Sands China takes strategic steps to nurture local talent

Sands China has again gone the extra mile in responding to the government’s call to nurture and develop the local workforce, with 25 of their management team members graduating from a first-of-its-kind international education programme – the Sands China International Strategic Leadership Programme for Integrated Resorts.

Over the course of five months, the programme sent an initial group of local management team members to study on three continents, allowing these team members to take advantage of the unique areas of industry expertise of the Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics in Lisbon, Portugal; Cornell School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, New York, U.S.A.; and the University of Saint Joseph in Macau.

In a bid to develop local leaders in integrated resort management, Sands China has taken strategic steps to tailor-made this programme in conjunction with the three universities and with reference to its industry-leading and unique integrated resort business model. Offering international horizons for 25 potential future leaders, the visionary programme is the latest initiative of the Sands China Academy. It is a significant investment standing as clear evidence that the leading integrated resort developer and operator values its team members by developing its leaders and local workforce – a type of investment that will continue to pay dividends not just for Sands China but for Macau as a whole. And it is part of an ongoing process.

Through the programme, Sands China now has leaders not only with enhanced knowledge and skills, but also with an international perspective and the ability to think as future leaders of Macau – a necessary tool to compete in today’s fast-changing market in order to take the company to newer heights.

“At this stage of the company’s development, we have reached the stage where we need to enable and train the local managers’ skills set, […] which only will be developed with exposure to different cultures, international best practices and case studies,” said Dr. Wilfred Wong, president of Sands China Ltd.

With this innovative programme, Sands China offers these 25 team members exposure to top-level universities to familiarise them with the best practices in China, Portugal and the U.S.A., which will assist in promoting strategic and lateral thinking – approaches important to empower and lead change in the team.

“It is important that being a leading corporation, we hope to nurture and cultivate the pool of talent, leadership talent, that is available in the economy,’ Wong continued.

“So we are prepared to make the best investments into our talent[ed team members], and hopefully these people will stay with us, but even when they leave us and go to other companies, they’re still benefiting the local economy,” the president proudly remarked.

This immense opportunity provided by Sands China to their management team members will benefit not only the individuals but also the company and its mid-level management as these 25 team members are ever-ready to take the next step forward from enhancing day to day operations to becoming strategic thinkers and leaders.

Once an individual joins Sands China, the leading integrated resort developer and operator allocates a number of training programmes for these team members in a bid to nurture and assist them in progressing in their careers.

Antonio Ramirez, senior vice president of human resources for Sands China pledges to hold the next programme again next year, a continuous move to cultivate local knowledge and skills.

“We always try to be pioneers in terms of training and development programmes. It happened in that way when we opened Sands Macao in 2004 and we continue to make our best efforts to ensure that we remain pioneers,” Ramirez pledged.

With a revamp of the business slated to occur again for Sands China, the executive confidently noted that these leaders are already conscientiously contributing to the company’s further development, The Londoner.

The Sands China International Strategic Leadership Programme for Integrated Resorts includes a business challenge – a practical component of the coursework for which participants are asked to analyse a specific, real world business challenge currently faced by the company and develop a set of recommendations to deal with it.

Professor David Patient, director and coordinator of the programme explained that the five-month long programme is customised for these 25 individuals who operate in the Macau context in terms of dealing with integrated resorts and facing challenges in a very fast-moving environment.

Considering the tough competition among integrated resort operators in the region, Sands China is continually focusing efforts to motivate and keep its best professionals as the company continues to develop and grow while contributing to the diversification of Macau’s economy by leveraging the integrated resort business model.

“I can say with confidence that these are the people that are going to get ahead. They’re going to make big contributions to the organisation,” Patient expressed.

Echoing Sands China’s aim of prioritising its local workforce, the programme director noted that the significant investment made in its team members goes to show that these leaders continually have the capacity to build their leadership potential.

The development programme culminated in a presentation of the participants’ ideas made recently to Sands China senior executives.

“The results were impressive, when I see some of their ideas, I know that these ideas will be developed within the company and that some of the people who are here today are going to lead those ideas. For their future and the company, this is very good news,” Patient remarked.

Meanwhile, back to the city from Lisbon and New York, the 25 future leaders are now more confident and ready to handle current and upcoming challenges brought by the nature of integrated resorts.

This article was sponsored by
Sands China Ltd.

what the students say

“The course is very thought-provoking. The programme has really changed our mindset to not just focus on gaming. We definitely need to grow our hospitality, retail, entertainment and food and beverage businesses as well in order to diversify our customer base.” – Valentino Ali, associate director of Operations Development

“We have so many different hotel brands in our portfolio so all the skills and theories that we have learned during the programme, we can apply when we do our strategic planning and execution.” – Melissa Chan, executive director of Gaming Operations

“The programme is a very strategic kind of training. I can apply it in the long-term development in the future and help me promote Macau, along with the integrated resorts, as the world’s leading tourism, leisure and meeting destination.”  – Anita Fu, director of Destination Marketing

“This was a wonderful journey. We have to be dynamic and have vision for the future. After the programme, the way we look at things are broadened. We not only think of Macau but we learned to think globally and internationally.”  – Connie Chio, assistant vice president of Paiza Operations.