Top Large Workplace: InterContinental Miami Hotel mantra is ‘We’re one great team’

For the second straight year the InterContinental Miami Hotel took the top position for large businesses in the South Florida Sun Sentinel's Top Workplaces of the Year competition for 2024. According to General Manager Glenn Sampert, it's all about the teamwork.

MIAMI — It pays to be ready for the Big Event if you work at the luxury InterContinental Hotel Miami.

In mid-March, observers visiting the downtown bayfront hotel got a taste of the action as the InterContinental hosted an anti-money laundering conference put on by the Financial and International Business Association that drew 900 people. At the same time, the staff was ramping up for Ultra Music Festival, the city’s annual blowout techno music production that would draw tens of thousands to Bayfront Park, just steps away from the hotel’s main entrance.

It’s a time when the hotel’s 450 to 500 employees rise to the occasion and multi-task, a function of cross-training and a fervent willingness to lend a hand whenever and wherever needed in an all-hands-on-deck fashion.

“We try to have every day all-hands-on-deck day,” said general manager Glenn Sampert. “On event days like this when you have a lot of attendees coming in and not all of them staying at our hotel, it puts unique pressures on our hotel.”

That means “everybody flipping ballrooms and meal setups,” moving nonessential vehicles out of the garage to accommodate the day visitors, or even working in the Starbucks (with whom the hotel is a licensee)  located off the lobby when things get really busy.

“There are financial incentives in that,” Sampert said. “If there is a colleague in the hotel who doesn’t have some way to make more money, or advance their career, I am not doing a good job.”

That overarching attitude toward employees is among the reasons that for the second straight year, the InterContinental Miami has been named by the South Florida Sun Sentinel as the Top Workplace of the Year among large businesses for 2024.

An enhanced environment

As for their work environment, employees appear to have few, if any grounds, to utter a discouraging word.

“Over the last year we have completed a significant renovation to the guest rooms and suites, spending more than $40 million on our room product,” Sampert said. “We also have added a new luxury cabana around our pool deck. There is new event space; there is a new pool bar. We have really enhanced the environment of our ‘day, life’ if you will.”

Upgrades are critical in a hospitality industry that’s among the most competitive in the world. New hotels are springing up all over Miami-Dade County, as well as condo-hotels,  where unit owners are allowed to lease their properties for short to intermediate time periods.

Since the mid-1980s, the 34-story hotel next to Biscayne Bay has been a longtime centerpiece for tourism, business and diplomatic events. It has served as a headquarters for Formula 1 racing, Super Bowls, Orange Bowls and the World Baseball Classic. It has hosted a Presidential Hemispheric Conference, which drew 20 heads of state to Miami, draws more than 500,000 people a year, and maintains a presidential suite originally decorated and named after President Ronald Reagan.

In the lobby, visitors are greeted by Henry Moore’s 18-foot-high, 70-ton sculpture, The Spindle, which was actually helicoptered in during the hotel’s construction. Just steps away, the well-appointed lobby bar and Toro Toro restaurant offer guests places to relax or discuss business.

The hotel is a community-minded organization, as well. Last November, it hosted the 28th annual InterContinental® Miami Make-A-Wish® Ball that raised record donations of more than $5 million — with the help of 900 international celebrants and the world-renowned entertainer Sting.

Retention a high priority

That cosmopolitan environment is among the critical components for the hotel’s business success, which includes keeping top talent.

“Talent has always been critical to our business and even more so in the last few years,” Sampert said. “We pay close attention to what the market is paying to make sure we are a great employer.”

“We take a lot of pride in being able to and willing to promote people from within,” he added. It results in a culture enhanced by “how people feel about where they work every day.”

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” Sampert noted, citing the words of the late Peter Drucker, the Austrian-American mentor, consultant and author regarded in academia and in many board rooms as the father of modern business management.

“Our motto is, ‘we’re one great team,’” Sampert said.

There are monthly team meetings that lead to feedback to the human resources director from “departmental colleagues.” In turn, the colleagues’ suggestions more often than not lead to problem-solving.

Two team members — always referred to by their general manager as “colleagues” not employees — said the hotel maintains more of a family atmosphere that supersedes a standard work environment.

Room attendant Tangela Mathis, an 11-year employee, said she cleans 12 rooms a day and appreciates the management’s willingness to be flexible with her hours. It’s important because she has to pick up her baby each day “at a certain time.”

“It’s like family here,” she said. “They work around my time. They are very caring.”

Sagrario Newman is the manager of the “Chill Grill,” an employee-only restaurant where everyone from top executives to housekeepers take their meals during their work days.

“I make sure they are all happy,” said Newman, a 37-year employee. “When we keep our employees happy, then they give better service.”

“I make sure the food is good and the cafeteria is clean and neat all the time,” she added. “I make sure we follow all of the menus. I’m everybody’s mommy.”

The Intercontinental, she said, maintains a deep respect for the people who work there.

“This is the best place to work and stay,” she added. “They treat employees with respect and dignity. They care about employees.”

For her, the most meaningful example of that care came after the death of a son, one of four children.

“They were a tremendous help for me and my family,” Newman said, sobbing softly upon reflection. “I appreciate everything they did in that time. And I will always keep that in my heart.”