CASE STUDY IV: MANAGING GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCES

The Hotel Paris’s competitive strategy is to use superior guest service to differentiate the Hotel Paris properties, and to thereby increase the length of stay and return rate of guests, and thus boost revenues and profitability. HR manager Lisa Cruz must now formulate functional policies and activities that support this competitive strategy by eliciting the required employee behaviors and competencies.

With hotels in 11 cities in Europe and the United States, Lisa knew that the company had to do a better job of managing its global human resources. For example, there was no formal means of identifying or training management employees for duties abroad (either for those going to the United States or to Europe). As another example, recently, after spending upwards of $600,000 sending a U.S. manager and her family abroad, they had to return her abruptly when the family complained bitterly of missing their friends back home. Lisa knew this was no way to run a multinational business. She turned her attention to developing the HR practices her company required to do business more effectively internationally.

On reviewing the data, it was apparent to Lisa and the CFO that the company’s global human resource practices were probably inhibiting the Hotel Paris from being the world-class guest services company that it sought to be. For example, high-performing service and hotel firms had formal departure training programs for at least 90% of the employees they sent abroad. Hotel Paris had no such programs. Similarly, with each city’s hotel operating its own local hotel HR information system, there was no easy way for Lisa, the CFO, or the company s CEO to obtain reports on metrics like turnover, absences, or workers compensation costs across all the different hotels. As the CFO summed it up, If we can’t measure how each hotel is doing in terms of human resource metrics like these, there’s really no way to manage these activities, so there’s no telling how much lost profits and wasted efforts are dragging down each hotel’s performance. Lisa received approval to institute new global human resources programs and practices.

Questions:

(a)Write a detailed note of what hotel managers should know to make it more convenient & welcoming for the incoming employees from abroad to adapt to their new surroundings?

(b)Recommend three HR practices Hotel Paris should use. Explain why you believe they could take this program abroad, how you suggest they do so?

(c)  Choose one Hotel Paris HR practice that you believe is essential to the company achieving its high- quality-service goal. Explain how you would implement that practice in the firm’s various hotels worldwide.