Leading With Human Resources

HR at the Marriot

Company Overview

The Marriott Hotels and Resorts is a high end luxury hotel chain that operates hotels in numerous locations and within many cultures around the globe. For example, the hotel chain's locations are positioned in roughly fifty different countries and at over five hundred locations worldwide. The Marriot operate under its own brand and is a mostly autonomous organization, but it also owns other hotel brands such as the Ritz-Carlton that also operate in a similar market segment. Although the facilities of the hotels are world-class, the organization's human resources (HR) capabilities are the company's number one core competency. The HR strategy of the company really defines its service capabilities and the company is also developing new and innovative new techniques for attracting top talent in the industry. This analysis will provide a brief background of the organization as well as the ways in which it leverages HR to create a competitive advantage, followed by some of the new techniques that it has developed and a brief discussion. In my opinion, any position in HR at the Marriott would be ideal to springboard a career in HR -- it would an amazing opportunity to work for one of the leaders in HR strategies.

Human Resources at the Marriot

Each Marriot location around the globe has different types of accommodations that are all world-class. For example, each hotel offers a different range of services such as spa treatments, golf facilities, as well as luxury condominiums. Despite the facilities and the services that are offered, providing the best service in the industry is considered the Marriott's number one priority. Furthermore, being able to provide industry leading human resources in significantly different operating environments as well as creating consistency in service worldwide can be quite the challenge. The Marriott's business model focused on the luxury industry segment in which the consumers in the target market have incredibly high expectations for service. The organization explains its focus in the market as follows (Marriott, N.d.):

We believe our strength is rooted in our core values: putting people first, pursuing excellence, embracing change, acting with integrity and serving our world. These values are our legacy and our future. As we pursue our vision of making Marriott the #1 hospitality company in the world, we never lose sight of our founding principles and our proud heritage. Our business is always evolving ... but we'll always stay true to who we are.

The Marriott's human resource team includes employees in over fifteen different business functions and these employees must work in unison to ensure quality (Marriott, N.d.). Not only must the entire HR team create high standards that are consistent worldwide, but they must do so in some starkly different operating environments. To achieve the level of service expected from Marriot and their stakeholders, they must recruit some of the top talent that the industry can offer. Yet, it is not only about recruitment, the organization must fully empower and equip their staff with all the tools necessary to meet their service objectives.

To meet all of the different challenges that HR at the Marriot faces, they were one of the pioneering organizations to adopt the total quality management model to the service industry (Partlow, 1993). This approach basically states that service quality at the Marriot must be flexible enough to be able to address any customer concerns or requests immediately and on the spot without having to ask approval from a supervisor for example. Nearly any employee at the Marriot can make critical decisions on the spot that are within some specified dollar amount. For example, if a customer is not happy with some aspect of their service, any Marriot employee can authorize any expenditure up to an amount, roughly $500 dollars in most cases, to quickly address the customers concerns. This HR strategy makes recruitment and continual training critical to empower their employees on this level.

Innovative Recruitment Techniques