IHG Hotels & Resorts’ Skills Academy goes global

IHG Hotels & Resorts has expanded its Academy programme to offer core learning content on a new digital platform in eight additional languages.

In Australia, IHG’s partner, OzHarvest, has provided new content to host on the Skills Academy site, from the organisation’s ‘Use It Up’ initiative that is designed to make it easy for people to waste less food at home.

Users of the platform will be able to access a selection of recipes designed to use up food that often gets wasted, and read a report on just how much food is wasted in Australia every day along with tips on how to be part of the solution.

The IHG Skills Academy, which was launched in the UK last October, was created to help break down the barriers to education and training that an increasing number of community groups face – barriers that were exacerbated by the pandemic.

Now available in Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin American), Thai, and Ukrainian, the academy offers free online education, courses and opportunities for people looking to build their confidence; get employment ready and explore a career in hospitality.

Louise Byrne, VP of global talent & diversity at IHG, said: “At the heart of our Journey to Tomorrow plan is our communities pledge to improve the lives of 30 million people, and one of the ways we intend to do this is through focusing on skills training via our IHG Skills Academy portal.

“By translating some of our best content into eight new languages, we hope to broaden our impact worldwide on people facing barriers to education and training.”

Justine Tarrant, national partnerships manager at OzHarvest, added: “We are pleased to be sharing our philosophy on food waste on the IHG Skills Academy website and thrilled that people from all over the world will be able to read and learn from our resources, thanks to the translation to eight different languages.

“At OzHarvest, we’re committed to achieving the national target of halving food waste by 2030. A huge part of this is educating and inspiring others to make food waste a thing of the past.

“That’s why we’re so pleased to share our resources on IHG Skills Academy website and that people from all over the world will be able to access and learn from these thanks to the translation to eight different languages.”

To support a sustainable pipeline of talent for the hospitality industry, new features are already being developed in the platform, which will enable IHG to fast-track the recruitment process for participants who have completed certain modules and gained badges.

IHG is rolling the new language options out in partnership with learning solutions provider, Learning Pool, over the remainder of 2022.

Since 2004, The IHG Academy has helped young people around the world gain valuable employment and life skills through work experience, internships and apprenticeships alongside some of the world’s best hoteliers – with more than 80,000 people positively impacted in the past eight years.

The potential to reach even more people via this new digital learning platform is an exciting opportunity to contributes to our wider Journey to Tomorrow pledge to improve the lives of 30 million people over the next 10-years.