Co-Founder and Partner at Red House International (RHI), Victoria is a human capital and total rewards professional with over 10 years of management consulting and hotel industry experience.
Why did you and Andrew launch RHI?
Myself and my business partner, Andrew MacLeod, felt that there was a real gap in the market for agile HR technology solutions backed by experienced, industry-specialised consultants. We have particular expertise in the hospitality and leisure industries, and I’ve directly experienced what a struggle it can be for hotels and their corporate offices to manage HR processes without user-friendly and scalable technology. So, for me, designing and implementing customised and effective solutions was a key driver to launching RHI.
What makes RHI innovative and different from other professional services consultancies?
There are two aspects that we’ve heard from our clients that we “do exceptionally well”. The first is that we have full control of our technology development and pipeline – I’m on the phone with our development team most days, translating client requirements and new features to reality, over the space of days or weeks rather than months. Secondly, the consultancy team are some of the most experienced industry specialists that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, many of whom have been involved with our network groups for over 8+ years, and having that level of expertise, insight and commitment on the team is just fantastic.
You’ve worked both in consultancies and “in-house” in the hotel industry. Has that affected your approach to designing solutions?
One of the challenges I found as an HR professional is “getting a seat at the table” alongside the other more established functions. And the most effective way to deal with this is by underpinning all recommendations with robust data and market-backed evidence, as well as providing clear visualisation of the proposals to senior leadership. I think this has really affected how we’ve approached our technology development – the aim is to make it as user-friendly as possible, both on the input and on the reporting side. Nobody wants to be wasting time searching for information that should be easily available!
Another element that’s really been apparent to me is how frustrating it can be to stakeholders, for example, hotel leadership teams, when they put a lot of energy into driving completion of market data surveys, employee engagement surveys, internal audits… and yet never see the results of their hard work. We build a lot of aspects around automated reporting and action planning into our systems, to reduce the administration required to return results.
RHI has done a lot in the last two years, what have been some of the greatest achievements?
Over the last 14 months, we have been delighted to partner with the Hotel Industry Reward Group EMEA and APDC International Ground Staff globally to manage their compensation and benefits surveys, through our tailored ‘RewardHub’ platform.
We’ve also seen a strong interest in our ‘GapHub’ platform, with modules supporting both D&I and pay equity compliance requirements. We’re excited to be branching the analytics out to encompass the Compliance Centre – covering gender pay gap and pay equality regulations across 190+ countries – as well as introducing a focus on areas such as Ethnicity pay gap reporting.
What will be the biggest challenges for companies as they transition into post-pandemic recovery? What is RHI doing to help clients overcome these challenges?
I believe the biggest challenge will be juggling the need for strategic, forward-looking recovery with the day-to-day HR firefighting caused by the pandemic. With companies managing furlough schemes and redundancies, whilst trying to maintain employee wellbeing, there’s a risk that organisations won’t have the data and industry insight that they need when the time comes to focus on re-opening. The pandemic has had a particular impact on the travel and hospitality industries, but we’re grateful to have worked with these clients to develop market data reporting ready for recovery and re-opening, as well as managing ad hoc studies and ongoing networking through our ‘Connect’ platform.
What do you and Andrew have planned for RHI in 2021?
There’s a lot of exciting developments coming up in 2021, including enhancements to the current RewardHub and GapHub platforms, as well as a greater focus on:
- AuditHub – fully-mobile operational and HR audit technology and analytics
- GovernanceHub – internal policy repository and oversight
- EvaluationHub – job descriptions, evaluation, grading and governance
- PulseHub – employee engagement surveys for the hospitality industry
And, just as importantly, I think the whole team is looking forward to meeting up for our annual party – even if it might have to be remote this year!
Co-Founder and Partner at RHI, Victoria has over 10 years’ consulting and in-house experience, specializing in the hospitality industry. Prior to founding RHI, she was the Director of Compensation & Benefits for Accor’s Middle East and Africa region, based out of Dubai, UAE. In this role, she was responsible for the reward strategy of over 200 hotels across 11 countries, as well as M&A integration support for the regional offices. She previously held the role of Director of HR Business Support MEA for FRHI, and initially moved to Dubai to work for Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts as Compensation & Benefits Manager. Prior to moving in-house, Victoria held the role of Reward Consultant at Aon, where she managed reward projects for multi-industry clients, with a focus on the Hotel Industry Rewards Group (HIRG) EMEA. She was previously employed by Korn Ferry Hay Group as a Reward Information Consultant. Victoria holds a B.S.C. in Mathematics from Durham University, in addition to being certified in PRINCE2 and Advanced Compensation & Benefits.
