The Marriott Way

Marriott's history of taking care of its employees dated back to its early days, when its founder, JW Marriott, counselled the company's employees individually on their personal problems at his first hotel. He valued their presence, kept them posted about the latest happenings in Marriott and gave them excellent training. JW Marriott always ensured that employees who joined the company felt themselves a part of the Marriott family. He made managers responsible for the satisfaction of their subordinates. JW Marriott was always conscious of the fact that in the hospitality industry, providing the best service to customers was paramount...
The HR Practices
Apart from providing a competitive pay package, Marriott strived to give its employees a good work life. The company gave equal importance to non-monetary factors such as work-life balance, good leadership, better growth opportunities, a friendly work environment and training. Employees stayed longer with Marriott as they were happy with these non-monetary factors and thought them more important. Marriott's culture and guiding principles had a significant influence on the company's HR practices including manpower planning, recruitment and selection; training and development, employee retention and welfare initiatives and grievance redress. Manpower Planning, Recruitment and Selection Marriott attached a lot of importance to manpower planning. It started right from entry level and went through to higher positions. Every unit of Marriott (division or department) prepared its expansion plans over the next couple of years, and, in the process, decided on the number of entry level and managerial employees required for the expansion. Details on the number of new units planned in the given time frame (two to five years), a rough picture of the likely organization structure, the time required to develop employees who could take managerial positions, current availability of employees within Marriott and the necessity to recruit externally - all these were determined during the planning process...

Training and Development

Once the right candidates were recruited, it was important to get them accustomed to the company's unique work environment. Training and development played a key role here. These programs varied between frontline employees and managerial personnel. Over time, training programs evolved from classroom- based teaching to interactive multimedia training. Fresh recruits went through an eight-hour initial training session, during which they were given an overview of Marriott and their individual roles.

A unique feature was that senior hotel employees served lunch at the first session. During the three- month training period which followed, a mentor, addressed as 'buddy' was allotted to each recruit. The mentor guided the trainee. All trainees attended refresher sessions after the first and second months. On the final day of training, recruits enjoyed a sumptuous feast at a Marriott hotel... Excerpts Contd...>>

Employee Retention and Welfare Initiatives Retaining employees in the hospitality industry was vital as the cost of recruiting and training new employees was very high. Marriott operated in an industry where every day counted and weekends and holidays generated more business than weekdays. Customer service had to be provided on a 24/7/365 basis. The implication was that employees had to go through a hectic work schedule; an average work week lasted more than 50 hours. With the increasing work load due to rising customers in the late-1990s, several key managers at Marriott left. They wanted to devote more time to their personal lives and their jobs at Marriott were not helping the cause. Facing this challenge, Marriott launched a new program called Management Flexibility in February 2000 on a pilot basis at three of its hotels. The aim was to assist Marriott's managers in balancing their professional and personal lives, without negatively affecting customer service or the company's financials... Grievance Redressal System By the mid-1990s, Marriott had a comprehensive complaint resolution system in place, known as the Guarantee of Fair Treatment (GFT), to ensure that employee grievances were addressed. Under GFT, complaints passed through successive stages in Marriott's hierarchy, starting with the immediate superior, depending on whether or not the said employee was happy with the redress response given at each stage. However, given the decentralized nature of Marriott's operations, and with managers handling several tasks, resolution of complaints through GFT did not quite produce the desired results.

It, therefore, decided to try new methods of complaint resolution while continuing with GFT. These methods included mediation, a toll-free hotline and peer-review... The Benefits Reaped Marriott's efforts over the decades to develop an employee-friendly work place earned it widespread recognition in the hospitality industry. The awards it received for 'the best place to work' were testimony. (Refer Exhibit IV for awards received by Marriott). The company reaped benefits like higher employee satisfaction and less turnover. Employee satisfaction could be gauged from the 2003 Associate Opinion Survey, in which 90% of employees surveyed expressed great pride in working for Marriott... Exhibits Exhibit I: Marriott's Culture - The Marriott Way Exhibit II: Programs For Recruitment Of Frontline Employees Exhibit III: Marriott's Recruitment Advertisement (2003)

Background Note NetApp was founded in 1992 in California by Michael Malcolm, David Hitz, and James Lau, in order to deliver simpler solutions for enterprises that dealt in big volumes of data. It was then known as Network Appliance Inc., and was started with an initial fund of US$ 12.8 million financed by private and venture capital sources... The HR Practices NetApp's HR policies focused on the well-being of its employees. The policies aimed at developing a healthy and motivated workforce. According to Gwen McDonald (McDonald), Senior Vice President, HR, NetApp, "We're really clear that our people are really our foundation to make our success happen. It's communicated by our leaders both in terms of what we say and do."... Corporate Culture

NetApp's management believed that the customers wanting to do business with the company gauged its value proposition on the basis of its corporate culture. If the corporate culture was strong enough, the customers would be attracted to it and be inclined to continue business relations with the company. Stressing this fact, NetApp educated its employees about its unique work culture...

Rewards and Recognition The employees at NetApp were always motivated through words of appreciation and they were made aware of the fact that they were valued in the company. There were different rewards and recognition programs structured to recognize the contribution made by the employees in various fields. Among them was the SHARE rewards program, which was an incentive-based program developed to encourage employees to participate in knowledge sharing... Future Outlook In February 2009, as the US economy suffered due to the impact of global recession, NetApp also reported a dismal financial performance. For the third quarter ending January 23, 2009, NetApp reported a net loss of US$ 75 million as compared to a US$ 102 million net income in the corresponding quarter of the previous year (Refer to Exhibit IV for NetApp's third quarter fiscal 2009 financial highlights)... Exhibits Exhibit I: Fortune List o