Marriott Hotels: Remote Working Challenges

Karim, a good place to start would be just to provide some context to the current structure of managing your team remotely, today, for Marriott.

My position, right now, is Area Director of Operations, so I look after four countries: France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. In the normal course of events, I travel a lot and I go to see my teams. I have about 35 people reporting to me and reporting to the general manager. The structure is such that I am actually a support and guiding the operations, but they have their own general manager of the property, so there is a general manager in each hotel. Additionally, I am in the regional team, giving support to the general manager and the operations team, in day to day operations, but also for different projects. So there is a hotel manager and head of operations that report to me, but there are also some structures where there is no hotel manager, for example. In total, it’s between 32 and 35 people.

What is the biggest challenge you face, managing that team remotely?

I would say it’s the communication. There is nothing better than direct communication and one to one communication. Yes, you do have emails, but nothing replaces picking up the phone and talking to people. Not everybody is available at the same time so the challenge is to make sure we align our planning, our schedule and make sure we are available at the same time. Personally, I prefer the phone and just talking to each other and, of course, following up by email, to make sure that we don’t miss anything.

Communication is clearly key. Do you say to your team, right, we’re going to speak at this point in the morning or this point in the afternoon? How do you structure communication?

The communication that I structure depends on my schedule, because I travel. Sometimes I am on a plane at a certain time or I’m in the train, so the way of communicating, the tools that we use, sometimes differ. When you are on a plane, you can’t use your phone. Usually, what we do is, I use my calendar a lot and I send an invite to the guys and, therefore, we can schedule. Most of the time, depending on the subject, we can reschedule a call. When it is something urgent, we arrange it sooner. I know exactly when my team is in the office. I don’t like to call them at 9PM, when they are at home, unless it is something very urgent. Usually, I know when they are in the office or when they are on vacation. Therefore, I can call them or I can just use WhatsApp and ask them to call me back.

How do you compare the communication when you’re travelling and they’re in the office, versus now, when they’re all at home. Do you have designated meetings per day? How do you structure communication, whilst working remotely, at Marriott?

Besides the normal subjects, where I can just pick up the phone and call, I do have regular calls with the team. I have regular scheduled travel and visits, for each hotel. On the 29 or 30 hotels that I manage, I know the exact days I’m going to be going to that hotel, and I schedule the meetings with each of them. When I’m travelling and I’m not visiting them, then I schedule a one to one call with them. Usually, it’s once or twice a month. It’s either at the beginning of the month or, sometimes, at the end of the month, just to make sure we connect and we talk how the previous month went. What was the result? What can we do to improve it for next month? Some of the calls that I do, are also with all the team, meaning 35 people. We do it once every two months and we make sure that everybody knows each other and we go through a specific agenda that I send out, up front, and we finish by a Q&A and best practices that we can share with each other.