New Business in the UK Operating in the Sector of Hospitality - Case Study Example

Case Study Analysis Name: Institutional Affiliation: Management: Instructor: Date: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY ANALYSIS CASE 1 FORMULATION GUIDE FOR NEW L & D STRATEGY This case study is about a new business in UK operating in the sector of hospitality. The business is steadily growing as a result of acquisition of public houses and small independent houses. The company has 15 separate businesses, which up to now are been managed by the previous owners. At the moment, the new owners indent to consolidate the businesses and design one clear mission, vision and business goals, and hence, in the processes of this developments, the Learning and Development and Human Resource strategies, practices and policies should be formulated for the whole business. Due to these new unfolding, my role as a Learning and Development consultant would be to offer a preliminary guidance and advice on how to approach and plan all the education, learning and training aspects for the consolidation of the businesses. The quality of the workforce as well as their development through education and training are fundamental elements in establishing long-term profitability for the business. When you keep and hire quality workers, it is a worthwhile policy to empower their skill development in order to improve their productivity (Armstrong, 2008). Often, training is considered only for new staff. This is a fault since ongoing training and development for existing staff would assist them to rapidly adjust to the impending changes of the job requirements. The Objectives of T&D The reasons why it would be necessary to focus on the development and growth of employees pending consolidation of the business include: Developing readily available pool and sufficient replacements for the employees who be promoted or leave the organization Improving the ability of the company to used and adopt technological advances because of adequately knowledgeable employees Creating a more effective, efficient and well motivated workforce that would be able to improve the firm’s competitive position as well as staff morale Making sure there is enough human resources for the consolidation plans The process of T&D The approach below outlines the necessary steps for the employee training Company objectives Assessments of needs Does a gap(s) exist Objectives for training Choosing the trainees Decide the training mode and methods Determine evaluation means Administer the training Training evaluation Auditing the T & D Needs The training needs could be measured by auditing three core human resource aspects: the company as a whole, the individual’s needs and the characteristics of the job. The auditing process will entail analyzing the following elements. Staff records Culture differences Standardize results Customer feedbacks The current HR policy, mission statement and the commitment of stakeholder to fund it Analyze the what value previous T & D added Strategic plan (5 fives from now) and what T & D can add to realize that Start by evaluating the company’s current status, on how respect to how it does things, and employees’’ ability to perform their duties. This audit will offer some benchmark upon which the effectiveness of the T&D initiative would be evaluated. After this audit you would be able to establish exactly where T& D in needed. CASE 2 REPORT ON PROPOSALS FOR LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AT HARROGATE HOTEL CHAIN It is a month since my appointment as a learning and Development manager at a flagship hotel in Harrogate. The history of the premier which is part of the Gilborough Hotel Chain in personnel and training functions has been successful. This impacted on the hotel recording high customer like: couples on holiday, students et cetera booking the hotel facilities so much. However, this positive trend changed and took a negative way. My task therefore is, to write a comprehensive report, detailing my observations and proposals with an aim of helping the Hotel reclaim its lost glory and become an employer of choice in the north within two years. My first observation at this hotel is that, most of the staff has a negative attitude towards their job and some real have little skill on what their job entails. After a careful and systematic analysis of this, I learnt that the learning and Development program initially at place impacted little on these employees and therefore, more needs to be done in terms of training so that current employees can be professionally competent in service delivery. Another observation is numerous customer complaints. This is due to poor service delivery from the Hotel staff. To minimize such cases, a customer training centre ought to establish to train the staff on how to handle the customers. This will enhance proper service delivery and minimize cases of customers complaining. After taking my own analysis of the prevalent situation at this hotel, I have come to a conclusion that, in order to salvage the image and status of the Harrogate hotel and indeed the entire Gilborough Hotel Chain, a radical shift in learning and development needs to be undertaken. This shift can be in form of adoption of mentoring programs, coaching, leadership management and motivation with an aim of making clear the short term and long term goals of the business venture. Mentoring programs promotes the sharing of Knowledge and greater collaboration between working areas within a department. This will boost and bolster the staff towards working together for the common good of the business. Coaching entails the actual demonstration to the staff on how the job should be done. This not only promotes a positive attitude towards the job but also inculcates a sense of responsibility on the staff. The management should embrace ’soft power’ rather than’ hard power’ when engaging with the staff. Unlike a hard power which entails intimidation and coercion of the staff towards executing a particular task and whose result can be temporal, soft power involves motivation and rewarding the most hard working staff (Armstrong, 2008). This will in the long run automatically make the employees work hard. In conclusion, l must emphasize that, it takes a great effort to build a business brand. Its long term depends on the commitment and resilience of the staff and their leaders. Therefore, the people with the right qualifications need to be at the helm. CASE STUDY 3 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY Knowledge management strategy is simply a plan that describes how an organization will harness and manage its knowledge better for the overall benefit of that organization, customers and all the stake holders. A good knowledge strategy management strategy is closely in tandem with that organization’s objectives, goals and targets. In this case, well documented report shall be written and presented to the new Human Resource manager of CompuLearn Company. This report covers three key areas namely; where the company is (current status), its objectives or goals and the possible ways of attaining it goals and objectives. The current status of CompuLearn company is relatively  small with a work force of about 50 who are situated at the company’s headquarter at Preston. Knowledge management at this level is not well apt and as a result, some knowledge management flaws like making an assumption that these employees are real tech savvies. However, the company is on a growing trend and therefore a real need for its knowledge management to be improved so that it can achieve its expansion agenda and increase its visibility across the globe The management of CompuLearn has anticipated to expand the company from its current position of 200 learning centres in 30 countries to about 500 learning centres in 60 countries. This will promote the company’s expansion of its market opportunity for its products. Therefore, a good and a cutting edge knowledge management will ensure that while the company spreads its tentacles more, the quality of its products will not be compromised but will be able to bring their products closer to its customers and thus increase its global visibility. The specific actions that ought to be taken for the company to achieve its ambitious expansion programs can be grouped in to; short term and long term. Among the short term measures can be, hiring more employees with high skills but carry an in-house retraining of these skilled manpower so as to make them more relevant and technically apt with the demands of the company. Also, the company needs to take a deliberate measure of diffusing tension between employees at the headquarter and the academics. This can be done through constant reminding these employees that they are one big family with a common goal and agenda. This will promote proper workmanship within the company and lead to its smooth expansion. The long term measures may include; creating an in-house training centre where most of the company employees will be sourced from. This can be possible if the company can source for extra funding for such a project (Porter, 2005). In conclusion, CompuLearn has an opportunity of executing its ambitious plan of expanding its ventures and transforming itself into a global brand in IT and fields.. This is highly achievable only if the management gets it right from the first step. Given the challenges that were noted when the company was small, a careful and all inclusive knowledge management will aid getting the best out of a highly skilled and motivated human resource References Armstrong, M (2008). Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action, 4th Edition, Kogan Page, London. Porter, E. (2005). Competitive Advantage, Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, The Free Press. Read More