Seeking, assessing and taking advantage of opportunities to evolve and develop our working environment to make it more agile, connected and productive, in order to acquire advanced predictive analytical skills, through clear policies and processes, keeping promises proactively, supporting, developing and implementing the NH Hotel Group operational model, and controlling staff costs and related budget items.

The main projects carried out in each strategic pillar are set out below:

 

STRATEGIC LINES OF WORK FOR HUMAN RESOURCES IN 2020

Global leadership and talent management

Providing support to managers in handling their teams in extraordinary circumstances (communicating
temporary labour measures, remote team management, handling of difficult conversations, etc.)

Consolidation of the talent management model and design of training material for implementation throughout NH.

Monitoring of development and succession plans for key positions.

Top performance

Contingency plan in terms of staff costs, adjusting them to the reality of the business.

Monitoring and control of staff costs; optimisation of the labour tools provided by each Government.

Fostering of conversations offering feedback, guidance and motivation to active employees.

Rollout of Feel Safe at NH, training the teams on the new operating standards.

Best place to work

Initiatives to sustain engagement and the sense of belonging to NH Hotel Group in all employees.

Launch of training content and access to learning platforms, to boost self-development of employees during furlough.

Design of specific communication channels to update employees on the situation of the Company and the recovery plans (COVID-19 & Feel Safe at NH).

Design of reboarding programmes to support the reopening of both hotels and head offices.

QUALITY JOB CREATION AND TALENT RETENTION

NH Hotel Group’s commitment to job stability can be clearly seen in the high percentage of employees with indefinite contracts. The Company fosters job stability, especially for women and those under 40 years old. Accordingly, in 2020, on average 87% of the contracts of women for workplaces in the consolidated perimeter are indefinite. Furthermore, on average 85% of employees between 25 and 40 years old have indefinite contracts.

The average number of contracts has been calculated by dividing the total number of contract days per category for each employee by the total number of days per year.

CULTURE OF DIVERSITY, EQUALITY, AND INCLUSION

NH Hotel Group sees diversity as a key factor in building up a network of diverse talent, capable of understanding customers’ needs, innovating and reflecting society in the business. For all these reasons, a fundamental pillar of NH Hotel Group’s corporate culture is also based on diversity, equality, and inclusion.

Thus, the Company’s 12,850 employees in 2020 are of 133 different nationalities and 22.5% of them work in countries that are different to their country of origin. Furthermore, 51% of the total workforce are women, who hold 44% of the total management posts.

Through its Code of Conduct, NH Hotel Group formalizes its commitment to promote non-discrimination on account of race, colour, nationality, social origin, age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, ideology, political opinions, religion or any other personal, physical or social condition of its professionals, as well as to equality of opportunities among them.

The policies and actions relating to selection, hiring, training and internal promotion of employees are based on criteria of capacity, competence and professional merits.

In July 2010, NH Hotel Group signed its Equality Plan with representatives of the workers. To draw up this plan, the Company carried out an exhaustive diagnosis of the situation and position of men and women, which confirmed that NH Hotel Group in Spain had a high presence of women and a high number of female executives present in the organization.

After this positive first assessment, work was done on an action plan with specific measures in different areas of access to the company: hiring, promotion, training, remuneration, work-life balance, occupational health, communication, and awareness-raising that would make it possible to eliminate or correct inequalities in these areas.

The document also included a series of measures to ensure the protection of women who are victims of gender violence: giving them priority in hiring, monitoring any cases of gender violence as well as the measures taken that arise, and informing the workforce of the rights of women in this situation.

In order to guarantee compliance with the objectives set out and the execution of the actions established in the Plan, a Monitoring and Evaluation Committee was also created, made up, on a parity basis, of representatives of the company and of the signatory trade union organisations.

This Plan enabled the Company to develop mechanisms to facilitate greater female representation throughout the organisation’s hierarchical structure. It was also the starting point for the development of the guidelines that define the Company in terms of its commitment to equality, focused not just on gender difference, but on different nationalities, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, beliefs, religion, disabilities…This is also recognised in the NH Hotel Group Code of Conduct.

The work carried out made it possible to replicate the diversity and equality diagnostic and assessment process in other countries, creating action plans on this matter in all Business Units.

In January 2020, a negotiating commission was set up with the main trade unions in Spain to work on the Company’s II Equality Plan. The COVID-19 crisis meant that the progress of the negotiations and the development of the Plan had to be postponed, having been resumed after the publication of Royal Decrees 901/2020 and 902/2020 in order to comply with them and within the established deadlines.

A team with the same opportunities

The salary of women in NH Hotel Group in 2020 represented 91% of the gross hourly salary for men; the average gross wage per hour was 15.85 euros for men and 14.36 euros for women. The pay gap has been calculated by comparing salaries between equivalent categories of professionals, as a result of the average salary of women compared to men. That is, those who perform the same function or have the same position.

The overall figure for the pay gap is obtained by weighing the gaps obtained in the comparison between average remuneration (considering fixed and variable remuneration paid) received by the professionals in each category for the number of professionals in that category.

This analysis of the pay gap has served to identify that the gap increases in Top Management, especially due to the lower presence of women in this category.

This situation offers a great opportunity to carry out an analysis in more depth of the different groups, not just women, and establish as a priority to continue with a long-term project of real management of employee diversity in all respects and support their professional development within the Company. NH Hotel Group will continue working to adopt the most suitable measures to eliminate this gap.

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

For NH Hotel Group, internal communication is a key factor in generating and maintaining employees’ engagement with the Company, as well as a powerful lever of change management.

In 2020, Internal Communication has experienced one of its most critical and relevant periods, consolidating its role as a key player in maintaining employees’ engagement and motivation at a time of great uncertainty. Faced with continuous challenges, the area has managed to show its maturity, responding swiftly and making optimal use of both its knowledge and its versatile digital tools.

EMPLOYER BRANDING – FURTHER TOGETHER

NH Hotel Group is proud that its employees are the key to the success of the business. Therefore, it strives to consolidate the NH Hotel Group employer brand throughout the world, to attract and motivate the best talent among employees and external candidates.

The long-term goal of the Employer Branding (EB) plan is to establish a unique culture around our values as an employer brand, through uniform and consistent communication of the Company’s identity and essence. To do so, work has continued on the “Further Together” campaign, featuring employees from all Business Units who talk first-hand about what they like most about working in the Company, thus becoming Ambassadors of NH Hotel Group.

At the end of 2020 and as part of its Employer Branding strategy, the Company launched the “Hello! I’m ….” campaign, with the aim of explaining the Feel Safe at NH project from the point of view of the Group’s employees. On the Group’s Instagram profile, employees show how this project impacts each area of the Company, and how they keep the hotels safe for guests.

 

Memorable Dates

Memorable Dates continues to mark the most significant anniversaries (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years), as well as the retirement of hotel and central office employees in all Business Units. Unfortunately, the health recommendations and safety distancing requirements have made it necessary to postpone celebrations of these events where the sole stars are our employees whose milestones are being recognized.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

At NH Hotel Group the performance management process is a key and consolidated element of our leadership culture, carried out through Time for You.

The evaluation of the performance and skills of the NH Hotel Group professionals allows us to know our internal talent in order to guide their training and professional development more effectively. The evaluation serves to identify the strengths and development areas of professionals in the performance of their work and forms the basis for defining the different development plans. The results of these evaluations are linked to their professional development and the increase in their variable remuneration.

 

Time For You (TFY)

It’s a performance management process aimed at all permanent employees who have at least 3 months’ service in the Company.

Performance in qualitative terms, how goals are achieved, is evaluated based on skills that serve to steer employees’ training and professional development effectively. Through TFY, the strengths and development areas of employees in the performance of their work are identified, and based on the areas for improvement identified, the different development plans are defined. The overall evaluation obtained also impacts other human resources processes such as in internal selection processes, talent or variable remuneration.

Due to the extremely unusual situation in middle of 2020, it was not possible to carry out the Mid-Year Review formally. However, to encourage managers to be closer to their teams and build a stronger relationship with them, they were nonetheless encouraged to have a conversation with each member of their team, and ask them questions about their emotional and personal situation, recognize their achievements, reflect together on what they have learned, exchanging feedback and agreeing with them what was the best way to provide mutual support going forward.

In December, it was possible to launch the Annual Review process along simpler lines for employees who had been active during the last three months of the year. The Company wanted to make this conversation special, turning it into a “With You moment”, based on appreciation for and recognition of the exceptional team spirit shown. For this purpose, the internal communication campaign “More than ever, thank you. More than ever, time for you” was launched.

The target employee participation rate in 2020 was 91%.

360º Feedback Process

The 360° evaluation process is part of the “Global Leadership and Talent Management” strategic pillar and all hotel managers and deputy managers at global level participate in it. At the end of 2019, the 3rd edition of the process was launched, which seeks to measure the progress in skill development by these key leaders in NH Hotel Group, as well as the effectiveness of the action plans they defined in the last evaluation. In this 2019 edition, 329 managers and deputy managers took part. This is a completely anonymous process which also helps to improve participants’ self-knowledge through the information they receive from all the people invited to respond, from each perspective: peers, team, management, and self-evaluation.

In 2020, participants received a personalized report, designed as a workbook that included questions for reflection to help them work on the design of a new development plan. They shared this individual development plan with their manager at the TFY 2020 at the end of the year, when the actions plans built up in different company processes aimed at employee development (360º Evaluation, Talent or Time for You) were formalized.

TALENT MANAGEMENT

NH Hotel Group has implemented a process to help identify and develop talent by looking not just at sustained performance over time but also at the potential and ambition of the people who have key positions in the Company. In this way, NH Hotel Group assures that key roles for the future are adequately channelled. The overall objective is to create a mindset of talent in leaders at all levels, starting with the top 100 executives in the Company and going on to our Hotel General Managers and Heads of Department and Directors and Managers in central services.

 

TRAINING: NH UNIVERSITY

NH Hotel Group is committed to the professional development and training of all its employees as a means of making the philosophy that inspires its vocation for customer service a reality. All the face-to-face and online training projects are managed through the corporate university, NH University. Every year the training curriculum is adapted so that the people who work at NH Hotel Group can continue to refresh both their technical knowledge and their skills.

In 2020, training has focused on making the hotels a safe place, reviewing the protocols and procedures related to the pandemic situation. All employees were also given access to online training through platforms such as Typsy, GoodHabitz or LinkedIn as part of the “With You” project.

The total number of hours of training, both face-to-face and online, in 2020 was 68,902 through 1,071 training programmes. NH University has trained 7,772 employees, which represents more than 50% of the total workforce.

Face-to-face training, which also includes training provided through webinars, has represented 63% of the total training hours with 195 internal trainers conducting the sessions.

In addition, the Company received a total of €68,453 in public grants for training.

In March 2020, training plans were put on hold due to the package of measures and budget adjustments activated to manage the COVID-19 crisis.

This suspension led the area to rethink its strategy, prioritising the most necessary and useful training, adjusted to the reality that employees were experiencing. Thus, the following lines of work were launched:

• Within the framework of the Feel Safe at NH project, training was launched in Health and Safety at Work, as well as in the new operating standards related to the safety and protection of our customers and team members.
• As for the coverage of other critical training needs for the business, these were taken up again only with internal trainers and via webinars, due to the necessary safety distancing and the impossibility of travelling. Training resources, such as videos, were also designed and created internally, and made available to employees on the NH Talent training platform.
• The “With You” project also launched access for all team members to two training content platforms, allowing each employee, whether they are working or not, to reinforce their knowledge and continue to invest in their own development:
  • − Typsy: the world’s leading online training platform for the hospitality industry, created especially by and for hospitality professionals, with more than 700 short training videos on cooking, bartending, service, leadership…The videos are in more than 18 languages, making it easy for any employee to learn. Access lasted approximately 6 months and, in total, more than 800 employees were trained for more than 2,400 hours.
  • − GoodHabitz: an international training platform focused on making training fun, different and personalised for each participant. GoodHabitz allows you to learn in the way that best suits you, read magazines, watch videos, or complete only the sections that interest you. Training in leadership, communication, languages, management skills and much more is available to all team members from May 2020. Up to December 31st, more than 370 employees were trained in more than 1,300 hours. Access will be available until May 31st, 2021.

FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE: ‘NEW WAY OF WORKING’

For NH Hotel Group, work-life balance is about finding a balance between the needs and interests of team members and the Company.

NH Hotel Group’s culture has been evolving in recent years towards a more flexible model, in which people can enjoy greater facilities in terms of time management and organisation, and the development of their work in environments adapted to their activities and which have the necessary tools. The project, called “New Way of Working”, is structured around three lines of action:

• Redefinition and adjustment of physical office spaces according to employees’ needs
• New technological equipment and systems that facilitate flexibility
• New flexible working culture in terms of both hours and workplace

The “New Way of Working” initiative has enabled the entire organisation and its employees to adapt quickly, flexibly and without constraints to the specific requirements of remote working and virtual meetings, especially since March 2020 in view of the exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thus, in order to further improve the ergonomics and quality of working from home, the organisation provided employees with a computer screen and an ergonomic chair for use at home.

Additionally, in NH Hotel Group’s corporate offices, the team of mayors has continued to develop its function aimed at facilitating change management, communication, employee involvement and question resolution. These 7 Mayors represent each of the neighbourhoods or areas of the offices (Commercial, Marketing, General Secretary, Operations, Finance, Expansion and Assets and People).

HEALTH AND WELLBEING AT WORK

NH Hotel Group understands that offering people a safe and healthy working environment is an absolutely necessary requisite. In Spain, NH Hotel Group has an Occupational Risk Prevention Plan which is the master document that governs the Occupational Health and Safety actions to be carried out at the Company’s workplaces in Spain. This Plan includes, among others, essential procedures such as:

The Plan is based on the integration of these processes throughout the Company’s hierarchical structure. Both Central Services department managers and hotel personnel (from General Managers to staff) have been assigned functions and responsibilities in this area. Furthermore, in Spain there is a Joint Prevention Service which provides services to the NH Hotel Group hotels and workplaces in Spain.

In other countries, this Plan is not applicable and therefore technical advising on Occupational Risk Prevention is outsourced with external service providers. In some countries, NH Hotel Group employees are designated as responsible for coordinating the actions of these service providers and for implementing the established corrective measures and prevention procedures.

NH Hotel Group strives to promote a culture of occupational health as part of its commitment to health and safety. The integration of occupational health into the Company’s activities is reflected in the programmes and action plans in hotels and offices in different countries.

In addition, in 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis and as part of the Company’s recovery strategy, a range of health and safety measures were designed, certified by experts on the matter, to be implemented in all hotels in order to assure the health, safety and social distancing of both guests and employees.

All the measures included in the Feel Safe at NH project have been devised to ensure that our hotels guarantee a comfortable and safe stay, and for this purpose the entire operation of the hotels has been reviewed and redesigned: contingency plan, SGS health inspection certificates, personal protection equipment and safety protocol, advanced digital services, water purification and air quality protocols, enhanced cleaning and disinfection protocols, F&B services adapted to the current situation, safety distancing regulations, health and safety protocols for employees and health and safety managers in hotels.

To ensure the effective implementation of the Contingency Plan and the Feel Safe at NH standards in each of the Company’s hotels, a health and safety manager has been appointed. In most of the hotels, this figure is the hotel manager. In the event that, functionally or for organisational reasons, the manager cannot assume these functions directly, they will delegate them to another member of the team that they designate, with the approval of the Management Committee.

Likewise, the health and safety manager is responsible for centralising, distributing and administering all health and safety information in each hotel related to COVID-19.

HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING

Training courses on occupational risks depend on the legislation in each country and we therefore have an extensive catalogue of training in this area, ranging from Food Handling, to basic First Aid. Furthermore, this year the programmes have had to concentrate mainly on the training relating to the novel coronavirus: what it is, how to identify symptoms and what to do in the event of an employee or guest becoming infected.

ACCIDENTABILITY AND OCCUPATIONAL DISEASES

90% of workforce scope. Information from the following countries are not included: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Uruguay.

90% of workforce scope. Information from the following countries are not included: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Uruguay.

In 2020, NH Hotel Group recorded 29 occupational illnesses, with 19 illnesses occurring in women and 10 in men. Most of them are related to damage to the musculoskeletal system such as bursitis, tendinitis, etc.

90% of workforce scope. Information from the following countries are not included: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Uruguay.
*Accident rates have been calculated in respect of a representative sample of data
** FR = number of workplace accidents or occupational illnesses / hours worked *1,000,000
*** SR= days lost by workplace accidents or occupational illness / hours worked *1,000

TURNOVER AND ABSENTEEISM

Due to the characteristics of the hotel business, NH Hotel Group considers it relevant to know and manage the specific turnover of employees with indefinite employment contracts. The table set out below shows the results obtained in 2020 with regard to permanent employees.

* Calculated on working days.

** The 2019 figures have been recalculated because for the Americas Business Unit, Spain and Portugal, calendar days had been considered instead of working days. In the rest of the geographies, only working days were considered as part of the employee’s working day.

EMPLOYMENT TERMINATIONS IN 2020

Despite the extraordinary circumstances of the year 2020, in most of the business units it has been possible to carry out a temporary suspension of employment for reasons of temporary stoppage of activity or insufficient income in the Company, hence the number of redundancies has not increased compared to the previous year. All dismissals for objective reasons or disciplinary dismissals have been taken into account in the calculation.

In addition, NH Hotel Group has relied on the economic aid provided by the governments of the countries where it operates.

SOCIAL DIALOGUE WITH EMPLOYEES

NH Hotel Group seeks to maintain a model of responsible and positive labour relations based on principles of dialogue, consultation with and participation of workers.

Accordingly, in October 2015 the European Works Council (EWC) of NH Hotel Group was set up as an initiative of the European Federation of Trade Unions in the Food, Agriculture and Tourism sectors (EFFAT) and at the request of affiliates from Italy, Belgium and Spain.

This EWC affects all the Company’s workplaces in the European Economic Area and operates under directive 2009/38/EC, as well as its transposition into Spanish legislation. Its principal function is to achieve a level of communication and social dialogue that, in a climate of confidence, makes mutual understanding possible on cross-border matters that affect its employees.

Coverage of NH Hotel Group employees by Collective Bargaining Agreements, which generally include aspects related to employees’ health and safety, varies according to the different Business Units.

* In Colombia the Collective Agreement between the company and employees has been considered.