PEGGY FOCHEUX-DUVAL, DIRECTOR OF THE RISEHY PROGRAMME FOR HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION: ‘IF WE HAVE HELPED THEM TO BECOME ADULTS, THEN WE HAVE SUCCEEDED’
Since 2018, the Hyatt Group has been investing in young people with an initiative to train and include those whose circumstances have kept them away from employment. Peggy Focheux Duval, who heads up this ambitious project, talks to Le Journal des Palaces about the genesis and development of the programme. |
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PEGGY FOCHEUX-DUVAL, DIRECTOR OF THE RISEHY PROGRAMME FOR HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION: ‘IF WE HAVE HELPED THEM TO BECOME ADULTS, THEN WE HAVE SUCCEEDED’
Since 2018, the Hyatt Group has been investing in young people with an initiative to train and include those whose circumstances have kept them away from employment. Peggy Focheux Duval, who heads up this ambitious project, talks to Le Journal des Palaces about the genesis and development of the programme. |
Category: Worldwide - Careers
- Interviews and portraits
- Career - Interviews
Interview made by Romane Le Royer on 2024-11-20
 Peggy Focheux-Duval, Director of the RiseHY programme for Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Photo credit © Hyatt Hotels & Resorts
Hyatt's RiseHY programme, officially launched in October 2018 after two years of preparation, is the result of the efforts of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team, at the request of Mark Hoplamazian, the Group's CEO. Back in 2016, the objective was clear: to develop an initiative that would have a positive impact on local communities, worldwide. The programme then focused on supporting young people who were a long way from employment, who had potential but lacked the networks and resources to turn it into reality. Today, while one eighth of the world's population is aged between 15 and 24, 23% of this category is far from school and employment.
The programme has an ambitious target: by the end of 2025, Hyatt is committed to recruiting and supporting 10,000 of these young people around the world, offering them training and professional development opportunities in the hotel industry. More than just a recruitment initiative, RiseHY relies on partnerships with local associations and offers personalised support, including mentoring and coaching, to help these young people fulfil their potential.
By April 2023, after a period complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, some 6,150 young people had already joined the programme, in 67 different countries. After the crisis, Hyatt redoubled its efforts to meet the target and continue to offer opportunities in the vast majority of its hotels. The commitment remains solid: to connect the talent of these young people with real career prospects in the hotel industry. A commitment that is close to the heart of Peggy Focheux Duval, whom Le Journal des Palaces was able to meet.
Journal des Palaces: How are young people recruited for the RiseHy programme?
Peggy Focheux Duval : We're very proactive. One of the aspects of my current role is to develop partnerships with associations. In the voluntary sector, we have both large international organisations and very small associations that know young people at a local level. We don't close the door on anyone. We partner with associations because we couldn't simply go into priority neighbourhoods and offer training courses, we wouldn't have been credible. That's why we welcome and value these associations around the world, because they have credibility, they have experience, they know these young people and they have a very strong link with them. We are moving forward with this principle of valuing this relationship and the idea that we are working as equals. It's not a hotel group that's going to subcontract with an association; we're coming together around the same conviction that these young people are brimming with talent and that they need to be supported.
In some areas, where there is not necessarily an association with which to form this partnership, it is the hotels that open their doors in large numbers, and we can carry out ‘organic’ recruitment, directly. The young people who take part in the programme are also very good ambassadors, as they bring friends of theirs from the same neighbourhood.
What other role can the associations play apart from recruitment?
They help us to organise training programmes. There are three parts to these programmes. The first is learning what one of our partner associations in the UK calls ‘Life Skills’. Some of these young people have to learn how to get up in the morning and be on time for appointments. Then there are what we call ‘Soft Skills’, social and emotional skills: the idea is to give them back their self-confidence. So before even considering technical training, we want to show them that they can have confidence in us and in themselves. That's why we work on social and emotional skills beforehand.
Is there a common denominator between disadvantaged communities or do they differ completely from one country to another?
Each young person is read as an individual. We often start with the idea that these young people are not interested in the hospitality sector. In France, we've worked with young people who didn't see themselves in this field at all. In India, Thailand and Malaysia, for example, we have young people whose dream was to go to a hotel school, but whose parents were unable to pay for the school.
Each culture, each young person, has something unique. We were keen to understand who these young people are, what their characteristics are and what their local needs are, so that we could always roll out a local programme that made sense.
There are some common characteristics, because they all need technical training for several weeks. On the other hand, it's training that we adapt, and we have as many cases as there are young people: sometimes they have been brought up in orphanages, and are then left to their own devices in certain countries, and sometimes we have young people from immigrant backgrounds. It's a diversity that makes the adventure extremely rich, and one that leaves no one indifferent.
Which associations have been able to support you in France?
We built our programme in France exclusively with the association Les Déterminés, in 2019, after a meeting with Michel Morauw, then regional vice-president of Hyatt France. It's an association that continues to develop, and which in the early days provided a link with small neighbourhood associations. The multi-sectoral nature of Les Déterminés, which also has an entrepreneurial activity, means that young people who start the programme in our hotels and realise after a while that they are not interested in the hotel business, can be supported and redirected towards other sectors. If things don't work out with Hyatt, the association continues to support these young people.
What technical training courses do you offer, and for what types of profession?
A lot of things have changed over time. When we launched the programme, we identified three jobs that seemed to be the most relevant: restaurant waiters, kitchen assistants and floor staff. We realised that we had young people arriving with different backgrounds and desires, so we didn't rule out any jobs. Today, our young people work in all our sectors, including spa, security, finance, catering and cooking.
This training takes different forms depending on the hotel. Some hotels have departmental training programmes, where the basics of the business are taught. In France, but not only, to meet the demand from young people who want to be ‘put in the bath’. They will be put into learning situations in the field. They will be supervised by ‘buddies’, employees who are at the same level as the young people on the programme, and who act as a form of informal reference in the field. Because we know that sometimes there are questions that a young person would never dare ask their manager, so there's this link between equals. We also have coaches who are there to observe the young people, support them and help them to improve.
Finally, we have a mentoring programme to help young people plan for the future. Sometimes it's the managers who are involved in the programme, and who ask me to be part of it.
At what point in their career with Hyatt can you offer them international mobility?
We've always taken a lot of precautions, because we want to make sure that a young person wants to travel for the right reasons and not that they have to leave their country to find an opportunity. A lot of young people, unfortunately, are in such a situation of poverty that they absolutely want to give themselves a chance and leave.
Mobility remains possible from the outset, although we are extremely vigilant because we absolutely want it to be on the young person's initiative. As soon as a young person is recruited in our hotels, he's a colleague in his own right. They have the same chances and the same opportunities for development as anyone else.
And what about job mobility?
On average, it takes 12 to 18 months to really master your current position. We want to encourage them to develop, but we've realised that some people, because of the history they've been through, also want to make the most of this new life. They need a breathing space, a sense of stability, because there's a lot going on in their lives in a very short space of time. So we respect that, but we also want to offer them a chance to evolve if they so wish.
With this programme, Hyatt is seeking above all to help the communities it works with, but not necessarily to achieve a return on investment?
Absolutely. Hotels are a people-to-people business. We don't claim to be the perfect employer. We are bringing together two worlds that were never meant to meet. We force this upheaval and we're proud of it. If we get them moving again, that's fine with us too, we're happy. It's a philosophy: if we've helped them become adults, then we've succeeded.
You officially launched the project in October 2018. A year later the COVID-19pandemic began. What have been your main challenges in this project?
COVID was a big obstacle, particularly for North America, which was the geographic region that really worked on this project from the start of 2019. We had to find associative partners, we had to coordinate programmes, so the pandemic was a real challenge. In fact, it's this search for associative partners in the United States that represents a huge challenge. The country's federal structure has made it harder to forge links with associations and with young people, who are much less in touch with the help that may be available to them.
But above all, we have had to face up to the challenge of the unconscious bias according to which these young people, because they are not at school or in employment, have done something wrong. We need to change the way we look at these young people, who are so resilient that they have developed an emotional intelligence. These young people deserve as much opportunity and consideration as any other young people.
You have set yourself the target of 10,000 young people trained and employed by 2025. What other objectives are you planning for this project?
For the moment, our fundamental objective is to support young people in their development, but also our teams so that they have all the resources available to establish themselves in these roles of coaches and mentors. We are also launching an international council made up of dozens of employees trained via the RiseHY programme, so that we can understand what we can do to have more and even better support for them.
And, beyond 2025, what does the future hold for the programme?
That hasn't yet been decided. We are carrying out research work today, taking the time to talk to NGOs, our colleagues, leaders and young people. We feel that it would be foolish to stop here, because we are humble enough to say that the number of lives we have had a positive impact on is still too small. There's still a lot to be done, so we're hopeful that the adventure will continue.
What would be your concrete solutions for making the hotel and restaurant sector more attractive?
For me, as someone who has a boundless passion for leadership and people, the attractiveness of the sector comes from the environment in which we operate. It's an environment where you want to come to work with a smile on your face, to learn and to grow. So, I place a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the leader, who has the ability to positively influence the teams. We mustn't forget the human role they play in a team. If you're going to make someone want to stay, you have to work on the relationships within the team more than anything else.
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