Ritz-Carlton Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

The Ritz-Carlton loves training. They offer a good 401k benefit and there's a lot of room for growth within the company. They have competitive wages. Lots of opportunity for innovation and growth.

Cons

No work life balance. Managers frequently worked 12+ hours and weren't effective. 6 day work weeks and coming on on your 1 off day for "mandatory" meetings were norm. Several operational managers were required to shorten their vacation time to come in when the hotel was busy, even though there were other managers available. Depending on the property, senior managers in the executive committee used negative reinforcement with employees. Meetings could be 2x or 3x as long when you have certain managers who just want to be there to rail you for everything you've done wrong.

Pros

The restaurant is a very tight-knit group of people so you get to know everyone pretty fast. They normally have your best interest at heart and will help you learn in your new position. The company culture of the Ritz-Carlton as a whole is very warm and sincere. If you are hired into the right position you could absolutley stay there for your whole career. I met some fantastic people and my new employer turned out to be a regular at the restaurant I worked at.

Cons

The tight-knit culture created a lot of favoritism to a point where a server was given hostess shifts without prioritizing the other full-time hostesses whose job it actually is. Servers receive tips, hostesses don't! We are hourly. Management is based on favoritism. Coworkers and management hang out together outside of work and their casual and sometimes inappropriate conversations are heard at work. There is very little room to move up in the hotel. Good positions are held by people commonly for many years of their career, making it difficult to move up unless you are willing to move to transfer to another hotel. I wish I had chosen a different entry level position in the hotel I could have potentially moved up in. I am no longer at the hotel but much happier in my new career choice. A last note, the work-life balance can be intense. The hostess position had the highest turnover in our hotel, and we constantly had gaps in our shifts and had to stay longer than we were scheduled for because management did not want to fill in for a little while. I was called in to work at least once every two weeks on my day off.

Pros

Great health, dental and vision insurance, great retirement benefits, good hotel benefits, ongoing Ritz-Carlton training.

Cons

massive corporate environment (which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it), work/life balance was sometimes not a priority,

Pros

Understanding and flexible boss who loved her staff!

Cons

Poor wage Highly demanding Rude guest Unsympathetic management Poor work life balance Expect too much from staff Little or no reward