Manager/Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs, West China (Government Affairs focused)

Job Summary

This role is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with government officials, industry stakeholders, trade associations, and focus on developing and executing action plans aligned with Greater China and global business strategies and objectives to support the company's business interests in the region. This role is also responsible for executing communication and owner engagement plans in the region to support the overall Greater China corporate affairs and strategic relations strategy. It includes,

• Establishing and maintaining strong government relations and building trusted institutional partnership with government stakeholders for policy communication, issue/crisis management, and to secure government support to IHG’s strategic business development.
• Identifying and exploring opportunities to support operation, commercial, development and the overall support to the corporate and hotels by leveraging resources of government, associations/chambers of commerce, medias and related key stakeholders.
• Implementing the corporate communications and corporate responsibility plans with the guidance from the Greater China support center function teams on building IHG’s company profile and reputation through all appropriate channels.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Developing and updating the regional government mapping with clear picture of role/responsibility of the governments and their relevance/implication to IHG’s business.
• Improving the policy/regulatory environment for IHG’s business operation by a comprehensive and systematic policy monitoring, communication, and lobbying network and mechanism.
• Providing report/analysis on political and economic major events, government agenda/initiatives to management team, alerting relevant functions of relevant policy/regulatory change and taking an important role in cross-function response/action needed.

• With the guidance from Greater China support center, building and maintaining good relationship with the chambers and industry associations to establish effective platform and channels for policy lobbying and promote IHG’s image and presence.

• Identifying key and high-level engagement opportunities for Greater China management team, e.g. high profile events, government meetings, etc. for top leaders to participate to build high-level relationship.
• Providing strategic support to the internal functions and hotels on related business opportunities. Supporting in the crisis management activities, offering overarching guidance of crisis management to minimize the impact on the company and hotels.
• Identifying cooperation opportunities with the stakeholders and developing relevant program/project, forum/seminar/training to support the business teams.

• Executing the communications strategy and plans to successfully engage our audience groups with the guidance from function teams in Greater China support center.

• Facilitating and executing the owner relations strategy with the guidance from the function teams in Greater China support center.
• Implementing the regional delivery of Corporate Responsibility programmes, championing the region needs and priorities and reflecting this in the communications to ensure success.

Required Skills

• Strong people skills to develop relationship and establish smooth communication channels
• Strong analytical capability and skills to be able to identify and resolve the key issues
• Strong business sense to develop the link and synergy for cooperation with stakeholders
• Strong written and oral communication both in English and Chinese
• Self-motivated and the ability to execute agreed strategies with minimal supervision
• Team player

Qualifications

• B.A. degree or above in political, social science, English literature or related discipline

Experience

• Significant experience working with government agencies and a good understanding of how policy-making processes work in different organizations and levels
• Experience of working effectively across a matrix organization, influencing and partnering with leadership teams and cross-functional business teams
• Knowledge and insights of the policies, laws, regulations relating to the hospitality industry
• 8+ years experience in working on corporate affairs or government affairs in international organization or MNCs