Case Study 3

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

A Case on Taj Work Culture
About the Author
Vasant Ayappan till recently was Associate Vice President– Corporate Sustainability
for the Indian Hotels Company Limited.
Before he retired He was responsible to provide overall direction to the company’s
mandate of sustainable growth related to social dimensions & environmental
protection. He has over 37years’ experience& has held various management
positions in the hotel industry. Mr. Ayappan is a Graduate in Science with a
postgraduate in Marketing Management from the Mumbai University.

Vasant Ayappan

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Case Study 3
Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast
A case on Taj Work Culture

T his mantra from the Tattiriaya Upanishad - matrudevo bhava, pitrudevo bhava, acharyadevo bhava,
atithidevo bhava. Summarizes the way ‘Indian culture’ still exists in rural India.
Visiting a village in India, even as a stranger, you would be welcome to most homes.
“Culture eats Strategy In the most humble of dwellings, the host would welcome you with a ‘Namaste’,
for Breakfast' spread a mat on the mud floor and offer a glass of cool water and maybe a small
snack. “This warmth is the projection of what hospitality is also about. In India, one
– Peter Drucker
of the things that really typify that spirit is ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’, Guest is God,”From a
young age children are taught to respect parents, teachers and guests as God.
That’s the level of guests in Indian culture. At Taj hotels, the philosophy is to serve our guests, anticipate their
needs, and make sure they feel welcome, protected, and safe. And these are visible in the working of the Taj and
the Tata leadership. “Culture’ in an organization is built over several years – or even decades. It is what is
passed on from one employee to another in the organization – but interestingly, never ever leaves the
organization! Changes in the Leadership hardly ever make a dent in the ‘Culture’ of the organization. It is &
remains unique to the organization.
A term often used to describe this unquantifiable aspect of the Taj culture is ‘Taj-ness’. “So what does Taj-ness
really mean? “It’s an overall feeling that you get when you’re in a Taj property, just by looking at it and by being
there. It’s something more sensory than tangible.” There are two important aspects that emerge. Firstly, the
emotion of genuine warmth that Taj represents. International companies, mostly have a transactional, cookie-
cutter approach of check in-check out. But the Taj has mastered the art of emotional connect,”. Secondly, the
approach to serve guests demonstrated by all Taj employees. “Something that is common among all Taj
employees is that they interact with you at a deeper level. And at Taj this is encouraged. Taj hires for attitude,
and inducts people who have that intense desire to serve. That is the differentiation for Taj,”. In essence, it
means that the guest is the reason for Taj’s existence, and everything it does has to be around the guest.
Employee needs can be categorized into three broad buckets. The first is the psychological need of pride and
belongingness with the organisation. “Somewhere deeply in their psyche, it should convince employees that
they are working for a reputed, stable, secure and respected organisation. The second is an aspirational need
to learn, grow and contribute. The third is obviously the financial need. Employees look for attractive
remuneration such that they can achieve a certain lifestyle, and look after their children and family. They would
expect the Company to have welfare programmes and policies to support the medical and social needs of their
families.
At the Tajo, it is not uncommon to find second and sometimes third generation employees working as
managers, and whose father would have worked as waiters at the Taj. For all of these multi-generation
employees, ‘Taj’ will always be much more than just a place of work. Employees are proud of their association
with the Taj because it helped them and their families to make careers, improve social status, and provide
stability in their life. And the credit goes to the efforts of Jamsetji and JRD Tata in demonstrating finer human
values in action.
Goodness is inherent, and cannot be taught. In its recruitment process the Company has to look for people with
sense of values that would resonate with the Taj ethos, and this selection process plays a vital role in ensuring
the Taj “culture’ remains vibrantly alive. “In the hospitality business a large portion of employees face and
interact with the customer – mostly unsupervised. For this reason, Taj tends to recruit most of its front-line and
junior staff from interior towns where traditional Indian values of respect for elders and teachers, humility,

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empathy, discipline, honesty, kindness to children, and support to senior citizens, still exist. Added to the
advantage of larger labour pools and lower remuneration, the advantage of recruiting from smaller towns
helped in accessing manpower with ‘inherent goodness’, a virtue apparently evaporating from cities where the
glamour of success could entice youth to compromise means for ends. For the next level of recruitment –
supervisors and junior managers, Taj reaches out to the top 100 hotel management and catering institutes
across India. Along with testing domain knowledge, and personality through the use of psychometric tools, the
Company also looks at candidates’ commitment to values and desire to contribute to the organisation. For
higher positions, Taj prefers candidates from second and third tier Indian business schools. Experience has
shown that candidates from 2nd& 3rd tier business schools adjust well in a customer-centric culture and are
not driven solely by monetary considerations. In the recruitment process for front line customer facing
positions, the final interview of every candidate would be with the GM of the hotel- or a panel in which GMs of
hotels would also be there - primarily because a direct interaction with prospective employees would enable
an understanding of whether the candidate would fit into the Taj culture. After hiring, the next step was training
new employees by giving them tools, exposure to experiences that make them efficient, and inspire them to
work with flair and sincerity. The TMTP (Taj Management Training Programme) and HOMT (Hotel Operations
Management Trainee Programme) were two major programmes to induct fresh talent at Taj. Both had a blend of
technical and soft skills couple with hands-on experience at various Taj properties. While most hotel chains
train frontline employees for a year, Taj insists on an 18-month programme even for its managers. A
combination of theory and practice helps trainees to imbibe lessons in classroom and practice them in real
situations. The values recruits from smaller towns learnt in school and at home, when coupled with the Taj
training, get translated as service values while dealing with guests.
The Taj philosophy is to make its employees the ambassadors of customers. All through the training, they are
groomed to approach every problem and tackle every situation from customers’ perspective. To empower
them in this decision making process, they are assured that for any decision taken by them to delight Taj
guests, everyone, right up to the CEO would stand by them. This gives confidence to employees to think
keeping in mind customers’ interests. The strategic rationale behind this approach is that employees should
understand and meet customers’ needs in such a way that the delighted guests have a compelling reason to do
business only with Taj Hotels.
The Company also created the ‘Taj People Philosophy’ (TPP) that covered all aspects of an employee’s career,
from recruitment to retirement. TPP was aligned to the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), and focussed
on three major areas: work systems and processes, learning and development, and employee welfare. As part
of TPP, Taj introduced a strong performance management system that linked individual performance with the
Company’s larger strategy. A unique part of this was STARS (Special Thanks a Recognition System), a reward
system to motivate employees to have fun, introduce joy at the workplace and also go beyond the call of duty
when required. STARS were developed in accordance with Taj’s core philosophy that ‘happy employees lead to
happy customers’. Still in practice, STARS is operative throughout the year, and is open to all employees across
the Company. Employees can earn points for STARS in three ways. One is when a guest writes a comment that
such and such employees gave me great service. Based on the comment, the concerned employees earn
points. The second way is by nominating a colleague who has done something amazing. This is a very unique
way of motivating employees. While appreciation from one’s boss can be very valuable, appreciation from
peers can be even more powerful. This approach is worthy of replication in employee appraisal systems across
industries. The third way of getting points under STARS is by giving a suggestion that would lead to a positive
outcome such as improving revenue, guest satisfaction, cost reduction, or increase in operational efficiency.
The employee who gives the valuable suggestion earns points. A senior team within the hotel including the GM,
HR Manager and Training Manager, typically evaluates these comments every day.
With changing times, there is an increasing impatience for instant success and career growth, especially
among younger leaders across industries. Also addressed are issues of employee wellness and occupational
health through a need-assessment survey.
To bring in that key element of team spirit& involvement with other departments, Hotel Annual Days are

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organised where the staff get an opportunity to showcase their talents. Then there is a Family Day, when the
staffs bring their family members to the hotel. When you start involving families with the place of work, it forms
that bond with the organisation, ”Also, during mentoring of management trainees, the General Manager of the
hotel would throw a challenge at them, “We want to open a new restaurant. These are the guidelines. Work on
them and let me know what would you do?” Such new concepts get the trainees excited and a lot of them
would get together and be involved in planning and execution. Thus, vibrant environment, team-building
efforts, involving family, mentorship, and executing challenging assignments were initiatives that worked really
well in creating greater engagement. Not surprisingly, Taj had the highest employee engagement scores in the
global hospitality industry, and was the only hospitality company in the world to be five-time successive winner
of the Gallup Global Great Workplace Award between 2010 and 2014.

Rebounding from Adversity:

The dastardly terror attack in Nov 2008 brought the Taj Mahal hotel Mumbai &almost the entire country to a
standstill &caused serious trauma to many of our employees who were on shift at the time of the attack, saw
their own colleagues as well as guests being killed.
In such a scenario, instead of lamenting the loss, The Taj team took the traumatised employees sitting
expressionless on the pavements outside the Taj, to the nearby Holy Home School, and requested the priest to
permit them to use the hall, to which he kindly consented. Batch by batch, morning, afternoon, night, next-day
morning, afternoon and night, his team continued to interact with employees and console them. Within few
days, employee assistance centres were setup in ten locations across Mumbai, each with two post-trauma
counsellors, a medical doctor, a car, a van and two drivers. Details of Taj employees in each of those areas were
prepared and they were brought to those centres along with family members. The HR team explained to them
what had happened, encouraged them that Taj would once again bounce back from this rare tragedy, assured
them that their jobs were not lost, and that they should unitedly fight the situation.
During the 4-day siege of the hotel by the terrorists, many employees on duty did not leave their place of duty
although they could have easily done so. They, on their own, chose to stay & help in guest evacuation &
protection
What was the reason for Taj employees’ behaviour on those days?” “The reason these employees created
those human chains and essentially put themselves in between the terrorist and the guests was that they
considered this hotel as their home. It was a direct manifestation of the Indian philosophy that Guest is God,”

Legendary Hospitality integrated with Social Responsibility

Imagine India in the late 1800s. The British ruled India. Mughals were out of power from the Delhi Durbar. The
Maharajas ruled their small kingdoms. The rich were really rich. But by and large, there was abject poverty
across the country due to the colonial rulers who had oppressed and plundered India for over centuries. In that
kind of overall atmosphere, there was this Indian businessman, who believed that the real purpose of business
should not be to just make money. It should be to give back to
society many times more than what one has taken from it. That
was Jamsetji Tata.
Group purpose of the Tatas: While such an approach seemed so daunting in today’s scenario
We must continue to be that somebody could think of it over 100 years ago speaks
responsible, volumes of Jamshedji’s visionary.
sensitive to the countries,
communities and environments Given that Tajis in the food production business, the initial
in which we work, always approach of corporate responsibility at Tajwas in the form of
ensuring that what comes distributing excess food to old age homes and orphanages. It
from the people goes back was easy to think that the Taj has done its bit in ‘giving back to
to the people many times over society’ by contributing towards poverty eradication by feeding
the poor. But very quickly it realised that the people to whom they
were giving food were becoming dependant. So it wasn’t really a

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nation-building activity. They needed to teach these people “how to fish.” The Corporate Sustainability (CS)
Team at Taj reflected on how they could contribute to nation-building. While the list of issues in a country like
ours are endless& one would not know where to begin, The Taj still they wanted to use their core competence to
make a difference. They mapped the Tata ethos, the Millennium Development Goals , the then Prime Minister’s
Ten Point Social Charter, and their core competence and decided that given their expertise in hospitality, they
would focus on ‘Building Sustainable Livelihoods’ in areas connected with the Hospitality industry. Their belief
was that by providing a skill for a vocation and economically empowering the youth, the company was actually
empowering the entire family, and thus contributing to a stronger India
Hence the opportunity to make a difference was enormous. An easy approach would have been to bring youth
below poverty line to the company centers, train them, make them employable, and send them back. However,
the CS Team decided to follow the difficult path of going into the community and establishing centers in very
backward and rural areas of India. The focus was on youth, who did not have the opportunity or money to come
to urban centers
Taj started its skill building journey in the tribal belts of India with the largest amount of poverty and
backwardness, including the North-East, and the naxal infested belts of Chhattisgarh. These centres were
started in collaboration with NGOs. Taj trained the trainers, provided curriculum and the vital resource material
on areas such as housekeeping, Food and Beverage (F&B), bakery services and more. It was estimated that by
2012, the industry would need an estimated 300,000 spa therapists. To contribute to this, Taj Jiva Spa offered a
three-month training course in spa services at the training centre setup at
Dimapur in Nagaland. Besides the inputs from Taj trained experts,
The Tata Way of Leadership, trainees would get an opportunity to briefly work hands-on at one among
for the next 100 years… the many Taj properties across India. At the end of their training, the
“To be a leader, you have participants would receive certification validated by the Taj, which would
got to lead human beings help them gain quick employment. Since 2009, over 12,000 youth had
with affection.” - JRD Tata received such training in hospitality-related fields, through 42 skill
development centres set up across the country. Over 90 percent got jobs,
while the remaining pursued higher studies or started their own venture.
The CS Team observed that advertisements brought in only 30 percent of candidates into the training centres.
More than 70 percent came through word-of-mouth. The large numbers were hence a proof of the
beneficiaries’ positive experience.
Notably, all Taj Graduate management trainees in India as part of their Training schedule have to take up a
community initiative which requires them to live with rural communities in their homes for about 10-15 days.
This is part of their internships to enhance their stewardship commitment and help develop programmes that
enhance the hotels’ ability to support villages and target communities. The Taj model may serve as an example
to the dozen players in the Indian hospitality industry.

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