For the HR personnel at Four Seasons Hotel Macao at The Cotai Strip, recruiting staff from Macau's already thinly stretched labour market is a challenge, but equipping new staff with an understanding of the corporate culture, operating standards and necessary skills to do their jobs successfully in the run-up to its operation in June is a mammoth task. The hotel group has done this at its properties worldwide, and this time it will make it happen in Macau. Getting top management involved is what makes training programmes at Four Seasons successful. 'For every new hotel, we pull in heads of different divisions from different hotels in our group to form a planning committee to conduct training for new staff at the orientation,' said Jimmy Chan Chor-shing, director of human resources at Four Seasons Hotel Macao. The general manager would make a welcome speech and the hotel manager would introduce the culture and core standards of service, better known as the 'Pillars of Success'. 'Top management will take time out of their schedules to contribute a certain number of hours to training every year,' Mr Chan said. Focused training contributes a lot to Four Seasons success formula and helps new staff ease into their jobs. 'We offer the new hires an introductory training programme which includes a series of components that every new employee has to go through within a timeframe,' Mr Chan said, adding that a designated trainer from the department would be assigned to each new employee to coach and guide them on how to perform their jobs and build their confidence. He said the trainer would go through a list of tasks with each new recruit and train them based on a set of core standards, which ensured the service quality was consistent and personalised. 'At the end of the training the new hires will be tested to ensure they understand and are able to consistently execute these standards.' To cater for the diverse cultures the overseas visitors bring to Macau, the hotel emphasises the importance of understanding and accommodating every culture in the staff mix and training programmes.