Marriott International has more than a million employees and 30 brands worldwide. Training for those employees, whether new hires or newly promoted, is a vital part of employee success and retention.
Marriott had a number of training challenges:
Training was provided through multiple platforms, which was confusing to employees and expensive to maintain
New hires spent five to 10 days training and were unable to do any other work during that time
Managers had trouble keeping track of employees’ training activities and compliance status
There was no way for employees to take charge of their career development
To figure out what was needed, we interviewed employees to understand their individual approaches to career advancement, what factors contributed to their progress, and what kind of training was most helpful. With that information, we created a new employee training strategy to be used across all 30+ brands and a personalized training experience that became the foundation for a new learning and development platform.
Marriott used the new platform to train all employees across all properties worldwide on its new COVID cleaning standards.
What We Did
New training platform
New user research program
Team training
New design system for 30+ brands
Outcomes
1
New research program for Marriott
1
New training platform for Marriott
3
X
Faster employee training for Marriott
1
M+
Employees trained for Marriott
3 Big Takeaways
Personal growth isn’t a straight line
Create personal, relevant experiences
Design a flexible framework that allows for branding
1.
Personal growth isn’t a straight line
Through our employee interviews, we learned that personal growth interests varied depending on the brand someone worked with and where they were in their employment journey. Putting our data together, we defined three learning stages—ramp up, grow and deepen, and grow and expand—and developed and tested potential solutions for each. What started as high-level illustrations evolved into interactive prototypes. With each solution, we created a product roadmap showing technical feasibility and the potential impact on employees and the core business.
2.
Create personal, relevant experiences
Once users log into the new training platform, the system recognizes them by name and position and shows them the corporate and brand training tasks they need to complete. Depending on the brand, employees can also build their own career growth curriculum.
3.
Design a flexible framework that allows brands to shine
We designed the new platform so that Marriott’s 30+ brands could coexist and, when desired, offer a brand-specific experience. For example, luxury brands have more to share when it comes to brand culture, features, and amenities. Employees complete their training in a branded environment, making learning more relevant and relatable.
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