Diversity is an integral part of the corporate culture at Leonardo Hotels
Berlin, 23 May 2024. Leonardo Hotels is a signatory to numerous initiatives such as the “Diversity Charter” and a recipient of many awards, including “Best Employer for Women”. This provides ample evidence of just how seriously the company takes diversity, inclusion and integration – a stance it adopted long before the topic attained universal currency.
Focusing on character, not difference
Diversity is revealed throughout the company. Leonardo Hotels always seeks to put people and their needs first. Different lifestyles and life choices are viewed as an enrichment. Everyone is free to pursue their own individuality regardless of origin, religion, age, disability and sexual or gender identity. Employees may have a temporary requirement to be relocated nearer home or to have their working time reduced for a while. These and other similar measures are aimed at supporting staff members with the particular situation with which they are confronted.
“Everyone of us might suddenly experience a life event which leaves us needing help,” says Torsten Kraft, the Talent Management Team Lead at Leonardo Hotels Central Europe. “Perhaps we find ourselves having to care a family member or suffer an unexpected bereavement. We tackle such matters in a similar way to our approach towards inclusion. We always strive to achieve individual solutions in order to ensure that every person gets the assistance he or she needs and is in the right place.”
Special needs are a further key focus
The Hotel Group has been cooperating with Berlin Workshops for the Disabled for the past ten years. The anniversary of this long-standing collaboration will be celebrated at the Hotel Berlin Köpenick by Leonardo Hotels this summer. Leonardo Hotels is an employer which is able to offer a wide range of potential task areas and development prospects to any staff members with a “special need”. Nearly every hotel has at least one disabled employee. Internships are available to underprivileged young people, who are recruited in a targeted way so that they can prepare to enter various types of training.
This welcoming culture has served Leonardo Hotels very well. But the company is not resting on its laurels. Diversity and mental health training courses and cooperation with education and training institutes and with special dedicated bodies which help employers gain access to disabled workers are just some examples of the high degree of commitment being shown by Leonardo Hotels in this area.
Diversity in all its facets
This commitment has also been entirely embraced by the employees themselves. Members of the Leonardo Family always boast a strong presence at the Carnival of Cultures and at Pride Parades. Efforts are already ongoing to raise awareness of this topic amongst younger colleagues too. Trainees and students work together to develop diversity-related projects for the so-called “TalentTrek Cup”. “This competition gives trainees and students space to dedicate themselves actively to this topic and to come up with ideas,” Torsten Kraft continues. “The particular feature of the TalentTrek Cup is that the projects are actually implemented. This enables the notions of diversity, integration and inclusion to be internalised by our youngest up-and-coming talents and allows us to come together to shape a future in which everyone feels that they belong and are welcome. All of these measures and activities in the area of diversity are encapsulated in the Diversity Charter, to which we are a signatory. This represents a clear commitment. We do not merely foster diversity and tolerance. They are an integral part of our working lives – every single day.”
Other aspects of diversity are broadly reflected at Leonardo Hotels too. The group’s employees are, for example, drawn from over 100 different nationalities. These include skilled workers from India and the Philippines, who have been acquired as the result of a foreign recruitment drive. “Such colleagues are a considerable asset,” adds Torsten Kraft. “They provide support in the front office, in service and in the kitchen and have already become a firmly established part of the team.”