Microsoft and AccorHotels presented Staff Hub at Microsoft experiences’16. Staff Hub is the first collaborative application that allows hoteliers and their teams to manage their schedules completely on their mobile phones.
It was developed using an agile method, after a field study conducted in close collaboration with the hotels’ employees, and has been tested in Sofitel establishments in the United States and Dubai and at the Novotel Roissy Charles de Gaulle, in France.
AccorHotels intends to roll out of the application in its 26 digital plan pilot hotels before deploying it across its entire hotel network from the first semester of 2017.
AccorHotels has 240,000 employees in its hotel brands worldwide. 80% of them serve guests 24/7 and do not have a dedicated computer or a work email address. These deskless employees are, however, highly connected, since 90% have a personal smartphone. As part of its digital plan, AccorHotels wants to provide its employees with devices that will boost their performance and make their daily tasks easier. By engaging its employees in this way, it aims to foster a more personalized and authentic guest experience.
AccorHotels Global Chief Information Officer, Laurent Idrac commented, “With Staff Hub, AccorHotels and Microsoft are offering a very innovative service which is perfectly suited to the needs of deskless hotel employees. AccorHotels is bolstering the technological services it offers its employees, with a special focus on BYOD and a mobile-first approach.”
Jean-Louis Baffier, General Manager, Enterprise & Partner Group at Microsoft France said, “Designing StaffHub with AccorHotels was a particularly important project for Microsoft. It reflects our ability to assist our customers and co-construct innovative applications with them that are perfectly suited to their business needs. It also demonstrates just how agile Office 365 is. This collaborative platform can offer brand new services integrated in an environment that is already familiar to over 1.2 billion users worldwide.”
Staff Hub will be available in EASY (Employee AppStore for You), AccorHotels’ soon-to-be-launched internal mobile app store. As well as Staff Hub, employees will be able to download other apps on their smartphones, including Yammer, the internal social network; Open Ideas, an internal collaborative innovation platform; and Voice of the Guest, the e-reputation management tool.
