Roads to Resilience

IHG has found risk awareness, a structure and culture that allows information to pass quickly through the line results in effective risk, issue and crisis management “ I believe in the flat structure, everyone can come and see everybody. I don’t believe in hierarchies, as they get in the way ” (GM Holiday Inn).

Stratergy, Tactics and Operations

The company strategy and its management of risk are closely related. IHG has, “ a major risk register that reflects the unmitigated view of the top risks for the business, including the strategic, tactical initiatives and operational issues, we discuss how effectively the risks are mitigated and that discussion occurs at our operating committee level and executive committee level ” (VP Head of Strategy, Americas). “ The strategic planning process, and budget setting processes has evolved over recent years however throughout each iteration, the consideration and integration of risk management in these processes has grown and is expected to continue. ” (Director of Corporate Risk Management).

Exhibit IHG-2: Framework for Managing Risk and Safe Hotels 9 (which identifies not only categories of risks but also the processes for dealing with them).

9

SECURITY

CRISIS & INCIDENT

A S A F E H O T E L

FIRE SAFETY

LEISURE SAFETY

RISK PROFILE

POLICY & STANDARDS

GUEST SAFETY

FOOD SAFETY

M A N A G E R I S K

STAFF SAFETY

WAYS OF WORKING

REVIEW & REPORT

RISK FINANACING

TRAINING& COMMUNICATION

OPERATE & CONTROL

To ensure that hotels, guests, people and assets are safe and the reputation of their brands is protected, IHG provides hotel owners, staff and contractors with a systematic framework to follow, with related processes and checklists for many situations. Exhibit IHG-2 is a diagram that shows (left ‘A Safe Hotel Cog’) with seven categories of potential safety risks in managing a hotel e.g. ‘Leisure Safety’ at the swimming pool, etc. The right ‘Manage Risk Cog’ shows seven pragmatic activities that support the management of these risks and it is saying “ when you’re managing a risk, go through a process. Although this framework is shown in the context of managing safety risks, the risk management activities apply to all risk types and these steps form the basis of many risk-based programmes at IHG” (SVP Head of Global Risk Management) . The range and scale of risks is broad; from ‘Guest Safety’ to ‘Crisis and Incident’. For example, when “Tahir Square [the Arab Spring in Egypt] broke out we were in the centre of the storm, so we immediately went into our crisis management mode. We had all of our plans, we were relatively well prepared. We started implementing a

9 From: http://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?pageid=761

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Appendix A Case study: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)