The challenge
TUI UK & Ireland forms part of one of the world’s leading leisure travel companies, flying more than 5.5 million customers each year. It was created following the merger of two of its best known brands, Thomson and First Choice.
TUI believes that the holiday begins not on arrival but from the time people first start thinking about their choices and that the total experience – from first interaction with the company to returning home – is important.
This means every employee, customer-facing or in support roles, played a key part in contributing towards the business’s financial success. They also recognised the importance employees placed on working for a travel company. The business needed to feel like a “fun place to work” with colleagues supporting each other. Employee research showed that awareness of the company’s goals was very weak, and people didn’t feel like they were able to speak out openly, however.
“80% of employees could not name even one of TUI’s strategic goals; and one in three could not name any of the three goals.”
What we did
TUI UK & Ireland has a dispersed workforce of 18,000 people, many working in retail outlets and overseas.
We created a large scale intervention that would build understanding of the business strategy and relate it to the needs of numerous teams operating in very different roles and environments. We also devised a process that would address staff feelings that communication was one-way and top down.
This involved:
- creating a visualisation of the strategy that every member of staff could understand and buy into
- coaching the executive team on how to use this to facilitate team based conversations across every part of the business
- rolling this approach out through managers at every level of the business so everyone was included in the conversation.
“87% said the process brought to life the goals and helped them understand Tui’s strategy”
“95% said they now understood how they and their team contribute to the business”
IABC UK & Ireland Past President 2019-2020
Gold Quill Award Winner
