In the Hospitality Industry

Before discussing the relevance of employee development program at Four Seasons it necessary to identify the goals of four seasons HR policy. Then we will be able to analyze if their program match their expectations.

Even though the company praise to be more interested in their employees then their guests, we can obviously assume that above al

l they are interested in their profit (and no one is going to blame them for that). However, evolving in the luxury hospitality Industry, Sharp has understood before every body that customer services were the key to create a good reputation for his hotels, and make the clients loyal. So he put the customer services at the center of Four Seasons' s culture. He wanted to make them feel at home, away from home, providing them for every single need they would have even if those needs weren't expressed. The anticipation of clients needs has become a leitmotiv in all the company's operations. He totally engraved it in the company's culture. Besides, he also understood that clients, during their stay, were in touch with every type of employees and more often with the small ones (doormen, waiters, maids). It is therefore those employees who make the brand image of the hotels, and their reputations. Moreover those employees are in the best position to analyze what clients are missing, to see how they live in the hotel everyday and what could make their stay better.

Moreover he got quickly aware of the fact the employees' well being had an impact on their performance and attitudes with the clients. He somehow applied the happy-productive worker hypothesis, which says that, a happy employee would be more productive than an unhappy one. Even though this assumption is limited in many ways, I believe that it is very relevant for hospitality. Hospitality is a matter of kindness, empathy, cheerfulness and even smiles. An employee that is not happy with what he is doing won't be able to perform with all those qualities.

Also Four seasons HR seems to focus on hiring the appropriate person in order to keep him/her in the company for long thus lowering the cost of turn-over, knowing that the cost of seeking and hiring a new employee are huge. Here again making the employees happy has an impact. The contrary would result in a high voluntary turnover rate.

We could define the two main goals of Four Seasons with their Human resources Strategy as follow:

* Have a continuous and outstanding customer service

* Lower turnover by hiring skilled individuals matching the company's culture and caring their well-being within the company

Regarding these objectives we can discuss the development program.

The overall development program is divided in 8 approaches: recruitment selection, orientation, training, performance management, reward and recognition, development and succession, and promotion and transfer. Such a division is very important because it allows analyzing and working on every steps of the employee development, from the very beginning (the recruitment) to the most advanced stage (the employee evolution to his best position in the organization). In Four Seasons policy all the steps are clearly defined and provided with operational components to evaluate and improve the employee's performances. According to the number of component provided in each category we note that the emphasis is made on orientation, training and performance management. The orientation and training approaches fits with the company's will to keep the skilled employees in the company. If he has proper tools to identify his skills and identify how he can make them useful to company, an employee is more likely to stay because he sees where he is going.

The performance management approach is also a key element of the employee development program. Measuring the performance of employees of very important as it permit o know if the whole employee development program is efficient. If the performances of the employees are not what they should be, it means something is not working. However from what is described in the Table 1 the performance management approach lacks of auto-assessment component. It seems to be too much oriented toward the assessment of the employee's competencies rather than the actual efficiency of the employee development program. This could be dangerous because without any way to measure the performances the whole development process could be totally usless

Recruitment and selection

The recruitment phase is quite extended. Brainstorming added to four extensive interviews for every single employee from the maid to the top manager can seem a little bit exaggerated. Though if we take in account the standards of costumer service Four Seasons is seeking in its hotels it is making total sense. They want their employees to be having an outstanding caring attitude in every moment for the guest. If a recruit is not able to maintain this attitude during four interviews, there is absolutely no chance for him to have the appropriate behavior with the guests all the time. Moreover the Four seasons hiring strategy has for goal to find people who stick to the Company's Philosophy in order to make theme stay and make their whole career within the company. In