Let's Celebrate

Good Neighbour Policy Pays at Accent Inns

How can a good employer become even more attractive to employees and customers? For Accent Inns, the answer has been to be a good neighbour, too.

Business development manager John Espley is clear on the role the inns plays in their neighbourhoods: "We take care of our community."

That means creating vibrant and healthy workplaces and working out from there. "We're like a family and this is home," he said. "We take care of our people."

Accordingly, Accent Inns pays fair wages and provides MSP premiums, extended health, dental, free stays, and a Christmas bonus for every employee. "We have shifts to fill," said Espley, "but if we can work with people, full and part time, we make flexibility another benefit."

The company also communicates regularly with employees, by publishing a newsletter, by providing recognition awards, and by hosting summer and Christmas events at each location, each attended by at least one executive.

Espley knows that these strategies help to retain staff because he started as a Night Auditor and chose to stay with the company, eventually winning promotions to front desk clerk, assistant manager, regional sales manager, and his current position.

He's pleased that an important part of his most recent position is to parallel the company's successes in human resources with progress in community outreach, helping create and maintain healthy communities around the inns.

"You give homeless individuals a shoulder or an ear and they give you a great big hug as if you had given them a million dollars," said Espley who represents the inns and the Greater Victoria Camber of Commerce on the Coalition to End Homelessness. "Accent Inns is not the big banks but I've learned we can find valuable ways to give."

Impressively, Accent Inns has created an annual event called Charity in Changing Times. They assemble experts on the year's subject, such as fundraising, and then provide meeting space, audio-visual equipment, and breakfast. Charities attend for free and gain knowledge and skills and professional-development savings, all of which they can put to use in the community.

Other events range from high-profile campaigns like the CHEK News Christmas Charity Drive Through to a number of causes for which employees are passionate and eager to participate. Victoria employees worked at hockey games to help the Salmon Kings support of The Land Conservancy and BC Cancer Foundation while another group of employees rallied around a co-worker with breast cancer through the Easter Seals' 24-Hour Run for the Cure.

Community outreach has only added to the company's reputation as an employer of choice. "The owners have always wanted to do well and so they have asked me to find out how we can help," said Espley. "They give me that latitude and it's a luxury—I believe in what we do."

The strong and still growing employee and costumer loyalty enjoyed by Accent Inns suggests that many others do too. Over the twenty-plus years of Espley's career, Accent Inns, formerly Stay and Save Inns, has expanded from Victoria to the Vancouver Airport, Kelowna, Kamloops, and Burnaby.

Click here for the full colour, printable version of this story.

More Information:

Ten Ways to Keep and Attract Your Staff: A new booklet from the Labour Market Dialogues documenting the successful hiring and retention strategies of 10 employers of choice in BC's Capital Region.

Affordability Index Calculation, 2010

An Innovative HR Resource for Capital Region Employers...Click here for practical tips and resources to help employers tap into hidden labour markets.

Employer Resources

For more employer CHALLENGE stories, click here and select the "Sustainable Incomes" topic.

Story by Rob Hicks

Jun 15, 2010