InterContinental Riyadh is partnering with local universities and technical colleges to offer free work experience placement and on-the-job training to Saudi students.
The initiative is part of the hotel’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) program called IHG Academy.
A new partner, the Laureate Vocational Saudi Arabia (LVSA), which is a part of the Laureate International Universities Network, offers students diploma programs in events and business management that are accredited by the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC).
Last year alone, InterContinental Riyadh accepted close to 15 student trainees and successfully offered job employment opportunities to six of them. Impressed by their English language proficiency and caliber of the students, the hotel signed a new agreement last week that includes five other hotels into the IHG Academy program, thus expanding training and employment opportunities within the hotel chain.
Tariq Y. Dowidar, area general manager, said: “Our work culture is driven by our pursuit of a higher employee satisfaction and engagement level, and effective Saudization. The current Saudization percentage at InterContinental Riyadh is 35 percent.”
One of the values of IHG, he said is: “Everything we do is to enable our people to live a life they can be proud of.”
The hotel holds two employee surveys every year that are available in the Arabic language. It is assessed by a third-party company that guarantees confidentiality and anonymity of employees when answering questions about whether they feel they are fairly compensated or whether they would recommend someone to work at their company or not.
The highest employee engagement survey rating was in 2015 when they achieved 95 percent employee engagement score. The hotel has been consistently scoring over 92 percent for the past five years.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) KSA, which comprises over 20 hotels kingdom-wide, made it to the top four “Best Workplaces” in Saudi Arabia, according to the 2016 Great Place to Work survey.

Source: Arab News