Creating a Consistent Company Culture

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) award winning fleet sails its passengers to more than 450 destinations globally each year. For over 50 years it has been an innovator in the cruise line industry not only with its luxury liners, but it was also the first company to allow guests the freedom to create their own bespoke itinerary, with no assigned dining and entertainment times and scrapping formal dress codes.

But continuous investment and success did not lie in just investing in their fleet. Passionate and committed to their people and the communities in which they live, as much as they are to their customers, NCLH wanted to create an environment that allowed their team to flourish, where they understood the relevance of the organisation’s values and mission in their everyday work.

With employees in offices across EMEA, which all had their own unique cultures and goals, they needed their values of Family First and Commitment to Community to be consistent wherever their people were based.

Understanding behaviour change filters down from the top of an organisation, NCLH and Dale Carnegie began working together in 2016 to create training and development solutions that would create a positive change across the whole shore based EMEA operation.

What followed was a range of open programmes covering a variety of topics including: people and communication skills, presentation, leadership and sales techniques. In addition, bespoke training solution sessions were created on breakthrough engagement and culture, that all employees attended, to embed the values and behaviours that NCLH wanted to see represented throughout their whole business.  Going forward these workshops will be attended by all new employees to give them a sense of belonging and purpose in their new role, boosting employee well-being, as well as the bottom line.

“Leadership starts at the top, which is why we invested in aligning key skills in key people, so that they could cascade our values, vision and mission across their departments.

 Since the training you can see  and feel the behaviour changes across the whole organisation. It is present in our culture, diversity and business results.

 Our employees are more engaged and we are showing outstanding growth year on year.”

Harvinder Pereira

HR Director, EMEA

“As a result of this training, people are thinking more about the ‘why’, as opposed to just getting on with the job, and of course this develops a greater understanding among the collective group. You can all talk openly to each other, understanding what’s going on, and the more you have understanding across the business, the stronger it is. You don’t have compartmentalisation. You don’t have one funnel doing one thing and another funnel doing another thing, so that for me is critical as well for the business.

We have also seen an increase in ownership and communication, both within and between departments. This open collaboration between all the departments ensures that no one is left hanging and that we all know what’s going on within the business at the same time.

…We now are at the stage where things that I put out to be done and directions that need to be followed are taken on and my direct reports work together very closely, often coming back to me with an end result that I may need to review, but I have to do very little with. … I believe that Oceania is in the best position, staffing-wise, that it has ever been. So, it’s a great result.”

Bernard Carter,

SVP and Managing Director EMEA, Oceania Cruises

Challenge

Develop a consistent corporate culture across all EMEA offices.

Embed the values of family first and commitment to community in all employees.

Increase collaboration across departments.

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