Creating a positive business impact through corporate responsibility

Building careers for youths United Nations figures highlight that the world now has the largest generation of young people in history, and they are facing serious challenges in building and growing their careers. Career preparation is crucial for these young people and their contribution to our global economy. According to WTTC, travel and tourism is the world’s single largest employer, supporting one in every 11 jobs worldwide, and will need to play a leading role in addressing the youth unemployment challenge. A great way of bridging this gap is for hotels to reach out to young people in their local area and show them the exciting options open to them and the training and skills they need to succeed. For example, Hilton Worldwide’s Careers@Hilton Live: Youth in Hospitality Month in May 2015 saw 90,000 young people impacted by 750 events across the world, including CV clinics, back of house hotel tours and Q&A sessions with hotel Team Members. Often young people are unaware of the enormous opportunities offered by our industry, and activities like this provide much needed insight and skills that are vital to success in the workplace and beyond. Serving the local community Companies that support and invest in their local communities create value for both their business and society by contributing to stable local economies, developing talented local workforces and fostering local relationships that help ensure success. It’s important that hotels work hard to strengthen their local communities, recognising that when a community prospers, so does their business. What is vital is that community engagement is centred around offering support that truly uses their skills and expertise to meet a local need. For example, your F&B team might want to use their know-how to help teach children how to cook or eat healthily, or your engineering team could support a local school by helping them make their processes more energy efficient. Whatever it might be, skills based volunteering is certainly a valuable approach and something we’ve seen have great impact at Hilton Worldwide as an expression of our vision to “Fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.” Supporting local businesses for sustainable sourcing It is also important to support the local businesses that are able to supply your hotel with fresh and authentic produce. With a growing trend for locally sourced and organic produce, supporting local community partnerships and looking at alternative methods of sourcing your produce will prove mutually beneficial to the environment, your guests and staff as well the local community. Reducing and recycling waste Last but not least, hotels can have a huge impact on the environment by looking at how they manage and optimise their waste and recycling efforts and even seemingly small steps can make a big difference. In our commitment to repurposing used goods for community needs, we launched a detailed waste management programme in 2013 called RePurpose. Since then, our hotels around the world have donated almost 600,000 pounds of soap that have been repurposed into over one million new soap bars, diverted over 20,000 mattresses from landfill, and saved more than 34,000 pounds of food that has been served to 30,000 people in need. In summary, when devising and implementing your CR strategy, remember the impact you can have on the young people in your community, develop meaningful partnerships with local organisations, create shared value by harnessing your employees’ skills and expertise to truly make a meaningful change and use your buying power and enhanced recycling processes to help transform your local environment. By Caroline Meledo, corporate responsibility manager at Hilton Worldwide. This article first appeared in the September 2015 issue of Hotel Owner