India's best workplaces of 2016: Hierarchies, a strict no-no at Marriott Hotels

Rank in 2016: 6
Marriott Hotels India
Founded: 1927
Employee strength: 8,200
Gender Ratio (F/M): 1:3.6
Rank 2015: 3



For Varun Babbar, assistant front office manager at JW Marriott’s new hotel near Mumbai’s Sahar airport, it is the culture of empowerment that the group provides is the key differentiator from any of its industry peers. The 27 year old joined Marriott as a duty manager in 2014 as a part of its pre-opening team and was promoted to assistant front office manager within a year. Babbar, who has some six years of experience in the hospitality industry with stints at Imperial, New Delhi and Taj Palace, New Delhi, says: “The empowerment that is given to the associates at Marriott is tremendous. For example, if a guest has a problem with an invoice, an associate is empowered to give a rebate. Not many hotels in India have that degree of empowerment. Their open door policy is not seen in many other hotels particularly in our industry where it is very hierarchical.”

27-year old Sarita Sharma joined around the same time as Varun. It was her first hotel job as a bar tender after having freelanced for five years. Sharma, who is now associate bar manager, feels it is the empowerment, transperancy and scope to upskill that keeps one here. “If you have growth and future opportunities to work across the globe in the same company it is amazing,” said Sharma.

On the face of it might look simple but there are a lot of well thought out strategies and initiatives that goes into taking care of the employees. Marriott employs more than 8,000 people in India, spread across different locations across its 33 hotels with a lot of presence in larger cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and also in other tertiary markets such as Lucknow. The group is in the process of opening hotels in locations such as Belgaum in Karnataka and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.

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“We consider our people to be our most important asset. If you ask me today what is our number one asset it is the people that we work with. There is a lot of investment that goes into that in terms of development. We have been successful in many markets we go to because of our investment on people,” says Neeraj Govil, marketing vice-president, South Asia, Marriott International (effectively the country head).

Marriott invests in local talent and in nurturing talent from within the company. “If we look at people today so people who started with the company when Marriott came to India are in pretty senior positions today. That investment has kind of paid up for us,” says Govil. There is also clear communication of goals and growth path within the workplace. “For any organization to be successful you need to communicate the vision. Our vision is to be the world’s largest travel company and everyone in this company understands this,” he says.

The other thing Marriott seems to have done well is create a strong culture. As the chain grows in India (last year, it took over Starwood Hotels world-wide), the management is cognizant of the fact that the culture should not be diluted. For Marriott, culture is taking care of people because they believe happy people at work will make customers happy and if customers are happy they will come back to the hotel and the business will thrive.

The third thing they have done is identifying and sourcing the talent that fits into this culture. Recently the group rolled out an initiative called “Take Care” that is about physical, mental and financial well-being of associates at work. Marriott has one of the lowest turnover rates in India compared with its competitors. “Of course growth helps. Building new hotels and buying company and that growth also helps retain people,” said Govil.

Marriott has customised development plans for nominating high potential leaders who are put through a 12-18 month elevate plan to fast track their career by exposing them to various function and skills and develop them to grow as an individual into the role they aspire for. “Developing people is key to our success,” says Neesha Mohapatra, director human resources at JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar. “If a new hotel is opening, 40% people are internal in that hotel. That wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t have a culture of constantly training our people for bigger roles.”