Best companies to work for 2014: How Marriott Hotels India climbed up to be in the top three

MUMBAI: Marriott has made a quite a breakthrough this year, climbing six places to emerge as one of the top three great places to work. How did it achieve this? "We made a special effort to bring home the Marriot culture, which is our single biggest strength. It's now taken firm root in India," says Rajeev Menon, South Asia head, Marriott Hotels.

The hospitality industry is a place where employee and customer satisfaction co-relate closely and Marriott has gone all out to bring its "people before profits" credo home to its associates (aka, employees) at every level. The past year has seen it organise training programs on "living Marriott's core values" across its 24 hotels, covering everyone from gardeners to chefs.

"It was an intense program spread over 30 sessions. We had translators present so everyone would understand what was being said," says Pavithran Nambiar, General Manager of the JW Marriott Mumbai.

Marriott has created an egalitarian American work culture which seeks to eliminate power distance. "It's different from Indian hotels, where things are more formal," says executive sous-chef Mandar Madan, who worked with a leading Indian hotel chain before joining Marriott. It also has a performance culture that gives weight to both education and experience. For example, one of its achievers is Rafi Ansari, 24, manager of Arola restaurant, who joined as a temp and has been working at the JW Marriott for seven years.

There's Shambhavi Thakur, who trained here as an intern while doing her diploma in hotel management and went on to do an MBA from Singapore. She's returned as sales coordinator for the Renaissance Convention Centre & Hotel Mumbai and says, "Marriott truly appreciates its associates and rewards us when we do well."

Hotel chains have inherent advantages when it comes to performance incentives. What better way to reward high performers than sending them on a holiday at a Marriott property? Last month, the high performers of the sales team were off to the Marriott Bali. And recognition is not restricted to quantifiable areas, like sales. Based on qualitative guest feedback and comments on TripAdvisor, Marriott also picks out the best from operations. Noel Sumitra, Head Concierge at Mumbai's Courtyard Marriott, was flown business class to Washington last month to receive a Marriott Award for Excellence from the chairman. "It was an honour receiving recognition from Bill Marriott himself," he says.

For those in management, Marriott India's pace of growth — it launched 6 hotels last year — provides ample avenue for advancement. Foreign postings are another route to career growth. "As a matter of policy, we promote from within rather than recruit from outside," says Gurmeet Singh, area director for human resources.

Menon was transferred to India from Marriott Australia in 2007, when the Marriott had just 14 hotels in the country. Today, the India operation is much more complex and the hotel industry's fortunes have declined from the heydays of 2007. Last year was particularly difficult, but Marriott India still managed 12% profit growth and employee satisfaction scores, as measured by Hewitt, were far above the industry average.

The good news moved Menon to write a letter addressed to the spouses and parents of his associates, thanking them for their support in achieving such results. "I got some very emotional letters in return," he says. "Many wrote to say how proud they were that their sons, daughters, husbands or wives were with Marriott."