our jobs. 

For all of these reasons, we are certain that caring about our employees, their working conditions and their work-life balance, is the best way to ensure we provide outstanding service.

Caring for employees:

• Increases motivation;
• Creates a working environment that fosters fulfilment;
• Enhances Accor's appeal as an employer;
• Makes Accor a great place to work, and a great place to be!

What we are doing already

The Feeling Well@Work committee was appointed in 2015 for the corporate head offices in France.

It was tasked with:

• Taking measures aimed at improving employee wellbeing then tracking them;
• Rallying employees around a participative and multidisciplinary program;
• Providing a forum to share ideas and serve as a resource for issues revolving around employee wellbeing.

Accor is also involved in efforts to prevent diseases and epidemics. Its teams organize sessions on:

• Preventing HIV;
• Preventing chronic diseases;
• Balanced diets and healthy nutrition;
• Preventing psychosocial risks;
• First aid.

Our ongoing drive to foster employee wellbeing has prompted us to take a wide variety of measures to prevent psychosocial risks, including:

• Training courses (in France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands);
• Hotlines and whistleblowing channels at local level (mainly France and Brazil);
• Collective agreements to channel initiatives (agreements signed in 2015 in Singapore, Romania, Mexico, Germany, France);
• Sessions on work-related stress (mainly in France);
• Initiatives specifically targeting sexual and psychological harassment.

What we plan to do for the future

By enshrining wellbeing at work among the key commitments in its new strategy looking at 2016-2020, Accor plans to take employee dedication to the next level.

Specifically, the Group plans to:

• step up awareness of issues revolving around health and wellbeing at work, in particular among managers;
• mainstream best practices to blend them into country-level Talent & Culture policies;
• organize and channel health and wellness at work initiatives so that they reach as many people as possible;
• identify the opportunities to take action at the most relevant level, i.e. in hotels.

The Group’s unbending efforts to promote diversity and inclusion go back a very long way, and it took a formal stand on these issues in 2008.

This is one of the principles underlying our managerial ethics and our resulting drive against discrimination and for equal opportunity.

Our vision of diversity cascades into 4 goals:

• Gender diversity and equality
• The integration of people with disabilities
• Richness of social, ethnic, racial and cultural diversity
• LGBTQ+ inclusion

Our diversity policy stems from a series of uncompromising pledges:

• we fight against all forms of discrimination;
• we give everyone a chance;
• we raise employee awareness and train them to embrace diversity;
• we publicize our efforts to promote diversity;
• we expect others to meet the same standards;
• we welcome everyone’s opinion and assess our efforts to promote diversity;
• we have committees to discuss strategy and monitor implementation.

What we are doing already

Accor intends to promote diversity and equal opportunity, fight against discrimination and, in a nutshell, be an inclusive company – in particular for women.

The Group’s policy for diversity and against discrimination is enshrined in its commitment to diversity.

Accor also provides a variety of resources aimed at refreshing and enforcing its commitment to diversity:

• the Group’s Diversity Intranet site;
• the diversity glossary;
• the e-learning program on diversity management;
• the handbook for recruiting officers and managers;
• the recruitment guidelines;
• the handbook on parenthood;
• the handbook on disabilities;
• the handbook on equality.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLES

By signing the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, Accor has pledged to:

• Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality;
• Treat all women and men fairly at work, respect and support human rights and nondiscrimination;
• Ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of all women and men workers;
• Promote education, training and professional development for women;
• Implement practices that empower women;
• Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy;
• Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality.

What we plan to do for the future

As a signatory to the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles and a HeForShe movement Impact Champion, Accor is aiming to:

• Achieve gender equality in management and equal pay. The goal:
• Raise awareness among men employees and encourage them to foster gender equality;
• Encourage changes in attitudes in synch with changes in the hospitality industry;
• Roll out local action plans to foster diversity, tailored to each country’s cultural and legal environment, and backed by a toolbox to support implementation;
• Promote diversity through our sustainability roadmap.

Committing to sustainable development is one step in the right direction. Acting on those commitments is one step further.

We are going even further: asking our employees to tell us what they think about our CSR programs. In 2015, we set up a CSR index. It measures employees’ feelings as regards our approach to a more sustainable business model and how earnest or otherwise we are about it.

An innovative indicator
Companies are typically more concerned with how outside stakeholders – customers, partners, etc. – perceive their CSR policy. At Accor, our employees’ perceptions are just as important.

It is a matter of trust, ethics and transparency: 
Firstly, because our CSR commitments apply to our employees and they are the cornerstone of our sustainable development policy.

• They are its ambassadors:
• They translate the policy’s principles into their everyday jobs and lives;
• They tell customers about them, to involve them in our efforts.

Then, because CSR inspires employees and nurtures their loyalty:

• when employees embark on a sustainable drive,
• they become more committed to their jobs and to customer satisfaction,
• they find more meaning in what they do and their allegiance to their employer grows.

Lastly, because relationships between employees and their companies are changing. Careers are becoming less linear and less smooth:

• they change companies more often;
• they also change tracks and expect their jobs to have meaning.

Our aim is to stay one step ahead of this trend. Assuming our responsibility as an employer also means providing employees with meaningful prospects. Whether they choose to grow within the Group or prefer to move on.

CSR index components

Our new engagement survey has provided us with a solid and significant Group-wide CSR index, and now puts us in a position to track it. This index measures employee perceptions of the related issues.

• Perceptions of the Group’s social and environmental action;
• Its efforts to promote diversity and inclusion;
• Its working environments and willingness to embrace differences;
• Its policy to develop skills.

What we are doing already

Explaining and training. This is the first step to raise employee awareness of our commitment to sustainable development.

 We have inter alia developed an e-learning program available in 10 languages. It comprises two modules:

• Sustainable development awareness: 
  - The issues and challenges;
  - The hotel and its environment; 
  - Our approach to a more sustainable business model.
• The rights things to do: 
  - How to tell customers about  our sustainability approach and the hotel’s initiatives; 
  - Why small changes matter and how to make a difference at work.

We also circulate sustainable development fact sheets to the Group’s business lines with the information they need to know and the initiatives they can take.

Two highlights 

Every year, all our employees worldwide gather for sustainability day focused on Accor's approach to a more sustainable business model. This day focuses on rallying the teams and taking action around our commitment to sustainable development

Every year, we also organize a Solidarity Week. The goal is to encourage employees to reach out to the disadvantaged, with local charities.

What we plan to do for the future