Boutique hotel wraps new branding into employee hub and communications to increase spend by 4x and reduce employee turnover by 20%

What they needed

Edwardian Hotels pride themselves on their individuality, passion, and professionalism, calling their employees Memory Makers to reflect their levels of service. After 40 years of being in business, the company saw a need to bring all of their individual entities together and rebrand under one identifiable hotel chain. Many of Edwardian’s 2,300 employees had little knowledge of the company’s roots and so their HR Team was tasked with bringing them all together as a community with shared values.

The team assessed their current offering and saw that their HR systems didn’t symbolise what Edwardian stands for, showcase their true beliefs, or reach the masses of their employee base. This led them to search for an employee engagement hub which would be a one-stop-shop for all of their Memory Makers – immersing them in their brand and those core beliefs. Edwardian’s new hub, My Edwardian, would need to become an employee-centric tool which was paramount to their working experience.

True to the Hospitality industry, Edwardian’s workforce is massively diverse. Employees ranging from 17 years old to 81 – some with 49 -years of service! – work side by side and the multi-national representation covers no less than 91 countries. And with only 45% of Edwardian’s employees online during working hours, bringing these unique individuals together under a new brand was going to be a challenge. Especially with the team seeing this as the one and only chance to harness their new identity and direct a cultural shift.

How we helped

To seize this opportunity, the HR Team partnered with their marketing colleagues who had put the external branding together and could help tie it to their employee engagement hub and wider offering. Together, they created a turbocharged strategy for the year ahead and established the three core values which an Edwardian Memory Maker needed to succeed – the mind of a leader, the spirit of a warrior, and the heart of a host. For the first time in Edwardian’s history, they had an internal brand which would set the foundation of the entire employee experience.

To give Memory Makers an offering which was immediately identifiable as being Edwardian, the team matched their employee engagement hub to their new internal brand. The custom logo incorporated Edwardian Hotel’s flair for iconography and the homepage of the hub was rooted in striking colour and carefully selected imagery.

The team built further solidarity with Reward Gateway, who put together a communication campaign which utilised all of the available channels for launch and beyond. Part of this involved tying the new branding to email communications and engaging collateral which was designed for employee induction roadshows. With everything in place, the team had a plan which reached every corner of the business.

What they achieved