Case study – Human Resource Management

Answer the questions for the case study in academic writing and easy to understand

Case study:
Beachside hotel human capital dilemma This is a case oftwo 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 forthe same set of guests, as well as the same set of potential employees.
They are both budget hotels, right next doorto each other, with 60 guest rooms each and a view ofthe beach .The occupancy during peak season forthe Sunrise Hotel is 98%, but during the winter months goes down to 65%. The Beachside Hotel has peak season occupancy of90% off peak occupancy of50%. Joe is the General Manager of Sunrise Hotel and has been in his current position for5 years. He has been with Sunrise Hotel for a total of10 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 ofthat area ofthe 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 theirjob better. There is a sense ofteamwork at Sunrise Hotel and that helps everyone want to do a good job. His guest satisfaction ratings for his hotel are overall excellent. On a rating scale of1-10, his hotel averages a 9.The average length oftenure of his employees is 4 years, and his current front desk supervisorwas promoted from within, along with his Assistant General Manager.Because ofthe small size ofthe hotel, Joe is actually involved with all ofthe 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 for2 years and he came out of the accounting and finance department in his old hotel. He has a great understanding ofthe numbers in the lodging industry, but has not been involved with the human resource aspects ofthe 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 ofthe hotel
wanted to make sure that she would not make any ofthe other guests angry, so he promoted herto a human resources practitioner. Since that time, she has been busy trying to keep up with hiring and she has had no time fortraining 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 ofthe hotel do not communicate very effectively and therefore everyone blames everyone else when things go wrong. The average length oftenure ofthe front desk agents at the Beachside Hotel is 3 months and the customer satisfaction rating at the Beachside is a 6 out ofa 10 possible rating. Most ofthe front desk agents that are hired come from other hotels in the area afterthey quit or are fired. Brian is not involved in the hiring forthe hotel at all, and does not get involved with training and development. He spends most of his days looking at the financial reports forthe hotel and analyzing average daily rate, occupancy rates, and REVPAR. 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.

Questions (Each question carries 2+2+1=5 mm)

1. What systems should Brian implement in orderto start changing the human capital practices in the Beachside

Hotel?

2. How could training and development programs be implemented in the Beachside Hotel in orderto help with turnover

and occupancy rates at the hotel?

3. What other human resource initiatives could be undertaken by eitherthe Sunrise Hotel or Beachside Hotel in order to help with the overall performance oftheir respective organizations?