question archive Beachside hotel human resource dilemma This is a case of two competing hotels, Sunrise Hotel and Beachside Hotel that are both located in a medium sized, tourism based town in the Northeast U
Beachside hotel human resource dilemma This is a case of two competing hotels, Sunrise Hotel and Beachside Hotel that are both located in a medium sized, tourism based town in the Northeast U
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Beachside hotel human resource dilemma
This is a case of two competing hotels, Sunrise Hotel and Beachside Hotel that are both located in a medium sized, tourism based town in the Northeast U.S. The hotels are both competing for the same set of guests, as well as the same set of potential employees. They are budget hotels, right next door to each other, with 60 guest rooms each and a view of the beach. The occupancy during peak season for the Sunrise Hotel is 98%, but during the winter months goes down to 65%. The Beachside Hotel has peak season occupancy of 90%
and off peak occupancy of 50%.
Joe is the General Manager of Sunrise Hotel and has been in his current position for 5 years. He has been with Sunrise Hotel for a total of 10 years. He worked his way up at Sunrise Hotel from front desk agent to front desk supervisor, and finally to Assistant General Manager before he became the General Manager. He does a good job of screening potential employees for his front desk area of the hotel because he realizes the importance of that area of the hotel, especially in tourist areas. He also has incentives set up for excellent performance of the front desk agents and training and development programs designed to give everyone information that will help them do their job better. There is a sense of teamwork at Sunrise Hotel and that helps everyone want to do good job. His guest satisfaction ratings for his hotel are overall excellent. On a rating scale
of 1-10, his hotel averages a 9.
The average length of tenure of his employees is 4 years, and his current front desk supervisor was promoted from within, along with his Assistant General Manager. Because of the small size of the hotel, Joe is actually involved with all of the hiring decisions and helps to give training programs himself, along with his leadership team. The employee turnover at the Sunrise Hotel is 25% overall and that is primarily when hourly employees graduate high school or college and leave the Sunrise Hotel for a career
somewhere else.
Brian is the General Manager of the Beachside Hotel and deals with a very different situation. Brian was brought in from another hotel in the same hotel group about 6 months ago. He was told by his boss that he needed to "fix" this hotel so that it would start having better customer satisfaction ratings and more return guests. Despite the fairly high occupancy noted during peak seasons, the off peak season occupancy is only 50%. Also noted by his boss, the occupancy should be as good as the Sunrise Hotel. Brian has been with his hotel group now for 2 years and he came out of the accounting and finance department in his old hotel. He has a great understanding of the numbers in the lodging industry, but has not been involved with the
human resource aspects of the job.
The turnover of hourly employees at Beachside Hotel is 120% and that means that Brian is constantly running the hotel shorthanded and with new employees. The Beachside Hotel has been doing the hiring through a human resource practitioner in the hotel that was put in the position because she really could not handle serving guests at the front desk very well. Mary was promoted to human resources a year ago after she had one too many altercations with the guests at the front desk. The owner of the hotel wanted to make
sure that she would not make any of the other guests angry, so he promoted her to a human resources practitioner. Since that time, she has been busy trying to keep up with hiring and she has had no time for training employees. Because she is so busy, paychecks often come out to employees late, there are no policies written down for employees to use as a guide for performance, customers are treated badly by new and poorly trained employees, and the departments of the hotel do not communicate very
effectively and therefore everyone blames everyone else when things go wrong.
The average length of tenure of the front desk agents at the Beachside Hotel is 3 months and the customer satisfaction rating at the Beachside is a 6 out of a 10 possible rating. Most of the front desk agents that are hired come from other hotels in the area after they quit or are fired. Brian is not involved in the hiring for the hotel at all, and
does not get involved with training and development. He spends most of his days looking at the financial reports for the hotel and analyzing average daily rate, occupancy rates, and
REVPAR (revenue per available room).
Brian knows that he has many problems to deal with and so he goes to the Sunrise Hotel to observe things over there for a while. He sees a happy crew and talks to Joe about how he is making that happen. Joe is happy to help, but wants Brian to go back and observe his employees
first and come up with ways that he specifically can help guide Brian.
1- What actions should Brian take in order to improve the practices in the Beachside
Hotel?
2- How could the training and development programs be implemented in the Beachside
Hotel in order to help with turnover and occupancy rates at the hotel?
3-What other employee related initiatives could be undertaken by both the Hotels in order
to help with the overall performance of their respective organizations?
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ANSWER:
1. What actions should Brian take in order to improve the practices in the Beachside Hotel?
Introduce employees' training and development program. As part of the recruitment process, new employees should be trained to fit the hotel's need as well as training the existing employees on the recent improvements that they need to incorporate. Ensuring that any information that relates to their working is available will help identifying areas of improvement.
Ensure that the hotel recruits employees with the relevant skills by having a human resource manager that fits and is well skilled in recruitment. A better and effective recruitment process will guarantee the hotel employees who have the skills and qualifications. An effective recruitment process is dependent on the recruitment officers who must be experienced, skilled and concerned about the quality of the recruitment process in employing qualified staff.
Ensure timely payment of employees' salaries - Late payment of employees' salaries may be a de-motivator to many and may even result to increased rate of turn-over. Ensuring that salaries are paid it time is key.
Reward excellent performance - This involves rewarding employees who demonstrate commitment and excellence performance. It may be in terms of bonuses, commissions, promotion and other incentives. This will act as a motivator for employees to work as well as helping in increasing retention rate.
Come up with policies that guide employees' performance - The policies will act as a framework or guide that direct employees on what is expected of them and how to conduct the operations of the hotel.
Conduct regular performance appraisal/reviews for employees - This is the process of reviewing employees' performance against the set standards so as to identify variations and take corrective actions.
Ensure there is effective communication in the hotel - This can be done by creating a communication system that allows for communication and feedback from the management to the employees and vice versa.
Offer attractive remunerations and other incentives to the employees - This is to try and retain employees in the hotel and avoid regular recruitment of new inexperienced employees.
2. How could the training and development programs be implemented in the Beachside Hotel in order to help with turnover and occupancy rates at the hotel?
The first thing is creating or designing the training program. This will involve several step to design and implement an effective training and development program. Here are the steps:
Assessing training needs - This will include assessing the various areas of focus for the hotel. For our case, the area of focus is customer satisfaction.
Setting the training objectives - The training needs assessment will identify any gaps in the current hotel situation. These gaps should be used to formulate objectives of the training.
Creating training action plan - Create a comprehensive action plan that includes instructional design, content, learning theories, materials and other training elements. Training delivery methods and resources should be clearly detailed.
Implementing training initiatives - This is the stage where the actual training happens. The hotel should decide whether the training will be done internally in the hotel or externally. During the training, employees' engagement is key. Ensure that the training is thorough and covers key areas of focus that is was meant to address. Assess the understanding of the employees and ensure that every employees is equipped with the skills offered in the training.
Evaluating and revising training - This is done continually to accommodate the necessary changes that come with time.
3. What other employee related initiatives could be undertaken by both the Hotels in order to help with the overall performance of their respective organizations?
Employees health and safety measures- This initiative includes creating an enabling environment for employees to work in. Ensuring that the employees are safe and they have protective gears to avoid injuries. The initiative may also include providing insurance cover to the employees.
Setting measurable goals and targets for employees - The targets should be measurable, realistic and achievable. This initiative will help the employees use the set targets as a guide to their performance. The targets should be set in a way that they motivate and not demoralize employees.
Encouraging health competition - A little competition among employees would not hurt and care should be taken so that the competition that does not turn harmful and cause conflicts. A competitive environment is a productive environment a friendly competition amongst employees would help with employees' engagement and participation.
Employees' conflict resolution - By ensuring that conflicts that arise amongst employees are resolved amicably and in time will create a good and friendly working environment that will produce positive results.
Step-by-step explanation
A well skilled and motivated workforce is a great deal for great performance. When you have employees who are well skilled in their areas and are motivated, customer satisfaction is guaranteed as it largely depend on the quality of the services offered by the employees.
