Zarah Doyle
European Director of People and Transformation, ODEON Cinemas Group
The pandemic changed the way that people view their careers and skills development. In response, one cinema chain decided to overhaul the way it attracts and develops talent.
It’s been a turbulent time for the cinema industry. In 2020, the pandemic forced cinemas to close. Then, post-lockdown, the Hollywood writers’ strike caused industry-wide production delays. It wasn’t a double bill anyone wanted to see.
When things settled down, one thing became immediately apparent: the way cinema employees viewed their careers and skills development had completely changed. “We faced a simple truth,” says Zarah Doyle, European Director of People and Transformation at ODEON Cinemas Group. “In this new landscape, our old talent strategy wasn’t working anymore. Rather than tweaking it, we decided to leave it on the cutting room floor.”
Developing skills to create a high-performance culture
Over the next two years, the Group developed and then rolled out a brand-new talent framework — with people at its heart — that transformed leadership and skills development.
“We completely changed how we attract, manage and optimise talent, and how we develop skills to create a high-performance culture,” says Doyle. “Recruitment was revised to remove barriers and widen access. We redesigned talent reviews to give colleagues a broad, cross-functional understanding of their potential. We introduced new mentoring and coaching programmes, created new talent pots for individualised talent development and launched an immersive leadership programme. Everything changed.”
Recruitment was revised to remove barriers and widen access
Creative environment that encourages idea generation and excellent quality
Consequently, the way people communicate and collaborate has been elevated and accelerated. For Doyle, it’s now a more creative, inclusive environment focusing on idea generation and quality of delivery. “Our talent retention has never been better, and we’ve seen strong improvement in commercial results and growth in our market position,” she says. “The results have been fantastic.”
