Atlas Hotels, an award-winning hotel franchise group, has 58 hotels in the UK, primarily under the franchised Holiday Inn Express and Hampton by Hilton brands. Operating in the hospitality industry,
Atlas Hotels has strict compliance training requirements, especially around health and safety.
“We have a goal of keeping our staff 100% compliant, so compliance training is a major focus for us. After implementing OpenSesame, we have been able to reduce the number of compliance courses while maintaining standards and providing training in a more engaging video format, mainly on mobile devices. This saves a lot of time, around 35% compared to previous content used and offers flexibility on how and when our employees take the training”, explains Darren Cooper, L&D Manager at Atlas Hotels.
Improving employee engagement and retention in a fast-paced environment
Employee turnover in the hospitality industry tends to be high, so Atlas Hotels focuses on improving employee engagement and retention. “We have a young demographic who see learning and development as a key benefit. Therefore, we want to provide all our employees with a possibility to learn new skills by offering engaging and interactive training,” continues Cooper.
While English is the primary language of Atlas Hotels’ guests, a proportion of Atlas Hotels employees don’t have English as their first language, so the OpenSesame solution has offered lots of benefits in
language learning. Also, compliance courses are available in multiple languages, which makes it easy for employees to take their mandatory training in different languages.
Engaging learners with modern learning solutions
“Our employees have a wide variety of training needs and requirements based on their job roles. We wanted to partner with a vendor who was able to provide a wide range of content for all our different
training needs, in multiple languages.
“We evaluated several solutions and when we looked at OpenSesame, we immediately saw the benefits of their content curation.”
Darren Cooper, L&D Manager at Atlas Hotels
“We evaluated several solutions and when we looked at OpenSesame, we immediately saw the benefits of their content curation. I could pick the best content from different providers that suited our requirements. Based on the learner feedback and engagement data we get from the system, we optimise and replace courses with better content when necessary. For mandatory compliance training, we can also offer fresh content every time, which makes it more engaging for learners,” explains Cooper.
Atlas Hotels is beginning to roll out additional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training using OpenSesame’s catalogue. Recently, there has been a lot of focus on modern-day slavery and human trafficking in the hospitality industry. All Atlas Hotels employees now take training on these important topics. The hotels have also been audited for training and compliance in these areas. The
feedback from those audits has been excellent – with external auditors describing the training Atlas Hotels offers as best in class.
“Because we see the learning platform as an employee benefit, we also offer our employees the opportunity to build transferable skills for their career development. In addition, we offer a wide
variety of wellness courses, such as meditation, yoga, and mindfulness. We have added a mental health programme with additional privacy features, so our employees feel comfortable taking the training. We’ve seen a positive change in learner engagement, our learners log in on a regular basis to access various courses,” says Cooper.
35%
reduction in training time
40%
increase in learner engagement
Adding fresh content based on feedback from learners
“Whenever learners request content on a specific topic, we can just look up additional content from the OpenSesame catalogue. For example, when our employees were asking for extra training on helping angry or upset guests, we were immediately able to provide content for that specific topic, by just searching the OpenSesame catalogue. We also got excellent feedback on this content,” continues Cooper.
“The OpenSesame team is very responsive. The curation process ensures that outdated courses are constantly updated and replaced with fresh and modern content and it seamlessly updates our Learning Management System (LMS). The curation is excellent and OpenSesame always offers the best quality. Atlas Hotels has seen an over 40% increase in learner engagement. In the future, we will definitely continue adding new content based on feedback from learners,” concluded Cooper.
About Atlas Hotels
Atlas Hotels is the largest franchisee of Holiday Inn Express hotels in the UK and Europe. Atlas currently owns and operates 55 Holiday Inn Express hotels, two Hampton by Hilton hotels and one Holiday Inn: the 58 hotels have around 7,000 bedrooms and are located in key business and leisure destinations throughout the UK. www.atlashotels.co.uk
“Atlas Hotels has seen an over 40% increase in learner engagement. In the future, we will definitely continue adding new content based on feedback from learners.”
Darren Cooper, L&D Manager at Atlas Hotels