Analysis of Learning and Development Practices at Marriott Hotel

This report provides a critical analysis of the learning and development practices at Marriott International. It begins with a brief overview of the company, including its size, global presence, and employee count. The core of the report examines various aspects of Marriott's human resource management, specifically focusing on coaching, training and development, and employee participation and engagement. The analysis includes an evaluation of Marriott's coaching programs, the initial and ongoing training provided to employees, and the platforms the company uses to encourage employee participation. The report highlights specific programs such as 'Xposure' and 'Guest Voice Meetings' and their impact on employee satisfaction and performance. It concludes with a series of recommendations to enhance Marriott's learning and development strategies, such as improving digital platforms and performance appraisal systems. The report emphasizes the positive correlation between employee development, job satisfaction, and the delivery of premium customer service, contributing to Marriott's competitive advantage in the hospitality industry. The report is available on Desklib, a platform offering valuable study resources for students.

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Introduction
The following report is focused on critically exploration and evaluation and make
recommendations in regard to their learning and development practices in
Marriott Hotel. Report consists of two main parts. In the first part, it was
described brief company profile. In the second part, it was identified and
critically evaluated the various learning and development practices in the
organization. In this part, it was evaluated coaching, training and
development and employee participation and engagement in Marriott.
Marriott Hotel: Brief Company Description
Founded in 1927 Maryland, USA, Marriott International (later Marriott) is one of the leading
hotel chains in the world with 7000 properties working under 30 branded hotels and resorts in
131 countries (Marriott International, 2021). Company’s main operations include franchising,
licensing and operating hotels. Company also operates such branded hotels as Ritz-Carlton, W
Hotels, Sheraton, Le Meridien, Gaylord Hotels, SpringHill Suites, TownePlace Suites, Aloft,
Protea, Element and Renaissance (Yahoo Finance, 2021).
As of 2020, Marriott has more than 121000 full-time employees in its hotels and resorts
internationally (Yahoo Finance, 2021). The number of full-time employees has declined from
174000 in 2016 by 30.46% (Microtrends LLC, 2021). This is due to Marriott’s selling off and
franchising some of its branded hotels and properties around the world. However, Marriott is
also consistently voted one of the world’s top employers with 85% of employees say Marriott is
a great place to work (Gibbons, 2020).
Identification and analysis of learning and development practices
Marriott is one of the leading company in hospitality industry due to its emphasis on providing
premium and luxury experience to guests. Company has won competitive advantage over
Wyndham and Hilton hotels and industry disruptors like Airbnb (Gibbons, 2020). This is largely
due to customer service differentiation that offer superior customer experiences (ibid).
Marriott’s human resource management principle is built on the idea of taking care of and
motivate employees so that they will take care of customers and committed to premium and
luxury class customer service. Company has a philosophy of “taking care of people will make
them happy, who in turn will keep the guests happy, and lead to a thriving business” (People
Matters Media Pvt, 2021). Company provided numerous learning and development activities to
employees which will lead to increase in their job satisfaction and performance improvement
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(Elena, 2000). Some of these employee learning and development activities are discussed in the
later sections.
Coaching at Marriott: Help employees the same as guests
Coaching is an important and informal activity of employee development. It involves treating
employees as a personal partner in achieving both personal and organizational goals (Hameed
and Waheed, 2011). As employees are in the front line to deliver unique customer experiences in
hospitality industry, Marriott heavily relies on brand reputations to desk clerks, housekeeping
staff and other frontline employees. Therefore, good experience is a must to provided unique
customer experience.
Marriott line supervisors provide positive on-site performance for the frontline employees, talk
with personal matters that hinder the work performance. Moreover, mid-level and senior level
managers always makes sure what company stands for and their feedbacks to employees are
directive to both employee and organizational goal achievement (Mcllvaine, 2019). More
importantly, managers who have employee’s success in mind will more like provide positive
feedbacks and employees accept compliments, advice and even criticism (Gibbons, 2020).
“Xposure” is one of the platforms in Marriott where employees receive mentorship, cross-
training and special assignments and projects (People Matters Media Pvt, 2021). This program
enhances employee experience in the workplace. Moreover, “Guarantee of Fair Treatment”
(GFT) platform allows employees to share their workplace concerns and receive helps to resolve
the issues (ibid). In that way, such platforms enable to solve personal problems of employees and
communicate the feelings of “belonging” to the Marriott Family (Agarwal et al., 2006).
Training and development
Training and development is one of the key aspects of achieving good employee performance.
From the time of recruitment, Marriott fresh recruits go through 8-hour initial training session
which includes both classroom teaching and interactive multimedia training varied between
frontline employees and managerial personnel (IBS Center for Management Research, 2004).
During this period, it was given an overview of Marriott and employees’ individual roles in the
organization and each fresh recruit go through 3-month training. A mentor will be allotted to
each recruit and guides the trainings and all trainees attend refresher sessions after the 1 and 2
months conducted by mentor (IBS Center for Management Research, 2004). During 3 months of
trainings, new employees will be accustomed to the company’s unique work environment and
understand the organizational goals and how employee is the key to achieve these goals.
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Training and development played key role because it increases the abilities and competency of
the employee (Dixon, 1999). The abilities and competencies are helpful in employee
performance and productivity (Hameed and Waheed, 2011). In addition, 3-month training and
mentorship program also helps employees to manage their own career responsibly (Afshan et al.,
2012). While mentorship is the cheapest way of improvement and development process in
human resource, it is also one of the important strategy and encourages continuous learning and
ability to develop employment (Hwang, 2003).
Harrison (2000) stated that employee performance is also linked to the training and positively
associated to the employee performance. Marriott oversaw an effort to build a digital-learning
platform to train employees in more than 100 countries in fewer than 21 weeks (Mcllvaine,
2019). Company created mobile-friendly “micro-learning” courses that included short videos and
virtual simulations. This digital platform enabled employees to save time and help them to apply
what they learned more quickly to their day-to-day jobs (ibid). Moreover, it also benefited
Marriott from hiring massive numbers of classroom trainers and pull workers away from their
regular jobs to attend trainings (ibid). Such training benefited the employee through development
of competencies, knowledge, ability, behavior and skills, while organization benefited from
realization of its goals and high production (Milkovich and Boudreau, 2004).
Employee participation and engagement
Employee participation in Marriott one of the essential aspects of employee development.
Involvement in all aspects of work decisions improves employee commitment to work, boosts
the retention and creates the environment in which employees come up with choices to
contribute to work (Kohl et al., 2004). Marriott has developed work teams, suggestion system,
processes for corrective measures, non-stop meetings and discussions held periodically with the
supervisors (StudyCorgi, 2020). Letting employees participate in organization decision-making
enhances employee performance (Hameed and Waheed, 2011).
Marriott also has a tradition of “Guest Voice Meetings”. This platform allows associates to meet
with general manager and leadership team to review and analyze the guest satisfaction scores
and comments (The Economic Times, 2018). During this meeting employees got through all
guest comments, understand the root cause for any problems and find solutions (ibid). Such
platform empowers the employees to know the core values of Marriott and provide suggestions,
ideas and thoughts to make the hotel better for customers. While “Guest Voice Meetings” leads
to employee commitment, morale, satisfaction and motivation, it more likely to improve
organizational performance (Champathes, 2006).
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Recommendations
Based on the findings and analysis of employment learning and development in Marriott,
following recommendations can be provided:
 Enhance digital platforms of learning and development
 Improve the performance appraisal system for frontline employees to develop effective
punishment system to deter the future occurrence of unacceptable practices at work.
 Improve the suggestion system at Marriott where every employee share the opinions and
thoughts about the workplace based on their experience to improve the customer service.
Conclusion
In summary, it can be stated that Marriott is one of the leading company in hospitality industry
due to its emphasis on providing premium and luxury experience to guests. Company has won
competitive advantage over due to customer service differentiation that offer superior customer
experiences. Company’s emphasis on learning and development activities to employees led to
increase in their job satisfaction and performance improvement. Therefore, such learning and
development activities benefited the employee through development of competencies,
knowledge, ability, behavior and skills, while organization benefited from realization of its goals
of achieving luxury class customer service.
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