We’ve asked Mrs. Pagona Liggou, the HR Director of Parklane, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa to spill the tea and give us a behind the scenes experience. What we’ve learned excited us! Read below the whole interview.
Tell us a few things about you!
I was born and raised in Athens, where I took my first professional steps in an Italian multinational Cement industry for 28 consecutive years in a succession of senior positions such as Official Spokesperson, Public Relations & Communication, Human Resources Management & Development and Corporate Governance. I hold a master’s degree in Human Resources Administration from Indianapolis University and a Bsc in Business Administration and Public Relations. Since 2012, I live in Cyprus, where, until May 2020, I was Chief Human Resources and Communication Officer in a heavy industry. During the period 2019-2020, I served as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Cyprus CSR Association, and I am also member of the Cyprus Mediation Association & Cyprus HR Management Association. As a speaker and trainer, I have spoken in conferences on Social Dialogue, Labor relations and Negotiations, CSR, Corporate Communication & Public Relations, Crisis Management, HR Management and Career Development, in Greece, Italy and Cyprus. Since September 2022 I am holding the position of Director of Human Resources at Parklane, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa.
Tell us a few things about Parklane Resort & Spa to know the company better
Parklane, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, member of Marriott International is the only internationally branded luxury beach resort in Cyprus, featuring 222 rooms, 34 suites and 18 villas, the award-winning Kalloni Spa and international branded restaurants such as Nammos Limassol and LPM Restaurant & Bar. The company owns the Park Tower, a completed 20-apartment luxury residential tower integrated within the resort’s premises. Parklane is part of MHV Mediterranean Hospitality Venture, a leading hospitality and real estate group with a portfolio consisting of luxury hotels & resorts and state-of-the-art developments both in Cyprus and abroad. The diversity of accommodation extends from family-friendly to adult-only, with a choice of rooms and suites, some with private pools. Of the three generously sized pools, one is seawater, another caters for adults only and each is populated by cabanas, poolside dining and sun loungers. A comprehensive resort, Parklane appeals to myriad tastes. Housing four distinct restaurants and two bars, it also has unmatched meetings facilities, including a vast 800m2 Diamond ballroom, imaginative Park Kidz club, transformative Kalloni SPA with 14 treatment rooms and a 300-meter-long sandy beach. Parklane is a multidimensional setting that is both immersive and personalized, redefining the art of living while retaining the historic resonance of the island.
If we were asking to see Parklane Resort & Spa through your eyes, how would this be sketched? How would you describe the company to a friend of yours?
Parklane is an organization that respects people as customers, as employees, as partners, as suppliers. It is a modern enterprise aimed at building relationships with its stakeholders; these relationships are based on mutual commitment, active cooperation, trust, transparency, and long-term cooperation. Its vision, mission and values are therefore translated into a set of specific rules, thus incorporating the guiding elements of its policies, where the company reports how and why it behaves with regard to each category of stakeholders and what it expects of them.
What do you think makes Parklane Resort & Spa stand out from competition?
A key element to stand out amid a competitive environment is to keep abreast with the market, read and monitor! To have powerful associates standing by you who shall decode and communicate the right messages. Only in this way can you see things from the right perspective and make the right decisions.
For us it is important that we do not remain stagnant! We are moving forward, investing in high quality services and development, evolving and adapting to anything new. We need to be firm, honest, but flexible and quick when needed!
What sets us apart-as employer- is the fact that we attach great importance on human resources that is the driving force for our company to succeed. We believe that our people deserve the best possible support in a working environment in where they can learn, evolve, and succeed. The personal and professional development is the result of serious and planned training as well as continuing guidance at the workplace. We offer our employees an environment that would allow them to deploy their creativity and capabilities, have good prospects for future development, based on meritocratic criteria (so that no one would have a reason to believe that promotions are the result of non-transparent procedures or that they are carried out based on criteria and priorities irrelevant to capacity and performance or that the supervisors do not deserve their post).
Parklane was proclaimed Cyprus’s Leading Business Hotel for 2021 at the 28th annual World Travel Awards. Where do you ascribe this success?
The recognition as Cyprus’ Leading Business Hotel 2021 highlights the hotel’s commitment to provide not only luxurious leisure accommodations, but also outstanding business facilities with the most impressive and latest state-of-the-art technology ballroom on the island. Winning a World Travel Award is more important than ever. With the revival of global tourism, the trend among business travelers is for greater luxury business facilities and a determination to only book with the best.
This award is a testament of our team’s genuine passion and dedication going the extra mile for our guests
Are there any general features you’re looking out for in a person to join your team? Maybe some soft skills or hard skills that would make someone stand out?
We all know that the staffing of jobs requires employees to have a specific set of skills matching the job requirements. Soft skills are features and properties enabling a person to interact and work effectively with others within a specific environment. These skills show your emotional intelligence and display whether or not a person is capable to work in a professional workplace with other professionals.
On the other hand, the hard skills are specific and unique skills that help ‘match’ people with specific jobs and job qualifications; hard skills alone don’t usually matter. A person needs to be endowed with soft skills. These basic skills are more personal and are the ones that make a person more fulfilled and highly sought-after.
The 6 most important soft skills for us are the following:
- Self-confidence
- Passion for your work
- Curiosity/willingness to learn
- Adaptability
- Communication
- Team spirit
What are the evolution opportunities for the Parklane Resort & Spa? Are there any examples that could be mentioned of employees who “climbed up” the professional ladder and built their career?
For Parklane, human resources management remains a strategic approach to handling labor relations, emphasizing the crucial issue of promoting and developing our people’s capabilities to gain competitive advantages. We firmly believe that our staff really makes a difference by being able to create value and constituting the most important asset for the company. In a collaborative, reliable and safe working environment, employees perform their best. The working environment plays an essential role and is related to stress, fatigue, professional satisfaction and the effectiveness of the work task. Certainly, remuneration affects the satisfaction of employees, but trust me on this, there are other factors, perhaps even more important ones, that affect satisfaction much more. Factors such as working hours, autonomy and freedom of expressing an opinion, equal opportunities and growth, job security, recognition as well as social relations and relations between colleagues.
How is an employee at Parklane Resort & Spa encouraged to succeed within the company? (Seminars, trainings, possible bonus/reward scheme, rewarding etc)
In today’s entrepreneurial arena and in today’s businesses, human resources deserve the best possible support in a working environment where people will be able to learn, evolve and succeed. The motivation of employees is also one of the most basic issues in human resources management, as it is closely linked to human behavior and performance within an organization. It determines the most critical attitudes of employees with regard to work and commitment within the organization. Recognizing each employee’s individual contribution to the enterprise, in addition to the positive climate which undoubtedly creates in the workplace, largely contributes to the development of more loyal, sensitized, and efficient human resources. We communicate with them almost daily, explaining what is sought after, what is expected from everyone, how employee performance will be measured, how it will be rewarded, what difficulties will be dealt with, what are the next steps, how developments affect the enterprise’s operation and profitability, etc.
We have 4 action areas: the working environment, remuneration and benefits, equal opportunities, and employability issues. In our working environment, our goal is to respond to employees’ concerns. To this end, a system has been set up comprising:
- Procedures – performance reward schemes
- Transparent rules and criteria for merit-based recruitment procedures
- Transparent and merit-based evaluation procedures
- Systems and procedures for regularly informing employees of the entire corporate activity
- Training & Development system
- Information programs and dialogue
What is the corporate culture of Parklane Resort & Spa? What is the philosophy behind it?
The key features of Parklane are sustainable development at all levels – entrepreneurship, technology, environment – as well as dynamic growth. Our company’s strategy is, in simple words, to continuously strengthen competitiveness and implement the Sustainable Development Program. Our philosophy is that we need to be sustainable and keep a steadfast commitment to our path and the high quality of our services; to remain the desired destination of our customers and the right employer for whom everyone would like to work. At the same time, we remain within the framework of our policies relating to our development having people at the center, our development with respect to the environment, our modernization to ensure quality. Moreover, respect for local communities through social initiatives and planning and training with a focus on safety. Truly satisfied employees tend to feel more committed to the company they work in and often feel loyal to the corporate vision. For this reason, for us, the building up of a system of shared values and a strong organizational culture was essential to underpin the dedication and motivation of our staff, creating a competitive advantage. We firmly believe that a satisfied and happy staff makes a real difference by being able to create value and constituting the most important asset for our company.
Diversity and inclusion are two of the most important employment trends today. Are there any systems in place or actions taken in Parklane to safeguard them?
The value of diversity and inclusion in our organization is multi-dimensional, so creating a culture that embraces diversity and inclusion has played a key role, as it created a tangible feeling of trust. This, in turn, contributed to creating favorable conditions for innovation, creativity and pluralism in an environment that allows employees to feel safe, to be themselves and to perform the best of their potential.
Employees of acclaimed worth always wish join companies that cultivate an environment of equal treatment where, regardless of nationality and gender, they have equal professional development opportunities.
The systems and actions in place to ensure all the above are the following:
- Equal pay, which is extremely important – particularly if we take into account the gender pay gap in Cyprus
- Significant participation of women in senior and top management positions of responsibility
- When hiring employees, we value diversity and present “shortlists” based on meritocratic selection procedures
- Acceptance of diversity and inclusion are part of young employees’ inclusion programs and of training programs for all employees
- Policies and procedures have been applied contributing to their integration in the business operation, avoiding last minute “corrections”.
- Integrating and accepting diversity are not the goal and field of responsibility only of the human resources department but it is also everyone’s responsibility and a key part of the corporate strategy.
It is a fact that there is strong competition in the search for and recruitment of talents in 2022. How do companies respond to this ‘battle’?
As the competition in the labor market is increasingly growing, the choice of the right people is crucial to our organization’s development and success. Talent defines all the dynamic elements a candidate has, beyond his/her CV. Studies and work experience are now a minimum requirement, not always mandatory, where personality, skills, ability to develop and all these elements are added up, making up a professional personality as a whole.
The human resources of Parklane are our most important ‘asset’, and this is because it is our quintessential difference versus competition.
The demographic changes in the labor market and the lack of skills on the part of executives found by companies are the main factors that put pressure on the business world and highlight the need to integrate talent as a strategic priority. The “Talent War”, albeit already numbering several years, since the 1990s, seems to have become more intensified in recent years due to the failure to fill in critical vacancies. The needs at this level can be identified either in the short term or on a long-term basis. Given the uncertainty characterizing the business world today, it is quite difficult to define the needs of a company beyond a three-year period. Nevertheless, it is possible for organizations to know whether the needs relate to immediate or future filling in of a vacancy, a new project that upon its completion will no longer require an executive and will adapt the final choice accordingly.
Which CVs and/or interview tips would you like to give candidates who read this interview and are probably looking for a job?
To attract your future employer’s interest, you must have sent an attractive CV as well.
The curriculum vitae (CV) is a brief description of the knowledge, experience and skills developed during education and professional career, and also includes other useful information for claiming for a job.
When preparing your CV, your aim is to gain recipient’s attention, to give a positive impression of yourself and to convince that you are the perfect candidate for the job. You must keep in mind that the first impression of a person reading your CV is very important. It is usually difficult to undo a first impression.
The reader must feel that the CV is addressed to him/her. To that end, it must be adjusted to the organization or enterprise you address, giving priority to information that is of particular interest to the employer.
Make it easy for the assessor to understand what you want to say without creating confusion. The purpose of a CV is to give answers, not to generate questions. Nobody will spend time to interpret vague statements. Information must be provided with consistency and continuity in terms of time, without any time gaps.
An interview for recruitment purposes seems like performing a role in theater, but without the acting part. Because, in the play called interview, we have to express in the best possible way who we are, not who we would like to be. Just like with a role in a play, an interview must express the good side of ourselves. We said earlier that the expression: “I leave my feelings outside the office door”, no matter how heroic it is, is not so much human; it is rather obsolete. Many things in our life are a matter of image. Not just image. But just like we clean up and decorate our home for a feast, similarly, with festive disposition, we have to face the opportunity of an interview, which will perhaps offer us possibilities and opportunities that we cannot even predict. We never know whether an enterprise we joined recently will offer us an opportunity for a great lifetime career.
So, in a nutshell
- Get ready for the interview in time and make sure that your look is impeccable and businesslike.
- Locate the company’s address in time, find how to get there and arrive to your appointment in time.
- Read again your curriculum vitae and the cover letter you have sent to the specific company to remember the points that you have underlined, and that the interviewer will potentially focus on.
- Collect as much information as you can about the job and the company.
- Make sure that you have your portfolio, in paper or electronic format. It will help you stand out towards your employer.
- Your posture, face expressions, and gestures reveal thoughts and emotions and send messages you often don’t realize to the person you discuss with.
- Avoid being judgmental, making pejorative comments or being critical of your former employer.
- Do not hesitate to ask questions relating to the work in a polite manner, without showing that you take your recruitment for granted.
What are the jobs Parklane Resort & Spa recruits for at present?
We are interested in all the specialties of the hotel industry. We are here to probe into all candidates who wish to become part of our large team and to discuss with them the prospects of growth and development within a large organization aiming at becoming the sought-after employer in the labor market and an Employer of equal opportunities.
Find all available job positions of Parklane, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa here.
