Onyx Hospitality Group has spent recent years taking its corporate culture across borders through a comprehensive HR strategy.
Onyx Hospitality Group has over 4,000 employees in several countries, including China, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Maldives. It has grown considerably since 2008, partly by leveraging on a unique strategy of employee development. In effect, Onyx creates a cohesive organization by marketing the hotel brand to its own employees.
The Nation‘s Pichaya Changsorn recently interviewed Onyx’s head of personnel, Suresh Menon, regarding the group’s HR strategy.
Said Menon:
We’re talking about our staff being our ’internal customers’, so we need to ’market’; to promote ourselves and manage our staff. We call them our ’team members […] Inform, engage and recognise are the three key words. In doing that, we make sure that we maintain the brand as well, so that staff understand what Onyx is, as a company.
This strategy has helped Onyx unify its corporate culture and business practices across countries and cultures–a unique challenge facing many multinational firms, especially those who employee large numbers of expats.
Key to the strategy is a “continuous learning environment,” featuring a number of training and orientation programs: leadership & development, a core supervisory program, a core management program, a situational leadership training course and training for property pre-opening.