Four Season Goes to Paris Four Seasons is one of the biggest midsized luxury hotels in the world. Although it is Canadian-based, it currently operates across different continents. Despite the fact that they operate in different parts of the world, they are known for its high standards of quality and providing good experience. Wherever they operate they bring their corporate culture, traditions and standards with them. Sometimes it is difficult to come and implement your corporate culture, because people are different, cultures are different, and lastly laws and regulations are different. Four Seasons faced these problems when trying to launch their hotel in Paris. When entering hotel market in Paris, Four Season faced number of problems both legal and cultural. France had its own laws regarding working hours, hygiene issues, and French people had their own moral, culture, attitude toward work, which differed from North American one. For a building they chose the building of old “George V” hotel. They tried to keep outside façade and change inside a bit. According to French hygiene laws, trash and food had to be carried via different corridors and elevators. Because of that Four Seasons had to create additional ways just for food and trash. “Right to light” law, which stated that each employee must work at least several hours a day by the window. Four Seasons management had to arrange schedules so that, no one was working all day in the basement. Human Resource Manager of Four Season in Paris faced problems with hiring employees as well. They had to hire whole bunch of new people. The question was whom to hire and how to find right people? They wanted to hire people, especially young ones, with attitudes and those who were adaptive to changes. The problem was- law. According to law, Four Seasons had to employ some percent of former employees of George V. They couldn’t just fire all of them. In order to adapt those employees who worked for George V, one option could be providing additional trainings, in order to teach them new corporate culture. In order to spread the culture, management can invite people with prior Four Seasons experience, who become ambassadors and help new employees to adapt to new rules. These ambassadors can teach them and show on their own example how to implement “Service Culture Standards” which are: Smile, eye, recognition, voice, informed, clean and everyone.
In my opinion, together with trainings and guidance, some motivational aspects also should be implemented. For example, they could launch employee of the month or employee of the year program. This employee can be chosen based on evaluations of coworkers and management. Portraits of the best employees can be hung on the walls, manager himself/herself can praise them in front of everyone, or maybe just approach him/her, shaking his/her hands and thanking him can motivate and give tones of positive emotions to employee. Manager can also reward good working employees by bonuses or larger paychecks. Reinforcement techniques such as reward and punishments will help. Implementing positive rewards, managers can give bonuses or even allow best employees additional day off during that month. While implementing negative punishments, by not letting employee to take the day-off during that month and stress out the particular reason. This will shape employee and change employees’ attitudes and job performance.
Many problems also occurred between employees and their managers, because this particular relationship is different in USA and France. In USA employees were more open in communication with their managers. In France it was vice versa. As we all know, most of the problems and misunderstandings occur because of poor communication. In order to establish rich communication channels between employees and supervisors, meetings every 2 weeks or every month can be scheduled, so that they can discuss issues concerning them. Another type of meetings can be scheduled between general manager and employees, because French employees do not feel comfortable speaking in presence of their supervisors.
In my opinion, reinforcement can help a lot in shaping employee behavior. When people are rewarded for particular action, they will more likely repeat that again and after some period of time, it will become their usual manner.