Kerzner International: Empowering a global, frontline workforce to deliver a world-class guest experience
Kerzner International has been redefining the luxury hospitality industry for over 30 years. Renowned for its iconic brands and awe-inspiring destinations, the organization partnered with Unily to create iKonnect, a powerful mobile-first platform that unites, informs, and enables its predominantly frontline workforce as they deliver outstanding experiences to guests around the world.
The vision for iKonnect
Kerzner employs more than 15,000 people worldwide; a workforce made up of 135 nationalities, based across 19 destinations (with more in development) and four iconic brands: Atlantis, One&Only, SIRO, and Rare Finds.
70% of this workforce is employed on the frontline. They are the lifeblood of the resorts, critical to the experience of their guests and the ultimate reputation and success of the brands. There is no sitting at a desk involved in the day-to-day life of a chef, lifeguard, or housekeeper, leaving critical communications and culture-building initiatives out of reach in the absence of a mobile-first solution.
With a commitment to 'doing business at an emotional level', the organization was keen to foster a strong sense of community and connection to the bigger picture - important for colleagues in remote locations - while at the same time providing highly personalized experiences to all.
With this vision clear, Kerzner approached Unily to develop an employee app that would unite its global workforce, and usher in a new era of employee experience excellence. iKonnect has become the living, breathing home of Kerzner’s culture – a platform where colleagues can access knowledge, communications, and applications, no matter where their role takes them.
Transitioning from informal comms channels to a dynamic Employee App
The problem space: Connecting a disconnected workforce
Before the inception of iKonnect, Kerzner's frontline colleagues relied on informal communication channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook groups to receive day-to-day information pertinent to their roles. They viewed these channels as a trusted safe space to connect informally with one another and share knowledge.
Without access to company email addresses, frontline workers couldn’t receive formal internal communications directly. Instead, they relied on their managers to share directives either by word of mouth or via screenshots of company emails posted into Facebook and Whatsapp channels. More often than not, the information would be misunderstood, easily lost, or simply not shared at all.
Kerzner realized that to seed their workforce with the knowledge they needed to excel in their roles a new approach was required. But convincing colleagues to move away from their informal communications platforms to iKonnect wasn’t going to be easy. The pressure was on to create a superior experience that would inspire colleagues to welcome the transition.
With four unique brands operating across multiple destinations around the world, iKonnect needed to provide a tailored experience to colleagues based on the information they wanted and needed, depending on their role, location, interests, and native language. It also needed to support communicators with an intuitive CMS that would elevate communications and provide new formats for engaging colleagues in business news. Most importantly, all of this needed to be available on a mobile app that colleagues could download on their personal devices.
The solution: Highly personalized, tailored experiences powered by AI
Through the use of Unily's targeting, theming, and personalization features, Kerzner has made iKonnect into a global, multi-brand mobile app that delivers a curated experience to every colleague.
Resorts are empowered to own and design their own unique areas of the platform, reflecting their specific vision, mission, values, and initiatives. An intuitive CMS and robust governance features ensure that standards are preserved across the platform while allowing resorts the autonomy to experiment and create experiences that match the needs of their people. Rich analytics provide leaders with a window into what colleagues are interested in, with feedback channels weaved throughout the platform to add qualitative insight.
It's simple to adapt language, tone of voice, and color palette to align with each brand, delivering recognizable and distinct identities that preserve the unique service culture of each resort. And, while colleagues receive a personal experience with content and branding that matches their role, interests, and resort identity, they are also empowered to connect across the business with shared resources and social communities that encourage inter-resort collaboration.
Prior to iKonnect language had been a major barrier to effective internal communications and global alignment. With a workforce made up of 135 nationalities, the ability to translate content seamlessly into hundreds of languages was transformational. AI-powered translation relieves content creators from the manual task of curating hundreds of translated versions. Translation even spans to video content, where auto-translated subtitles give colleagues on the frontline the ability to engage with dynamic content, from leadership addresses to town halls.
But iKonnect is so much more than a communications tool - it's the single destination for everything colleagues need to succeed at work. Alongside dynamic employee communications, colleagues can also find a curated list of all the third-party applications they need to do everything from accessing HR systems to learning platforms. They can search for colleagues, scan internal vacancy opportunities, find answers to common guest questions - the list goes on. And that's what's helped to embed iKonnect so deeply into the workday from day one.
Cultivating a culture that attracts and retains the best talent
Problem space 1: Connecting employees with learning and development opportunities
Kerzner is dedicated to providing colleagues with meaningful learning and development opportunities that ensure colleagues are able to deliver exceptional guest experiences and progress in their careers. The company offers training both internally and from external providers such as the prestigious Forbes Travel Guide, but prior to iKonnect these were decentralized, making it difficult to drive awareness of what was on offer.
The solution: A self-service learning hub
iKonnect provides a home for Kerzner's industry-leading learning and development program, with resources fully integrated into the mobile application. Colleagues have specific learning plans, which is reflected in the content displayed within the platform.
In-depth, content-rich resources, relevant to their position, goals, and interests provide colleagues with an accessible learning experience, allowing them to learn in a way that suits them. Colleagues are taking renewed pride in learning more about the different functions around them within the business. In addition, managers report seeing increased confidence with guests and more well-rounded colleagues who know more about the business and facilities.
Problem space 2: Driving internal mobility
The leisure and hospitality industry suffers from a notoriously high annual staff turnover rate, with some sources placing the figure at almost 85%. Tackling this issue of retention and not losing great people as they moved on to new experiences - and potential competitors - was a priority for Kerzner.
The solution: Searchable vacancies keep talent in the ecosystem
To combat this issue, Unily helped Kerzner develop a widget that pulls through the organization's internal opportunities from SAP SuccessFactors to iKonnect, placing this information front and center in the employee experience.
Providing a platform that supports internal mobility keeps colleagues focused on their next move within the organization, ensuring the knowledge and expertise they have acquired continues to add value to Kerzner's brands as they seek their next adventure.
Problem space 3: Creating a home away from home
With a diverse, international workforce who are often separated from friends and family by thousands of miles, Kerzner is keen to provide a 'home away from home' experience. The organization strives for both high standards in the accommodation itself and creating community among the people who live there. This focus on all-round colleague needs that extend beyond the physical workplace is part of what sets Kerzner apart as an employer of choice.
The solution: An always-on service
A dynamic and secure site within iKonnect has become a vital tool for elevating Atlantis Dubai’s exceptional home-away-from-home experience. The site helps foster connections between colleagues and the accommodation team, as well as providing easy access to the resources and tools relevant to where they live. Social channels and forms deepen this connection, allowing colleagues to do everything from sharing recipe suggestions for the colleague restaurants to welcoming newcomers.
There is a practical side too, with maintenance issues and accommodation requests previously managed through longwinded or inconvenient methods, now streamlined by Kerzner’s intelligent use of Unily forms.
Kerzner is proud of the dynamic way iKonnect delivers a seamless, ‘always on’ 24-hour service for their 6,000+ live-in colleagues, enriching their lives from their very first days away from home.
Supporting colleagues to deliver outstanding guest experiences
The problem space 1: Tricky knowledge management
Atlantis Dubai has a 100-person call center that, prior to iKonnect, used an old-school Excel spreadsheet to manage customer queries. This became frequently outdated, and the resort desperately needed a better solution.
Across Kerzner and the rest of the brands, there was a tendency for information to become siloed, leaving frontline colleagues unable to answer customer questions that sat outside their own specific area of knowledge.
The solution: Centralized, searchable FAQs
Information from the Excel sheets was migrated into a dynamic, searchable FAQ portal, allowing colleagues to quickly find answers to an exhaustive list of common guest inquiries. Crucially, the FAQ portal includes a social function that lets colleagues flag information that needs to be updated or reviewed. As a result, knowledge stored in the center is trusted and maintained effectively over time.
The FAQ portal has transformed the way call center colleagues interact with guests, supporting them to deliver accurate answers at speed. But it’s not just call center that is benefiting from this tool. With a single source of truth, colleagues from all departments can now access and share accurate knowledge outside of their direct remit with ease.
Beyond this specific use case, wider knowledge management has also been transformed through the use of a powerful global search capability that crawls every repository, including third-party platforms like SharePoint, to surface information in one place.
Problem space 2: Recognizing and rewarding best practice
Each of the Kerzner brands has its own 'service culture' - a set of pillars and behaviors that define how they deliver an emotional experience to guests that is in line with the brand and product. Each service culture provides a strong blueprint to support colleagues in delivering exceptional service, and in turn, this provides a framework for recognizing and celebrating colleagues and their incredible work.
The solution: Social recognition spotlights unsung heroes
Unily's enterprise social capabilities make it simple for managers to share compelling stories of their culture in action for recognition by the wider company. Social channels are used to highlight colleagues who have gone above and beyond in their roles, helping to nurture a culture of appreciation that sets the foundation for outstanding guest experiences.
With digital recognition now possible and available to everyone through the app, colleagues no longer have to wait for award ceremonies to be recognized; praise can be given at any time, from anyone across the business.
An employee engagement success story
With iKonnect, Kerzner is architecting a workplace experience that puts it ahead of competitors, helping to attract, retain, and develop the talent that keeps the business at the forefront of the luxury hospitality industry. In the three years since launching iKonnect, Kerzner has received the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award two years in a row.
But Kerzner isn’t just relying on qualitative feedback to prove success. Alongside positive feedback from employees and stakeholders, platform analytics also reveal a correlation between app adoption and employee engagement levels. By slicing and dicing platform metrics against annual employee engagement scores, Kerzner can show that resorts using iKonnect the most are also those with the highest employee engagement levels.
The impact of iKonnect has been felt across the business and the platform’s place at the center of the employee experience continues to remain strong. Today adoption sits at 76% and continues to climb as new resorts embrace iKonnect.
