The World’s Most Ethical Companies
The Rezidor Hotel Group treats its customers, the employees, and the environment in an outstanding and morally creditable manner. The US think-tank, Ethisphere, has honored the Rezidor Hotel Group for four years consecutively since 2010 for its sustained and real ethical leadership (Ethisphere, 2013). Since the company started operating in 1938, Rezidor Hotel Group has earned an exceptional reputation, which is based on higher standards of business ethics and conduct. Rezidor has also developed an outstanding ethical culture by ensuring that its business is run openly and through honesty; it has also taken appropriate steps in order to ensure that it delivers the desired results as far as quality, environment, and health is concerned (Ethisphere, 2013). The company values integrity and honesty; these attributes have apparently remained indispensable elements of its business success and relationships.
To its customers, Rezidor Hotel Group is committed to delivering exceptional experiences which are supposed to delight the customers in the long-run. Additionally, the company’s objective is to build, develop, and maintain excellent, strong and long-term relationships with its clients, customers and guests. These measures are often attained by ensuring that Rezidor Hotel Group adheres to its Ethics Code because it understands that customer satisfaction and fulfillment is important to its success (Chen, 2012). Rezidor Hotel Group also ensures that it provides high quality services and products which continuously meet or surpass the customer expectations and also comply with the entire related terms that are made in its marketing materials. Moreover, Rezidor Hotel Group Company treats every person with respect, including its customers, in all situations (Cullen, 2013). As a matter of fact, the company has been successful over the years in retaining and attracting more customers, guests, and clients to its business. This success has particularly been attained by providing exceptional customer experience and quality services.
Rezidor Hotel Group strongly discourages any behavior that may pose a threat to the safety of the customers, employees, or other people (Cullen, 2013). Rezidor group-wide developed Responsible Business Program in1989 that emphasizes on respect for ethical and social issues in the company and focuses on the safety and health of the guests and employees. This program is mandatory to all employees, hotel chains, and is further reflected in ‘Always Care’ motto for Rezidor’s well-known Safety and Security Program, TRIC=S. Responsible Business Program further includes caring for customers’ and the employees’ health by ensuring that customers are offered products which are environmentally-friendly amenities, increasing number of the non-smoking rooms, and encouraging the use of local and seasonal produce in its restaurants (Cullen, 2013). Through this program Rezidor Hotel Group has managed to gain its customer’s trust because of the perception that the company’s products are safe and adhere to the expected health standards. These measures have often given Rezidor it an advantage over its competitors.
The company facilitates the well-being of its customers and guests by providing sport and exercise facilities with swimming pools, gyms and spas. Rezidor Hotel Group has also designed its hotels to accommodate customers, guests, or clients with any form of food allergy; in fact, about 33% of the Rezidor Hotel Group hotels have allergy-tested guest rooms (Ferrell, 2011). Moreover, the company further offers organic and fair trade products within its concepts. For example, Fillini has incorporated Responsible Business through eliminating unsustainable ingredients like bluefin tuna and promoting local seasonal foods (Cullen, 2013). These ensure that the customers enjoy a healthy lifestyle, which is vital nowadays in promoting healthy lifestyles among the people because of the higher prevalence of weight related illnesses, such as obesity.
The company also expects its staff to give equal and fair treatment to its customers, guests and clients (Sloan, 2009). This is because employee’s interactions with the present or potential guests, customers, or clients affect their experience and the company’s perception. Therefore, Rezidor Hotel Group expects all its employees to conduct themselves in a way that reflects the company’s positive image and reputation. This includes the face-to-face interactions and communications with the customers, guests or clients by email, phone, social media as well as the Internet (Sloan, 2009). This has enabled Rezidor Hotel Group to meet the customers’ and clients’ needs and even surpass their expectations.
In addition, Rezidor Hotel Group creates more employment opportunities for the workforce every year and also recruits its employees without regarding the issues of race, gender, disability, age, marital status, nationality, sexual orientation, affiliation with political organizations, caste, national origin, veteran status, union organization, religion, minority group and any other attribute protected by the law (Cullen, 2013). The company hires employees for their willingness and attitude to serve customers, clients and guests. Moreover, whenever Rezidor Hotel Group is acquiring existing hotels, Rezidor endeavors to retain majority of staff of the previous hotel brand (Ferrell, 2011). This gives employees with outstanding potential to get another opportunity to serve while the company also gains by retaining excellent employees of the previous hotel brand.
Rezidor is committed towards maintaining conducive work environment where employees are respected and treated with courtesy and dignity. The company also strives to uphold a culture which supports the employees’ well-being and involvement and is committed to promoting a positive work environment which meets and even exceeds the legal requirements (Chen, 2012). This increases employee motivation and productivity which in the long run benefits not only the company and the employees, but also the stakeholders in general.
Rezidor also believes in promoting its employees from within as opposed to hiring external employees during promotion; it is further committed towards developing each staff to their highest potential (Cullen, 2013). This motivates its employees to work harder leading to increased productivity among them. Moreover, the company also supports employee transfers across its hotels in all nations where it operates thereby enabling its staff to grow alongside the company, develop themselves and also gain international exposure in the hospitality industry.
Rezidor Hotel Group company does not tolerate any form of forced or child labor which is guaranteed through local recruitment policies, training as well as careful monitoring. Rezidor also pays more attention to the risks caused by child sex travel and tourism and trains its employees to be familiar with this child sex tourism; while it is a signatory to ECPAT Conduct Code against sexually exploiting children (Sloan, 2009). Accordingly, the company is widely seen as a promoter of children’s rights and welfare, which is indispensable because children are vulnerable beings and also the future and their welfare today will determine their tomorrow.
Furthermore, Rezidor signed the ‘United Nations Global Compact’ that seeks to provide all employees with vital human rights as stipulated in the ‘United Nation Declaration of Human Rights’ (UNDHR), for example, treating the employees with respect and dignity, providing a safer as well as healthy work environments for every employee, not using employees who under the lawful employment age, and protecting children from all types of labor which may be dangerous to their wellbeing or interfere with their learning (Chen, 2012). The employees therefore, feel they are highly valued in the company which increases their loyalty and commitment to the company.
Rezidor encourages any employee with questions or concerns about the company’s ethics and business conduct code to discuss openly with their respective supervisors. The company has also tasked its employees with the responsibility of reporting any breach of its Code or the applicable laws, which may bring possible problems in the company and it does not take retaliation against the employees for reporting violations by others, in good faith (Cullen, 2013). The employees, therefore, feel involved in the company affairs which further increases their commitment to the company.
Rezidor pays reasonable and fair wages to its employees according to the standards of a particular industry and has committed no legal infringements regarding labor legislation in the last few years. Rezidor also respects the employees’ rights to join the trade unions provided they opt and to collectively bargain in line with the local laws (Cullen, 2013). This acts as an incentive to the employees to even work harder.
To the environment, Rezidor has continued to increasingly focus on the resource efficiency regarding water, energy and wastes and the extensive eco-labeling of its hotels that has allowed it maintain its exceptional environmental performance (Sloan, 2009). Continuous attention to the environment is now part of Rezidor’s everyday operations and during the designing, building as well as renovation of its quickly increasing hotel portfolio. This has turned Rezidor into a leader in the environment conservation. Rezidor also works aggressively to improve resource efficiency as well as measure, monitor and cut its carbon emissions and this needs cooperation with the property owners, architects and constructors (Chen, 2012). Additionally, so as to minimize the environmental impacts resulting from its operations and promote more efficient resource utilization when the starting new projects, the company recognizes that it is essential to use smart designs and the best available technologies.
The ‘United Nations Global Compact’, in which Rezidor is a signatory, also seeks to protect the environment and communities in which it works and lives through putting in place effective environmental policies and obeying the existing regulations and legislations relating to the environment protection (Cullen, 2013). This includes managing hazardous and harmful materials in order to ensure they are safely handled, stored, recycled, reused or disposed; reducing wastes as well as managing treatment together with disposal of wastes; and monitoring and managing discharge of the air emissions which can be harmful to the environment.
The company’s Responsible Business Program focuses on decreased negative effects on the natural environment caused by its operations. Among the most recent developments in Rezidor’s Responsible Business Program is an ambitious as well as engaging project dubbed ‘Think Planet’ which targets 25 percent energy consumption reduction across its entire hotels by 2016 (Cullen, 2013). ‘Think Planet’ also seeks to keep on reducing water use and installing water-saving devices in the guestrooms and; continue to cut the amounts of wastes Rezidor produces and further increase the amount of waste that is recycled (Sloan, 2009). ‘Think Planet’ has been able to raise the percentage of the eco-labeled hotels within the group to 65 percent and it seeks to have 100 percent of eco-labeled hotels by 2015.
Rezidor has put in place operational procedures to cut water consumption and the waste production in their day to day business. The company has invested in environmentally-friendly technologies designed to maximize energy and water savings and has raised employee awareness regarding water and energy savings through committed training as well as communication campaigns (Cullen, 2013). It has, therefore, become a good example and one of the leaders in resource efficiency.
There are a number of outcomes that these morally-conscious decisions have offered Rezidor’s company in the long-run. For instance, Rezidor’s commitment to ensure that its customers are offered exceptional customer experiences; establish and maintain excellent, strong, and long-term relationships with its customers, clients and guests; and offer safe and healthy products for customer safety has benefitted the company in a number of ways (Chen, 2012). For instance, the process has increased the customer loyalty and employee motivation. As such, Rezidor is able to attain profit and also ensure that its customers are satisfied (Chen, 2012). In addition, morally-conscious decisions are fundamental to helping Rezidor avoid any form of breach of good practice, business code of ethics, and association with the social problems. In most cases these issues can cause significant damage to the company’s reputation and can even lead to a company being declined future license to operate and sometimes even face international boycotts.
However, Rezidor should improve on providing feedback to its employees, customers and clients (Cullen, 2013). This is because at times monthly reporting is not done properly which may derail areas that need improvement. Feedback is vital for employees to continuously improve on their performances. Moreover, the company should also further increase its efforts to environment conservation due to the rapidly increasing destruction of the environment by human activities (Chen, 2012). It should create more awareness on the impact of human activities on the environment and appropriate measures to mitigate these negative impacts.
References
Chen, J., Sloan, P., & Legrand, W. (2012). Eco-advantage in the hospitality industry. Oxford, UK: Routledge Publishers.
Cullen, J. B., & Parboteeah, K. P. (2013). Multinational management: A strategic approach. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Ethisphere’s world’s most ethical companies – honorees (2013). Retrieved 3, December, 2013, from, http://ethisphere.com/worlds-most-ethical/wme-honorees/
Ferrell, C. O., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2011). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Sloan, P., Legrand, P., &. Chen, S. J. (2009). Sustainability in the hospitality industry: Principles of sustainable operations. Oxford, UK: Routledge Publishers.
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