Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Corporate Responsibility on a "Grand" Scale: MGM's Employment Outreach Program

1994; Florida International University School of Hospitality & Tourism Management; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0739-7011

Thomas J. Jones, Bernard Fried, Andrew Nazarechuk,

Business Law and Ethics

The world's largest hotel, casino, and theme park has demonstrated that corporate responsibility to the community and corporate self-interest need not be mutually exclusive. MGM's human resource department established an employment outreach program that hired 1,462 economically disadvantaged persons from the community. This effort was a win-win situation for the both the community and the corporation and the hotel received a significant wage credit from the Job Training Partnership Act. This article is available in Hospitality Review: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/hospitalityreview/vol12/iss2/1 Corporate Responsibility on a Scale: MGM's Employment Outreach Program by Thomas Jones and Bernard Fried and Andrew Nazarechuk The world's largest hotel, casino, and theme park has demonstrated that corporate responsibility to the community and corporate self-interest need not be mutually exclusive. MGM's human resource department established an employment outreach program that hired 1,462 economically disadvantaged persons from the community. This effort was a win-win situation for the both the community and the corporation and the hotel received a significant wage credit from the Job Training Partnership Act. A number of adjectives come to mind when trying to describe the task of hiring 7,000 employees. Words such as daunting, massive, and onerous could well be used to describe the process of staffing the new MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Vice President of Human Resources Cynthia Kiser Murphey and her staff were charged with the responsibility of making certain that this 5,005 room hotel, casino, and theme park opened correctly with a competent, well-trained, and guest-oriented staff. In order to accomplish this goal, it was estimated that a candidate pool of more than 100,000 applicants was needed. The difficulty of this task was compounded by the fact that two other mega-resorts, Treasure Island at the Mirage and the Luxor Hotel and Casino, were due to come on line in the two months prior to the MGM opening. Clearly, Murphey's staff had to take an innovative approach to the staffing challenges they faced. One noteworthy innovation was the company's Employment Outreach Program (EOP). Of the 7,000 openings, 1,200 were reserved for economically disadvantaged persons.