Hotel Cateys 2021: HR Manager of the Year: Caroline Harrison

In the two years since her appointment, Caroline Harrison has revolutionised the HR culture at Luxury Family Hotels, a group of five properties across the south-west and Suffolk with 161 rooms in total and 460 employees. As well as a drive and passion described as “profound and unequivocal”, her success is evident in vastly improved turnover and retention figures and positive employee survey results.

She created a clear vision of an insightful and positive HR culture by asking the teams for their ideas, talking about the challenges they faced, and creating an evolving HR and team-focused culture. She began with small, clear steps to ensure team buy-in and commitment, traveling to the hotels to promote best practice. She listened, adapted and ensured that everyone felt a part of the process.

She has created a full team of HR assistants at each hotel equipped with the tools to deliver great HR and talent management, and empowered to make decisions that affect recruitment, retention, reward and recognition. Together with a newly recruited group training manager, they have written five in-house training programmes and delivered 139 training sessions. Post-training surveys show a highly positive response, and ReviewPro service scores in individual hotel teams have improved. Harrison has also recruited a talent manager to help develop a proactive recruitment process. As a result, vacancies across the group have declined by 50%.

She launched a ‘Keeping Us Connected’ programme to tackle the loneliness of lockdown, with weekly drop-in Zoom sessions, newsletters, quizzes, cooking masterclasses, online escape rooms and step challenges. She also created a plan to train management teams in mental health awareness for the issues some people face in coming back to work.

The company also now has a bespoke Future Leaders learning platform, an accredited management training programme, and NVQs at all levels for the teams to progress.

Following her creation of the structure, process and programmes needed to build a team-focused culture, vacancies at the group have been minimal, enabling the business to deliver a record-breaking summer from a revenue perspective. Employee satisfaction was above-average at 78% in 2020, while group staff turnover fell by 40 percentage points.

Her achievements and success are likely to be hoped for, rather than expected, from a seasoned HR professional. From Harrison, moving up from a part-time accounts and HR position, it is nothing short of outstanding.

What the judges said

“Self-developed herself, Caroline has nurtured and trained five HR assistants in each property, all of whom have excelled in their roles. She has embraced change, introducing new processes and technologies to bring about efficiencies. Also noteworthy are her tangible results in employee satisfaction, productivity and revenue.”

Gail Kenny

“Caroline led a robust Covid welfare strategy while introducing a strong and creative people and culture change management strategy. The success of both approaches shone through in the retention and engagement results achieved.”

Sean Wheeler

The shortlist

Yasmin Boromand Dorchester Collection

Caroline Harrison Luxury Family Hotels

Jennifer Watts Resident Hotels

Past winners

2019 Anita Bower, Iconic Luxury Hotels

2018 Lindsay Southward, Malmaison & Hotel du Vin Group

2017 David Morison, Jumeirah Carlton Tower and Jumeirah Lowndes hotels, London

2016 Tristan Knight, Rosewood London

2015 Aideen Whelehan, Lancaster London

2014 Mike Williams, De Vere Hotels & Village Urban Resorts

2013 Julia Murrell, Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Great Milton, Oxfordshire

2012 Sarah Banner, the Cavendish London

2011 Ros Young, ABode Hotels

2010 Della Fanning, the Marylebone, London

2009 Liz McGivern, Red Carnation Hotels

2008 Sean Wheeler, Malmaison and Hotel du Vin

2007 Helen Kalyan, Novotel London West