Aimbridge Hospitality is a leading global hospitality management company and trusted operator of distinctive independent hotels as well as some of the world’s most recognized hotel brands, including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Wyndham.
In an interview on the WhatWorks podcast from The Josh Bersin Company, Aimbridge Hospitality shares how it is leveraging AI in the UKG Pro suite to create gig-like flexibility for its frontline workers by giving them control over their schedules.
Challenges
In an industry challenged by labor shortages and high turnover but where frontline workers are the backbone of business operations, Aimbridge Hospitality needed a way to better distinguish itself as an employer of choice and empower its 45,000 U.S. employees, as well as attract and retain new talent.
“We compete for talent with the Ubers of the world, where people can decide when and where they work and set their own schedules. We are always keeping a pulse on the needs and preferences of our associates, and we set out to ‘gigify’ our workforce a few years ago to better compete for talent and become a more flexible employer,” said Ann Christenson, chief human resources officer at Aimbridge Hospitality.
Solutions
Already leveraging the UKG Pro suite for its human capital management needs (HCM), Aimbridge Hospitality decided to adopt additional UKG technology, notably workforce management, to provide additional, gig-like experiences that allows associates to pick up shifts when and where they want. “With UKG already in use for HR and payroll, it was a seamless process to add advanced scheduling to our UKG suite and transform the way our people work — and especially to attract the next generation of workers,” said Christenson.
“Since we launched flex scheduling, more than 12,000 employees — about 30% of our hourly workforce — have traded shifts across our 1,100 U.S. properties, and that number continues to grow,” said Christenson. “We’ve given the power to our people, with opportunities to pick up shifts at any of our Aimbridge-managed properties in their area. Through UKG, Aimbridge associates have more choices to work their preferred hours and earn additional pay to support the other areas of their lives, which was important to us.”
Chief Human Resources Officer at Aimbridge Hospitality
Results
In 2023, Aimbridge rolled out flexible scheduling to its 24x7 workforce, giving people control of their schedules and work-location preferences through intelligent shift scheduling. Employees immediately began to self-schedule, swap shifts, and pick up open shifts across hotels through the UKG Pro mobile app, resulting in better work-life balance and improved employee satisfaction for their people, earning the hospitality giant a 2023 UKG Innovation Award.
According to a forthcoming global study on the frontline workforce by the UKG Workforce Institute, Aimbridge is ahead of the hospitality industry in offering flex scheduling, with nearly half (47%) of global employees in 2024 saying flexible/self-scheduling is highly desirable.
“Since we launched flex scheduling, more than 12,000 employees — about 30% of our hourly workforce — have traded shifts across our 1,100 U.S. properties, and that number continues to grow,” said Christenson. “We’ve given the power to our people, with opportunities to pick up shifts at any of our Aimbridge-managed properties in their area. The power of UKG's solutions gives Aimbridge associates more choices to work their preferred hours and earn additional pay to support the other areas of their lives, which was important to us.”
Beyond creating more empowering and flexible options for employees, Aimbridge saw an opportunity to dramatically reinvent how it communicates with employees at its corporate, frontline property, and management levels through UKG Talk® — a mobile communications platform in the UKG Pro suite that helps organizations build a culture of belonging through connection and collaboration.
“We rely on our General Managers to lead their properties and cascade messages down to their frontline employees,” said Christenson. “Every associate has access to UKG, and the ability to use the communications platform in UKG, where employees are already accessing their schedules, timecards, paystubs, and time-off requests, is extremely valuable. With UKG Talk, all of our communications are streamlined, leading to stronger operations and a more consistent, reliable, and enjoyable communications experience for our frontline employees.”
Another area Aimbridge plans to use UKG technology to more effectively communicate with employees is around paid time off (PTO). As a multi-state organization with union and non-union workers, as well as a diverse collection of hotel verticals housed in its Full Service and Select Service divisions, Aimbridge offers a wide range of PTO options to employees and plans to leverage UKG Bryte™, an AI-powered assistant in the UKG Pro suite that uses GenAI, to help guide employees, managers, and leaders to be more transparent about those policies.
“Our associates want to know they can get information they need from our HR team, and with 45,000 hourly workers, we need the right systems to support each and every individual,” said Christenson. “Initially, we had planned to build a chat bot to help answer questions more quickly, and the functionality is already available with UKG Bryte. Having a partner who can anticipate our needs and is always there with the right solutions at the right time truly speaks to the value of our UKG partnership.”
“At the end of the day, we want our associates focused on delivering great experiences for people, no matter what their reason is for traveling,” added Christenson. "When hospitality is done right, people are guest focused. We don’t want our workforce focused on the payroll cycle, their timecards, or any of those back-of-the-house functions. UKG does all that for us, freeing up our people to focus on providing the exceptional guest services we are known for.”
