Lesson’s From The Best: How Marriott Protects People Culture At Scale

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Marriott uses Leadership Culture Connects sessions to turn employee feedback into real-time action.
• More than 31,000 Marriott associates across APEC took part in the iJobs cross-skilling program.
• Over 90% of Marriott hotels in APEC adopted iJobs to support career mobility and workforce flexibility.

In a recent invitation-only Senior Leaders Breakfast hosted by Great Place To Work® Singapore in partnership with Marriott International, Rajeev Menon, President of Marriott International Asia Pacific excluding China (APEC), and Andrew Newmark, Chief Human Resources Officer of Marriott International APEC, shared an exclusive talk about how they enable trust, inclusion and opportunity to grow as fast as the business does.

Scale doesn’t have to be the enemy of culture

“Companies are not short on ideas around initiatives or programs. But what has been hard is how do we grow at scale? How do we keep our people-first culture at scale when operational pressures are real? How do we listen at scale and remain inclusive when we need to move at speed?” asked Evelyn Kwek, Managing Director, Great Place To Work® ASEAN & ANZ, opening up the conversation.

For 99 years, Marriott’s belief has remained the same: ‘If we take great care of our people, they will take care of our customers, and our customers will keep coming back, and the business will take care of itself,'” said Rajeev Menon, President of Marriott International APEC.

What has changed is the discipline required to deliver on that at scale.

1. Leadership development has to reach every level

“Leadership exists at all levels of the organization,” explained Andrew Newmark, Chief Human Resources Officer of Marriott International APEC.

Marriott’s Leadership at All Levels framework covers four clear stages: frontline associates learning to lead themselves, first-time managers learning to lead others, department heads leading teams, and senior leaders running business functions and entire hotels. Each stage has targeted programs, and each stage builds towards the next.

Crucially, all of it sits on a single shared foundation of three leadership essentials they call the three Cs.

“Being curious, being courageous and being connected. Curiosity is all about lifelong learning, asking questions, always seeking out to learn more. Courageousness is about speaking up, challenging the status quo, being willing to take on something that maybe others turn away from. Connectedness is really about relationships. We can’t do it alone. We have to do it with others.”

These underpin what leadership is, from the frontline upwards. So when a new general manager joins, or a supervisor gets their first team, they’ve already been grounded and guided by these leadership essentials. That consistency is what allows culture to travel as the organization grows.

Andrew was also clear that leadership development, “It’s not a one-and-done type approach, we have to activate these programs at the right time for our leaders, supporting them to be ready to move forward.”

2. Inclusion only works when it’s localized

Global inclusion statements can be easy to write. Making them relevant and meaningful across diverse geographies and teams is the ultimate measure of success. Marriott’s approach is to activate their inclusion efforts, including their global employee resource groups, through locally relevant action rather than top-down mandates.

“While those dynamics globally may shape and shake out in different ways, what’s really important is how we bring it to life locally, guided by who we are as a company. We have our global associate resource groups which are very important, but it’s the local activities, the local chapters of those resource groups coming to life that are making impact for our people.”

In practice, this looks like a Women’s Leadership & Engagement network with active regional chapters preparing women for general manager roles. It looks like Project Pranita in India, bringing underprivileged young women into hospitality with education, professional training and life skills. It looks like the Employing 100 partnership in Australia, where Marriott joined three other employers to hire and support people with disabilities, and trained leaders to include them properly.

As Andrew said, “It’s about hiring, but it’s also been about educating the leaders to support their associates that are coming into the workforce to understand what it means to have someone in the team that is with a disability and how to include them and support them and to grow just like every other associate.”

3. Career mobility is a retention strategy 

Throughout 2024 and 2025, more than 31,000 associates across Marriott’s APEC region took part in their iJobs program and over 90% of hotels in the region adopted it.

iJobs (short for Integrated Jobs) is a cross-skilling initiative that trains and certifies frontline employees across multiple operational areas. A housekeeper can now be hired to clean more than guest rooms. They become a guest cleanliness expert, certified across all areas of housekeeping. Similar cross-functional roles exist in food and beverage, guest services and kitchens.

“We really needed to think about how we enrich those roles beyond just doing a job. No longer are we hiring in operations just to do a role such as clean a room, but we’re training, certifying and recognizing our associates in operational functions.,” said Andrew.

When people can see a real path forward inside an organization, they are far less likely to look outside it. Research across Great Place To Work’s global dataset consistently shows that when employees experience fair opportunities to grow, it drives loyalty, advocacy and discretionary effort.

Multi-skilled teams give the business more flexibility to manage productivity across peaks and quiet periods without compromising quality, delivering real outcomes for guests and hotel owners. It’s the kind of alignment that makes people feel genuinely valued rather than just managed.

4. Annual surveys aren’t enough. Smaller rooms, faster loops.

Most organisations listen to employees. Fewer actually close the feedback loop in a way that people can see and feel. Andrew was candid about Marriott’s own experience here. “We have our pulse surveys throughout the year, we do our town halls and our fireside chats, but I think those things can become a little bit formulaic.”

Their response has been to build something more intimate alongside those big channels: Leadership Culture Connects. Two senior leaders sit with a group of around 15 to 20 associates. Questions are shared in advance so people can actually think and prepare. The session is not a chance for leaders to talk about their careers. It has one purpose:

“It’s really to listen to the associates, know what’s on their mind, give feedback in the moment, and also have real-time action planning.”

That last phrase is the important one. Real-time action planning. Not “we’ll take that away.” Not “great feedback, we’ll feed it into the next cycle.” Something gets decided in the room.

Sitting alongside this are NextGen Marriott Business Councils, which give younger associates a direct seat at the table in conversations about business priorities, community impact and company direction. They aren’t just consulted; they contribute.

Combining a regular listening tool with small-group conversations where people know the questions upfront and can see actions follow makes a measurable difference to whether employees feel heard or just surveyed.

Progress not perfection 

Marriott’s data is encouraging, with Trust Index scores up year on year, turnover down, guest satisfaction tracking in the same direction. Andrew was not, however, in the business of declaring victory. “While we celebrate the progress, we are also identifying through our participation in the Trust Index survey areas we can continue to work on,” he said. The survey, for Marriott, is not a report card but a compass.

That spirit carried through all the Senior Leaders gathered for the exclusive Building Great Workplaces event. Andrew said the breakfast confirmed something he had suspected: that despite the differences in industry, geography and scale, the leaders around that table were essentially working through the same problem. How do you keep the things that matter when everything around you is moving fast?

“I appreciated being able to share what we are learning at Marriott,” he said, “and to hear from peers who are asking the same questions.”

He closed with a line from J.W. Marriott Jr. that has clearly travelled well across the decades: “Success is never final.”

FAQs

What is the Great Place To Work® Trust Index™ survey?

The Great Place To Work® Trust Index™ survey  measures the employee experience across trust, fairness, leadership and belonging, and it’s the same tool Marriott uses to track their own progress. Organizations that earn Great Place To Work Certification™ based on those results are automatically considered for the Best Workplaces™ lists across Singapore and Asia. It’s a research-backed employee survey that measures how people experience trust, leadership, fairness and day-to-day culture in their workplace. The results are benchmarked against thousands of organisations globally, giving leaders a clear, honest picture of where their culture stands and where it needs attention.

How do you maintain culture when an organization is growing fast?

The short answer is consistency. Companies that protect culture at scale tend to share a clear, specific picture of what good leadership looks like at every level, create local versions of global inclusion goals, build real career paths for frontline and operational employees, and run listening sessions that lead to visible action rather than just data collection.

What is Great Place To Work Certification™?

Certification is a recognition awarded to organisations where employees consistently report a high-trust, positive experience. It’s based entirely on employee feedback through the Trust Index™ survey, not on company submissions or payments. Certified organisations are automatically considered for Best Workplaces™ lists in Singapore and across Asia.