Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hiring policies: The candidates are gauged on their value system and trained for 18
months which is 6 months more than the industry standard. The hiring process
particularly looks for employees on their values and whether the recruits would be able to
adapt to the culture of the organization. It is believed that the employees can be trained to
be better chefs or waiters, but they cannot be taught to be good individuals. So the
organization expects an individual to possess good values to become a part of the Taj
family.
Honing leadership skills: Apart from the normal training sessions to inculcate
leadership skills in the employees, each employee is given an authority to take the decisions
pertaining to his work and this empowers them and helps in building a leader in all. This
was primarily the reason why each one of them could impromptu take the decisions during
the attack, when none of them had been trained for such a situation.
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2) Works systems
A 360-degree feedback system was adopted wherein the employees, including the
managers and departmental heads are evaluated not just by their bosses or peers but also
their immediate subordinates. The employees are counseled at a personal level and
apprised of where they fell short of the expectations and how to go about it. Thus the
feedback session is not just limited to assessing the employees but guides them to prepare a
roadmap for the future endeavors and hone their skills.
STARS (Special thanks and Recognition System) was designed keeping its core
value in mind ie the customers of an organization can be satisfied by it only when its
employees are satisfied. So the STARS was aimed at recognizing and rewarding employees
who showcased excellent performance at their work. The employees are awarded points
and based on the points accumulated within the predefined time frame, they are promoted
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successively to various levels. A distinguishing feature was that the employees were not just
assessed on their performance but also on parameters like honesty, trustworthiness,
concern for the environment, team spirit, cooperation etc. Besides, appreciations from the
customers also fetched points. In all, there were 5 levels.
Level 1 : Silver level was attained when the employee accumulated 120 points within 3
months.
Level 2: Gold Level was attained by employees who accumulated 130 points within 3
months from the date of achieving the silver level.
Level 3: Platinum level attained by employees scoring 250 points, 6 months from
attainment of level 2.
Level 4: Membership of COO club on scoring points in the range of 510-760.
Level 5: Scoring points above 760 would enable membership to MDs club.
There are forums for the employees to voice their recommendation or compliment
their colleagues. It is mandatory for the review committee to reply to the employees
suggestions within 2 days or he shall be allotted default points. These methods are
primarily focused to boost the motivation levels of the employees and to improve job
satisfaction.
Overall outcomes:
The HR practices followed by the Taj group had a great impact on the employee
commitment and ERR (Employee retention rate) of Taj group was the highest amongst all
its competitors. The policies were so well planned and implemented that they drove the
employees beyond their duties which was totally unexpected of them as was in the case of
26/11.
In 2002, Taj Group was conferred HERMES Award for its innovative HR practices.
With the implementation of STARS, there was tremendous improvement in the
service standards and also the customer satisfaction level.
From the above study, it can be concluded that people are the most important resource of an
organization and the edifice of performance of different departments and the organization as a
whole builds on it. The sooner an organization accepts this fact, the better it is. Taj group had
always stressed on the employee-focused policies and that was primarily responsible for the job
commitment shown by the employees and explains why they considered the safety of the guests
beyond their own lives.
To wrap up, this article not just intends to emphasize the importance of HR in an organization,
but also that the HR policies should be fabricated such that they are synchronized with the vision
and values of the organization. The success of any organization would depend upon the extent of
alignment of its policies with its vision. Also, it is important that these values should be
ubiquitous in work environment so that they become the second behavior for the employees
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like it happened in the Taj when the employees stuck to their organizations values even at the
cost of their lives. The unprecedented example set forth by the employees of Taj has a deep
lesson to be learnt by one and all.
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