According to its Web site, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company “sets the gold standard in luxury hospitality worldwide.” A recent Luxury Brand Tracking Study verified that The Ritz-Carlton has become the most preferred luxury brand among other hotels in its competitive set. Twenty-four of its hotels received AAA Five Diamond Hotel Awards in 2009 and 16 received Four Diamond Hotel Awards. The company has won the Baldrige Award twice.

The Motto of The Ritz-Carlton—one of its gold standards—is “Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.” The company employs 38,000 Ladies and Gentlemen. Every one of them is empowered to use his or her own judgment, without seeking permission from a supervisor, to spend up to $2,000 on each guest each day.

In his enlightening book, The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Joseph A. Michelli devotes a chapter to describing how the company hires, trains, and empowers its employees to provide world-class customer service. I encourage you to read the book. Here are the key points:

• It selects people from the same candidate pools as everyone else and pays the same as others in its industry.
• It involves frontline employees who have been certified as interviewers in evaluating potential employees.
• It adheres to its rigorous selection process no matter how urgent the need, which is one reason its turnover rate is one-third the industry average.
• It applies its customer service standards to interactions with new employees by treating them as welcome guests. Orientation takes place in hotel meeting rooms with lunch in the hotel restaurant.
• The hotel’s general manager and other senior leaders attend orientation to congratulate the new employees and tell them, “You are part of our family.”
• During the first two days of orientation for all new employees, senior leaders talk about culture including the company’s gold standards: Credo, Motto, Service Values, and other core components, all before any job-specific information is discussed.
• New employees cannot start their employment until they complete the orientation process.

This is just the beginning of ongoing and extensive training for The Ritz-Carlton’s Ladies and Gentlemen. All employees receive approximately 250 hours of training per year, including daily 15-minute “line-ups” before their shifts start. That, too, is world-class.

The results validate The Ritz-Carlton’s approaches to hiring, training, and empowering employees: Lower turnover, higher employee satisfaction, and engaged employees providing the gold standard in customer service.

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