Search

×

Gostelow Report: Mandarin GM can ‘Hang Ten’

Mandarin Oriental, New York is a community, a surrogate home for its team, says General Manager Susanne Hatje. “Manhattan is such a frenzy and the pace is constant change. The hotel provides a welcoming stability for all of us,” she explained.

The 244-room hotel, in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, opened November 2003 and a staggering 45% of its 575-strong workforce has been there from the start. “Our turnover is a mere 5%, and they leave for a variety of reasons,” said ‘The Boss,’ or ‘SH,’ as she is known.

Applicants for jobs go through at least four interviews, plus a few minutes with Hatje. “I am always proud when someone asks if a family member can apply for a job,” Hatje added.

Other than in HR and Security, family members are allowed to work together. There are parents and kids, siblings, cousins and so on. Relationships between team members come and go the whole time, but Hatje tries to avoid having couples in the same department as it is difficult if they break up. At management level, it is an unwritten code that she is told about a new in-hotel relationship.

She personally goes to weddings (presents are flowers, and perhaps something from Shanghai Tang). Last weekend she joined most of the Housekeeping team at the funeral of the mother of that department’s head. She shares joy and sorrow.

Susanne Hatje by Dale Chihuly's 'Glass Garden' on the 35th floor lobby of Mandarin Oriental, New York
Susanne Hatje by Dale Chihuly’s ‘Glass Garden’ on the 35th floor lobby of Mandarin Oriental, New York

A male GM would look after the team just as diligently, but Hatje does think that sometimes feminine intuition helps. Her office door is always open, unless she is on a conference call or there is a sensitive meeting. Otherwise, team members call in on a variety of issues, and they also catch up with Hatje when she eats in the staff restaurant, which is all the time unless she is entertaining in the hotel’s Asiate restaurant.

Although the legal right is three months’ maternity leave, many staff members return after only a few weeks. Because there are many Asians and South Americans on her team, new mothers often have family members to help with childcare.

On December 6, Hatje will be hosting the annual kids’ Christmas party for about 300 offspring of her team, and the following evening there is an ultra-formal gala, with dancing, for adults and their other halves.

Before then, there is an inter-departmental cooking competition to aid the hotel’s charity, City Harvest. Two days before Thanksgiving, teams compete to raise the most to help the feed-the-homeless support.

Hatje boasts about the hotel’s Bedside Reading program, which allows guests, of whom about 25% are regulars, to take books away. For the team, HR arranges regular self-education offerings, plus e-learning from Cornell. In fact, Hatje is an avid reader of ‘real,’ hard-copy news and views.

Hatje joined Mandarin Oriental, via Rafael Hotels, in 2000. She was brought up in her family’s hotel in Hamburg, now run by her brother, and if she were not a natural hotelier she might be a professional surfer. “There is so much in parallel,” she admitted. “You have to hit the wave at just the right time, not too soon and not too late.”

Comment