New Recruit: Hilton Worldwide's Sean Thomas

Hotelier Middle East meets Hilton Worldwide cluster director of human resources in Doha Sean Thomas

What initially inspired you to get into the hospitality industry?

I spent my whole career in retail and restaurants before this time and then I covered maternity leave for an HR director in central London for Hilton Worldwide. I took the role for just six months thinking it would be interesting to do something different. Within three weeks, I fell in love with hotels and hospitality and the rest is history.

How has your previous work experience inspired your management philosophy?

I learned very early on in my career that if you talk to all your people and learn about them personally, you can use their innate skills to help you with anything you encounter. My management philosophy has become about hiring great people with great attitude and skill and training them to be better than me. This has made my teams exceed expectations over time.

Have you experienced any major moments that have shaped your career to date?

I have worked for some major brands and great leaders who have inspired me to find a balance between insisting on great performance and listening to the individual and helping them to maximise their potential.

How does working in your current position differ from any of the other hotels where you’ve worked?

The Middle East Region is very different to the UK and Europe. I am learning new things every day here. The labour laws are very different and do not offer much protection to the employee, therefore ensuring that the management culture in our hotels are of integrity is very important to me to make sure our people are treated fairly and get the right opportunities for growth. Also the food and beverage offering is much stronger in this region than elsewhere, and this has again given me an opportunity to learn this side of the business much better and help to find the best people for our outlets.

What aspect of your new position are you most excited about?

Learning: I have extensive experience and education in people management and development, however this is a new region and I am learning something new every day. This excites me and drives me to want to learn and then apply that to making our team members’ lives better and more engaged and in turn driving the results of the hotels.

What new initiatives or programmes are you planning to introduce as part of your new position?

I am very keen to ensure that we have a very strong succession plan in the hotels we have in Doha to ensure we continue to have a strong internal promotion rate and that our team members know they can grow their careers with Hilton Worldwide under the different brands. With strong succession we need strong development plans for every team member that wants to progress, and so this will continue to be my focus.

My CV

2011 – 2014: HR director, Hilton Worldwide (London and Qatar)
2009 – 2011 : Interim HR
director roles
2007 – 2009 : Head of HR,
Habitat Furniture
2006 – 2007 : HR business partner, Gatwick Airport
1996 -2006 : HR Manager, Sainsbury Supermarkets

My Goals

1 To become a specialist in the rules and labour laws of the Middle East region. I want my management and team members to have faith in my advice, as I am new and I am still relying on my team to help me with this.

2 The growth of Hilton in the Middle East and Qatar in particular, means there will be new properties to support, so I see my home being in Qatar for the next few years. It’s an exciting place to be right now and I would like to build a legacy here.

3 I want to inspire my team to be less focussed on the transactional and more on the strategic. We need to balance transactional work with the vision of HR and ensure we are looking out to the future and being more proactive.

4 Personally, I would like to learn much more about the Arabic culture and I would also like to learn the Arabic language as well. I think if I left the Middle East region without doing this, I would always regret it.

5 Qatar is an awesome hub to travel to anywhere in the world. I think it would be a missed opportunity to not take full advantage of the ability to travel from this area and take in much more of what the world has to offer.