There are not many industries whose success depends so heavily on its human capital than the hospitality industry. Finding the right people for the right task, building their skills and making sure they choose to stay after they’ve attained a certain level of competency are challenges that are inherent within this business.

In the GCC, one of the biggest challenges is the composition of the labour force — it is almost entirely an overseas pool of talent, making it a very transient market and one in which employees tend to move around quite frequently in pursuit of the best opportunities available.

The other challenge is the question of investment in training. Time is probably the biggest inhibitor of this. I think generally hotel companies have great intentions. What happens though is you get busy on a day-to-day basis, and it becomes a challenge to get people into training sessions. But it is crucial to invest in staff training as individuals who “grow up” so to speak within a company have a greater sense of belonging which ultimately helps build the culture of your brand and deliver it to your guests.

At Four Seasons we have dedicated Learning & Development managers who spearhead training efforts, and this is done in conjunction with the hotel manager to ensure senior level support. We have a wide range of in-house developed and locally delivered programmes to train at all levels — from line-level circuit training on service delivery and supervisory development programmes, to the integration of personality typing and one-on-one executive coaching.

Another critical element is strong leadership. In fact, the company focus for 2013 is on ‘dynamic leadership’. Everyone looks up and hopes to see a role model who talks the talk and more importantly, walks the walk! Are they real, authentic, inspirational? Do they take time to engage and listen at all levels? Are they prepared to roll their sleeves up and help out when needed? Do they make good decisions consistently and in a fair way? All these leadership traits (and many more) are key to staff developing at an optimal level.

And this deep investment has paid off multifold for the company. Four Seasons has been named by its employees to feature on Fortune magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 16 years in a row.

Staff turnover at all levels is lower than industry averages across the world. The average tenure of our senior company leadership is 17 years.

Crucial to this culture of career growth and internal promotion is the question of staff empowerment. In the hospitality business, this is something that needs to be deeply ingrained at all levels because it is such a people-driven industry. I think most, if not all business, would say this is important but the real question is do they really do it and how?

You will only get the best out of an employee if they feel personally responsible for the guest experience in their area of influence and so you need to create a safe environment, free of fear of consequences to achieve this. You have to ‘greenhouse’ this ethos at line-staff level so that it is a natural skill that can be taken on through to supervisory and management jobs later on.

To give a real example of staff member empowerment, a Four Seasons Hotel Doha guest recently wrote to me and relayed the following: the guest had asked the front desk agent for some local coins to take home to his son who collects them. We don’t really use coins, but the agent went outside and found a taxi driver who had some and gave them to the guest. It gets better ...on her time off that evening she went to the souq and found a presentation case of Qatari coins and gave this to the guest the next day at check out. Imagine how valued this made the guest feel? You can’t train this sort of behaviour, you can’t pay people to care that much ...but you can endeavour to create an environment where they want to because they know it is allowed, valued and gives them a sense of personal pride and satisfaction in their job.

— Simon Casson is Regional Vice President, Four Seasons Hotel. He is also General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel Doha.