MGM in Macau uses Microsoft Teams to replace resource-heavy processes with faster, digital alternatives

“We have a huge workforce between the MGM MACAU and MGM COTAI properties,” says Ringo Cheang, Director of Talent Development at MGM. “Before each shift, we need to brief 300 employees on anything they need to know to do better on their shift, like updates about major activities or events or changes to procedure.” In the past, those briefings happened in person—a big undertaking that required a room that could accommodate hundreds of people who needed to arrive early to get the latest information. “Those pre-shift briefings were a challenge for us,” says Ringo. “For simple meetings, they certainly involved a lot of resources and time.” 

 “With Microsoft Teams, our frontline workers now receive pre-shift briefings on their personal devices. They arrive at work with all the information they need to start a successful shift right away,” Ringo continues. “Communication has become so much easier now.”

Saving time and streamlining processes with Teams

As Vice President of Digital & Technology Solutions at MGM, Winnie Ho seeks to understand how technology can improve the performance (and the lives) of employees.  She reckoned there was a desire for workplace collaboration tools that were as easy and intuitive as the apps employees use outside of work. “When employees started using chat tools like WhatsApp and WeChat, they would say, ‘This is great! Why can’t we do this in our workplace?’” she says. “We wanted to give employees an easy way to collaborate in a highly safe manner from a data security perspective. When we found Teams, we recognized that it offered the features, functionality, and security we needed.” 

The move to Teams aligned with MGM’s existing focus on innovation, explains Hubert Wang, President & Chief Operating Officer at MGM. “As a pioneer in the hospitality industry, MGM strives to offer a wealth of innovative experiences through our ethos of “Originality + Innovation + Technology” for our guests and also our Golden Lion Team,” he says. “Using Microsoft Teams not only helps our team members to stay connected with each other, but it also amplifies our work efficiency remarkably. Via cutting-edge technology and innovation, we will continue to empower and inspire our team members, who are our most valuable assets, to make great moments for all our stakeholders.” 

MGM MACAU and MGM COTAI implemented Teams to facilitate communication among dispersed employees, but the scope of the tool quickly grew to include integrations with frequently used applications. “We knew that we wanted to take advantage of the integration capabilities of Teams,” remembers Winnie. “Since the rollout, our workforce management and payroll solutions, Virtual Roster and Workday, are now available through Teams, making it easier and more efficient to access everything we need from one platform.” The business has also connected its SharePoint-based intranet portal to Teams, making it easier for employees to access and share relevant content. “Employees can now use their mobile devices to access our intranet from anywhere, anytime they like,” says Winnie, who also notes that the audience-targeting feature in SharePoint helps direct specific information to the right business segments. 

Having business-critical applications easily available within Teams helps employees access frequently used apps quickly, resulting in significant time savings for employees at both MGM properties and at the MGM head office for Macau. “An important feature we implemented was single sign-on for Teams,” says Winnie. “Previously, employees had to enter a code to access each application individually, which was cumbersome. Now, employees can sign in to Teams with a single code that gives them access to all the applications within Teams. This provides the same high degree of security, but it makes their lives so much easier and their work so much more efficient than entering different lengthy codes to get into each app multiple times a day.”

Streamlining time-consuming processes for each employee makes an overall impact. “In the case of the pre-shift briefings, our use of Teams has helped us save 10 minutes for more than 300 people per shift,” says Ringo. Those 10-minute blocks add up, especially when multiplied across hundreds of employees and three shifts a day. He continues, “We now save 10 minutes for more than 1,000 employees a day, which means we’re saving more than 61,000 total staff hours a year.”

Bringing knowledge closer to employees and customers 

Jose Ho, Director of Employee Communications at MGM, considers himself a storyteller for the business. Jose is responsible for ensuring that employees are aware of key business strategies and constantly feel driven to build on the culture of excellence and innovation that makes the business stand out. He uses Teams to share key communications with a geographically diverse audience of employees. “We need to be able to communicate with teams in different locations to help build our culture,” he says. “With Teams, it’s much easier to do that.” 

MGM MACAU and MGM COTAI use Teams to empower employees with brand knowledge and storytelling regardless of their location. Teams has helped create what Jose calls “a workstation at your fingertips.” It’s a big leap from the static workstations used by employees in the recent past. To access time-sensitive information, frontline employees previously used an employee workstation in a shared office to access a company portal. Today, with Teams on their mobile devices, employees get the information they need to be more productive and efficient from anywhere. “Now that we use Teams, we operate with the trust that everyone is on the same page, which helps us amplify our values,” says Jose. “We also want to increase opportunities for our employees to engage our customers in conversations that promote the stories of MGM. With Teams, we can create more opportunities to share insights, such as discussing our latest fondant art exhibition, for which MGM collaborated with Zhou Yi, the ‘Sugar King‘ of China. One way we distinguish service culture is that our employees are well equipped to showcase MGM and captivate their audience with relevant and interesting stories about MGM. ”

Creating a space to work together to improve customer experiences

Several times a year, MGM faces the challenge of rapid and significant increases in customer flow. These often coincide with national holidays in China. To address this challenge and ensure a delightful experience for customers and employees, Winnie and her colleagues used Teams to brainstorm ways to improve efficiency during an influx of visitors and thus improve the customer experience during a busy time of year. “The front office director of one of our properties called me on Teams and said we should talk about an upcoming holiday,” Winnie recalls. “He had some ideas about how to streamline the check-in process, and we immediately pulled other team members into the call to put together a process for the holiday. We were able to accelerate the whole endeavor using Teams to reach out to colleagues in the moment rather than breaking the momentum and setting up additional meetings for later in the week.”

By collaborating more effectively in Teams, frontline workers at MGM MACAU and MGM COTAI are finding ways to improve customer service on the ground. For example, if a guest reports a problem with a TV in their room, an employee will quickly open a ServiceNow ticket for the customer to resolve the issue. “A ticket like that is a very structured process,” says Winnie. “That’s where Teams comes in. We use it to share additional information if there’s something more to communicate or we want to get information quickly on behalf of a customer. Teams is always at people’s fingertips, and that makes our turnaround times much faster.”

Training hundreds of employees in a fraction of the time 

In his role overseeing training at MGM, Ringo is responsible for sharing trainings with the entire frontline workforce whenever the company introduces a new protocol or process. Before Teams, he and his colleagues conducted much of that training face-to-face. If MGM MACAU used a training video, employees would still need to convene, a few at a time, in a designated training room to watch it. “It may have taken two to three weeks for everybody to go to the training room to watch a new training video,” says Ringo. “But now, we use Teams to share the video instantly with every employee who needs to see it, and they watch it at their convenience. It saves a lot of time and resources.”

Allen Li, Supervisor at MGM COTAI, uses Teams to stay up to date on information shared from the business and communicate that information easily to colleagues across the busy business activities. “My main job is to keep the operations that I oversee operating smoothly,” he says. Using Teams, frontline employees like Allen can now reach colleagues who might have been inaccessible before, getting prompt answers to customer questions and relaying information about the operation. “In the past, I couldn’t communicate with a person unless I knew their name and phone number,” he says. “But now I use Teams to message anyone. I only need to look them up in Teams. It’s so much faster.”

Treating employees like guests with innovative technology

With employees working across properties and departments, it’s a challenge to inspire a close-knit atmosphere. Today, both MGM resorts in Macau use Teams to bridge gaps between employees, sharing information and encouraging communication among those on the ground in the resorts and in the head office. “We’re very proud of our culture,” says Jose. “We’re aware that everything starts with the employee experience, so we want to treat our employees the way we treat our guests. We embrace new technology and innovations like Microsoft Teams to build that great experience, and it’s helped us to foster a culture of openness among all employees.”

In the future, MGM hopes to continue to cultivate great employee experiences with the help of AI capabilities. “We envision several areas where AI will benefit frontline workers,” says Winnie. “For instance, AI can help us personalize guest experiences by predicting and recommending suitable products and services to customers in real time or help frontline workers overcome language barriers by providing language support in the moment. There is a lot of exciting potential for improved productivity and experiences.”

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