The Taj Group has a legacy like no other. Incorporated by the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata, in 1903, the company is a part of the Tata Group, one of India's largest business conglomerates. The Taj Group has not only sustained through the tests of time but also is a landmark of sustainable management, moral principles, and possesses a strong track record of serving beyond duties.
The pillars of Taj Group’s core strength is formed by its, three-pronged recruiting system that helps it to identify people, that it can systematically train to be customer-centric. Unlike most other companies, that recruit mainly from India’s metropolitan areas, the Taj group chain hires, most of its frontline staff from smaller cities and towns such as Pune, Chandigarh, Mysore etc…
According to its senior executives, the rationale behind their mode of staff selection, is neither the larger size of the labor pool available outside the big cities nor the desire to reduce salary costs. The very reason Taj Group prefers to go into the hinterland is because, in their view that’s where the traditional Indian values—such as respect for elders and teachers, humility, consideration of others, discipline, and honesty—still hold sway. Whereas, In the cities by contrast, where youngsters are increasingly driven by money, are happy to cut corners, and are unlikely to be empathetic with customers.
In its recruitment drive, the Taj Group believes in hiring young people, often straight out of high school. Its recruitment teams starts out in small towns and semiurban areas by identifying schools that, in the local people’s opinion, have good teaching standards. They call on the school’s headmasters to help them choose prospective candidates. Contrary to popular perception, the Taj Group doesn’t scout for the best English speakers or math whizzes; it will even recruit would-be dropouts.
Its recruiters look for three-character traits:
1. Respect for elders (How does an individual treat his teachers?);
2. Cheerfulness (Do they perceive life positively even in during an adversity?); &
3. Neediness (How badly are they, or their family in need of the income from a job?).
The chosen few are then sent to the nearest of six residential Taj Group skill-certification centres. The trainees learn and earn for the next 18 months, staying in no-rent company dormitories, availing free food while receiving an annual stipend. Trainee’s remit most of their stipends to their families, because the Taj Group pays their living costs. As a result, most of them work hard and display good values despite any temptations of the big city. All they prioritise is building a career with the Taj Group. The company offers traineeships to those who exhibit potential and haven’t made any egregious errors or dropped out.
One level up, the Taj Group recruits supervisors and junior managers from approximately half of the more than 100 hotel-management and catering institutes in India. It cultivates relationships with about 30 through a campus-connect program under which the Taj Group trains faculty and facilitates student visits. It maintains about 10 permanent relationships while other institutes rotate in and out of the program. Although the Taj Group administers a series of tests to gauge candidate’s domain knowledge and to develop psychometric profiles, recruiters admit that they primarily assess the prospects, sense of values and desire to contribute. What the Taj Group looks for in managers is integrity, along with the ability to work consistently and conscientiously, to always put guests first, to respond beyond the call of duty, and to work well under pressure.
For the company’s topmost echelons, the Taj Group signs up 50 or so management trainees every year from India’s second- and third-tier B-schools such as Infinity Business School, in Delhi, or Symbiosis Institute, in Pune, usually for functions such as marketing or sales. It doesn’t recruit from the premier institutions, as the Taj Group has found that MBA graduates from lower-tier B-schools want to build careers with a single company, tend to fit in better with a customer-centric culture, and aren’t driven solely by money. A hotelier must want, above all else, to make other people happy, and the Taj Group keeps that top of mind in its recruitment processes.
A Recognition-as-Reward System
Underpinning the Taj Group’s rewards system is the notion that happy employees lead to happy customers. One way of ensuring that outcome, the organization believes, is to show that it values the efforts of both frontline and heart-of-the house employees by thanking them personally. These expressions of gratitude, senior executives find, must come from immediate supervisors, who are central in determining how employees feel about the company. In addition, the timing of the recognition is usually more important than the reward itself.
Using these ideas, in 2001 the Taj Group created a Special Thanks and Recognition System (STARS) that links customer delight to employee rewards. Employees accumulate points throughout the year in three domains: compliments from guests, compliments from colleagues, and their own suggestions. Crucially, at the end of each day, a STARS committee comprising each hotel’s general manager, HR manager, training manager, and the concerned department head review all the nominations and suggestions. The members of this group decide whether the compliments are evidence of exceptional performance and if the employee’s suggestions are good. Then they post their comments on the company’s intranet. If the committee doesn’t decide within 48 hours, the employee gets the points by default.
By accumulating points, Taj Group employees aspire to reach one of five performance levels: the managing director’s club; the COO’s club; and the platinum, gold, and silver levels. Departments honour workers who reach those last three levels with gift vouchers, STARS lapel pins, and STARS shields and trophies, whereas the hotel bestows the COO’s club awards. At an annual organization-wide celebration called the Taj Business Excellence Awards ceremony, employees who have made the managing director’s club get crystal trophies, gift vouchers, and certificates.
Service beyond duty
The Taj Group’s hiring, training, and recognition systems have together created an extraordinary service culture, but you may still wonder if the response of the Taj Mumbai’s employees to was unique. To highlight on some incredible exhibition of sheer sense of duty, let us reflect upon some events of the past: At about 9:30 AM on December 26, 2004, a tsunami rippled across the Indian Ocean, wreaking havoc on coastal populations from Indonesia to India, killing about 185,000 people. Among those affected was the island nation of the Maldives, where tidal waves devastated several resort hotels, including two belonging to the Taj Group: the Taj Exotica and the Taj Coral Reef.
Many guests were panic-stricken, but the Taj staff members remained calm and optimistic. As soon as the giant waves struck, guests say, Taj Group employees rushed to every room and escorted them to high ground. Women and children were sheltered in the island’s only two-story building. Many guests were panic-stricken, believing that more waves could follow, but staff members remained calm and optimistic. No more waves arrived later on, but the first one had inundated kitchens and storerooms. A Taj Group team, led by the head chef, immediately set about salvaging food supplies, carrying cooking equipment to high ground, and preparing a hot meal. Housekeeping staff retrieved furniture from the lagoon, pumped water out of a restaurant, and restored a semblance of normalcy. Despite the trying circumstances, lunch was served by 1:00 PM.
The two Taj hotels continued to improvise for two more days until help arrived from India, and then they evacuated all the guests to Chennai in an aircraft that the Taj Group had chartered. There were no casualties and no panic, according to guests, some of whom were so thankful that they later volunteered to help rebuild the island nation. These Taj Group employees behaved like ordinary heroes, just as their colleagues at the Taj Mumbai would four years later. That, it appears, is indeed the Taj Way.
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