Taj Mahal
Week One Human Resource Management
Raeellen Machado
Southwest Florida College
Instructor Morris
April 9, 2013
Sustainability occurs when an organization is able to profit without depleting its resources. Back in 2008, in the Indian state of Maharashtra’s capital of Mumbai, heavily armed terrorists attacked the famed Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. In the end several people were killed and a fire was set in the dome. But during this siege, employees of the hotel put the safety of the customers who were staying in the hotel above the needs of their own. And some of the hotel staff died as a result of this courageous act.
But if one were to delve deeper into why these employees would jeopardize their own safety for that of a customer, one would need to look no further than at how the company strategically recruited, trained and rewarded their employees. This organization worked with the local community, to hire students for entry level positions. If an employee did well in training then they would be hired by the hotel as a trainee. This organization also went to their own country’s catering institutions and hotel management schools to hire supervisors. All were given phenomenal training for selected job positions, free rent while in training, and once out of training were put on a rewards system to further incorporate good customer relations, which thus, would increase the sustainability of the organization.
The basic strategy of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel was to make employees aware of how to handle different types of situations, make the employees feel safe and valued in the workplace. The human resource department of the hotel focused on “employee development and empowerment rather than short term costs” (Gerhart, Holenbeck, Noe & Wright, 2014).
Because of the extraordinary way the employees of the hotel took care of their customers, researchers from Harvard decided to investigate. They interviewed both employees and the company’s human resource
Raeellen Machado
Southwest Florida College
Instructor Morris
April 9, 2013
Sustainability occurs when an organization is able to profit without depleting its resources. Back in 2008, in the Indian state of Maharashtra’s capital of Mumbai, heavily armed terrorists attacked the famed Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. In the end several people were killed and a fire was set in the dome. But during this siege, employees of the hotel put the safety of the customers who were staying in the hotel above the needs of their own. And some of the hotel staff died as a result of this courageous act.
But if one were to delve deeper into why these employees would jeopardize their own safety for that of a customer, one would need to look no further than at how the company strategically recruited, trained and rewarded their employees. This organization worked with the local community, to hire students for entry level positions. If an employee did well in training then they would be hired by the hotel as a trainee. This organization also went to their own country’s catering institutions and hotel management schools to hire supervisors. All were given phenomenal training for selected job positions, free rent while in training, and once out of training were put on a rewards system to further incorporate good customer relations, which thus, would increase the sustainability of the organization.
The basic strategy of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel was to make employees aware of how to handle different types of situations, make the employees feel safe and valued in the workplace. The human resource department of the hotel focused on “employee development and empowerment rather than short term costs” (Gerhart, Holenbeck, Noe & Wright, 2014).
Because of the extraordinary way the employees of the hotel took care of their customers, researchers from Harvard decided to investigate. They interviewed both employees and the company’s human resource
References: Gerhart, B., Holenbeck, J., Noe, R., & Wright, P. (2014). Fundamentals of human resource management. (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.