Welcoming Communication Excellence: Writing the next chapter for Imperial London Hotels

The client

Imperial London Hotels (ILH) is a family-owned business with a heritage of almost 200 years and eight hotels based in central London.  When ILH approached Enthuse, the business had seen organisational changes resulting in an exciting new brand, strategy and set of values. Ready to embark on its next chapter, Enthuse was drafted in to help bring colleagues on the journey. 

Need help engaging your employees? Get in touch

The situation

Following a tough time for hospitality during the Covid-19 pandemic, ILH had a relatively new employee base.  Despite this, most colleagues, including many who had recently joined, valued the family feeling of ILH’s culture.

Enthuse was brought in to help set up an internal communication function, working with the newly appointed Employee Communication and Culture Lead who had a background in HR and needed some guidance with communication and engagement best practice. 

As plans were underway to invest in building the external brand, a more strategic approach to engaging colleagues was needed to ensure that they were set up to work towards delivering the organisation’s vision and mission.  With a small team, practical solutions that could be implemented in the short, medium and long-term were needed.

With a 24-hour operation, ILH has many diverse, shift-based roles and not all employees have access to email, so an accessible approach for everyone was needed.​ In addition, a silo working culture existed in the central services team due to departments working across multiple sites.  A move was on the horizon, which would bring everyone together, so we needed to encourage greater collaboration between the teams. 

A strategic solution

Our work began by reviewing ILH’s current culture, their internal communication approach and infrastructure by conducting a thorough internal communication audit. This included focus groups with colleagues covering all levels within the organisation and one-to-ones with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).

Developing a narrative

A communication workshop with the SLT, colleagues in HR and the Communication Lead, enabled us to develop a key message house and create the communication infrastructure we required to foster best practice. We developed a solid narrative to ensure communications were engaging with a consistent and on-brand, tone of voice. Uniting colleagues to tell the ILH story, we encouraged them to get involved in creating the next chapter of ILH’s future. 

Creating a communication infrastructure

Not only did we suggest enhancing existing channels, such as improvements to the Town Hall sessions to make them more interactive and engaging, Enthuse also set out a new plan for ILH’s communications infrastructure. This included establishing ways of working and a new approach for operational start of shift meetings for frontline colleagues. To improve two-way communication, opportunities for colleagues to share their voice were given greater prominence and we advised the team how to take a consistent approach to implementing listening across all areas of the business.

Culture

ILH already had a positive culture, so Enthuse offered guidance to maintain and continually improve this across the organisation to foster greater collaboration. We developed ideas to ensure a proactive plan was put in place to maintain the ‘family feel’ element of the culture that colleagues appreciated and valued, ensuring the Internal Communication Lead understood the positive contribution she could make to the employee experience at ILH.​

We also created teaser and launch concepts for the values campaign, focusing on embedding these into the organisational culture and integrating recognition to drive lasting engagement.

Leadership

With leaders playing a crucial role in employee engagement and satisfaction, a key part of our work was to help ensure that leaders understood their role in building an engaging culture and driving change in a positive direction. We designed and facilitated a training event for leaders about the values and made recommendations to help support leaders to develop their communication skills and increase their visibility.   

Coaching

Enthuse worked closely with the new Communication and Culture Lead to give her the confidence to take responsibility for ILH’s internal communication agenda, defining Internal Communication best practice and helping her to plan new ways of working. Guidance included how to prioritise communications and a plan to launch the new Internal Communication function internally, supporting her with the tools to do this. We also helped the wider team to understand the important part internal communication has in the development of the employer brand and employee value proposition.

Measurement

Finally, to ensure the effectiveness of our strategic approach and to aid continuous improvement in the long-term, our recommendations included a blend of quantitative and qualitative evaluation measures that would be feasible for the client to implement.  After we recommended using an anonymous survey tool to gather feedback at the Town Hall, the number of questions asked immediately increased by almost 40 per cent.

What they said

“Thank you to Andrea and the Enthuse team for supporting Imperial London Hotels in establishing the Internal Communications function. With their package of strategic recommendations and mentorship, we were not only able to build the right foundations from the start but also develop a strategy for the years to come.”

Yuliia Prokhorova, Employee Communication and Culture Lead