Case study 1: How Tata responded to 26/11

26/11 was the biggest crisis the Tata group has ever faced. The behaviour of
their employees at the Taj Hotel and the subsequent actions of the group
were an excellent display of the values the company holds.
Heroism displayed by the staf
During the actual event, all levels of staff from janitors, waiters, directors,
artisans, and captains at the Taj Hotel displayed extraordinary courage.
There were 500 emails from various guests narrating heroics of the staff and
thanking them for saving their lives. The sense of duty and service among
them was unprecedented. Consider some of these points:

There was a Unilever event at the hotel on the day of the attacks.
The young lady who protected and looked after the HLL guests was
a management trainee. She had no instructions from any supervisor
but took just three minutes to evacuate the entire team through the
kitchen. Cars were organised outside the hotel according to seniority
of the members. In the peak of the crisis, she stepped out into the
firing and even got the right wine glass for a guest.

Thomas George, a captain, escorted fifty-four guests from a

backdoor staircase. He was the last to go out and was shot by the
terrorists while trying to leave. His widow would later say that she
did not know that the man she lived with for twenty-five years was
so courageous.

In a subsequent function, Ratan Tata broke down in public and

sobbed saying the company belongs to these people.

When the hotel was reopened on 21 December, all employees of

the hotel were paraded in front of the guests.

The Tata gesture

Some of the provisions the Tata group made were as follows:
-

All category of employees including those who had completed even

one day as casuals were treated as on duty during the time the
hotel was closed.

Relief and assistance was given to all those who were injured and to
the kin of those killed.

Relief was extended to all those who died at Chhatrapati Shivaji

railway station and its surroundings, including the pav-bhaji vendor

and the paan shop owners.

-

During the time the hotel was closed, salaries were sent by money
order.
A psychiatric cell was established in collaboration with the Tata
Institute of Social Sciences to counsel those who needed such help.

Employee outreach centres were opened where all help-food, water,

sanitation, first aid, and counselling-was provided. Sixteen hundred
employees were covered by this facility.

Every employee was assigned to one mentor and it was that

persons responsibility to act as a single-window clearance for any
help that the person required.

Ratan Tata personally visited the families of all the eighty employees
who in some manner either through injury or getting killed were
affected.

The dependants of the employees who lived outside Mumbai were

flown to the city and were all accommodated in Hotel President for
three weeks.

Ratan Tata himself asked the families and dependants what they
wanted him to do.

In a record time of twenty days, a new trust was created by the

Tatas for funding the victims of 26/11. Even non-Tata employees
were covered in it. Each one of them was provided a subsistence
allowance of Rs 10,000 per month for six months.

Several lakhs were paid for the treatment of a four-year-old

granddaughter of a vendor who had taken four bullets.

New handcarts were provided to several vendors who lost theirs.

Tata took responsibility for the life education of forty-six children of

the terrorists victims.

The settlement for every deceased member ranged from Rs 36 to

85 lakh in addition to the following benefits: Full last salary for life
for the family and dependants; complete responsibility for education
of children and dependants, anywhere in the world; full medical
facility for the whole family and dependants for the rest of their life;
all loans and advances were waived, irrespective of the amount;
counsellor for life for each person.

The Tata DNA

How was such passion created among Tata employees? How and why did

they behave the way they did? The organisation is clear that it is not
training and development that created such behaviour. Rather, it has to
do with the DNA of the company and the Tata culture.
The organisation has always told its employees that customers and guests
are their top priority. They also emphasise to their employees, To think
and act first as a citizen. These values displayed themselves in the
heroism of 26/11. Moreover, as a business, Tata believe that family values
hold them together. This can be traced to its beginnings. The hotel
business was started by Jamshedji Tata when he was insulted in one of the
British hotels and not allowed to stay there. He went on to create several
institutions which later became icons of progress, culture, and modernity,
believing that in a free enterprise the community is not just another
stakeholder in business but is the very purpose of its existence. Tata
holds this statement very dear. It is these values that led to the extremely
generous provisions the company made after the attack. The
organisations attitude was that if they were going to spend several
hundred crore in rebuilding the property, why not spend equally on the
employees who gave their life for the hotel? (As narrated by H N Srinivas,
HR Head of the Taj Group of Hotels at the National Institute of Personnel
Management Conference held at Goa, in December 2009 and adapted
from an email narration from Ravi Rajagopalan.) The Tata Leadership
programme promotes the following values: integrity, understanding,
excellence, unity, and responsibility. It is included as part of the Tata
Leadership programme and Tata Business Excellence model and Tata
organisations are constantly evaluated using these values.