Benefits of the Shared Services Centre of Snow Mountain Hotel Service - Case Study Example

Human Resources (HR) Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Business Partner Model 3 1. Internal and external drivers of the Business Partner Model: 3 1.2. importance of Business Partner Model: 4 1.3. Potential disadvantages of implementing the model 4 2. The use of centralised shared service centres 5 2.1. Explanation of shared service centres 5 2.2. Internal and external drivers for developing shared service centres 5 2.3. Benefits of the shared services centre of SNOW Mountain Hotel service: 6 2.4. Challenges of shared services 6 3. Devolution of HR Responsibilities to the Line Managers 7 3.1. Meaning and aim of devolution HR responsibility to the line managers 7 3.2. Benefits 7 3.3. Drawbacks: 8 Conclusion 8 Reference list 10 Introduction Human resource management is one of crucial practices for the international firms to maintain their operations and employees. Hospitality and tourism is one of the booming industries reporting highest profit and GDP in the global economy. Employees are the crucial part of this industry as this industry is dealing with services. In the current study, SNOW Mountain Hotel is used to outline the effects of employee’s skills, efficiency and knowledge in the organisational profitability. In the study, different studies business partner model, centralised shared service centres and devolution of HR Responsibilities of line managers of SNOW Mountain Hotel are outlined (Moeller, 2010). 1. Business Partner Model Business Partner Model can be defined as the framework of developing organisational human resource. Such model empowers HR department of firms to participate in strategic planning process. In the current context, SNOW Mountain Hotel can use the business partnership model in order to recruit and use employees efficiently to achieve present and future goals (Gilmore and Williams, 2009). This model represents that the HR management diversified duties like they have to seek for the benefit of the workers, creating and maintaining employment payroll and employee associations development. In addition, HR department of SNOW Mountain Hotel have to maintain the responsibility of employing new staff, train new recruits and develop employee knowledge. Assignment of job roles to new and existing employees is another responsibility of HR department according to the business partner model (Moeller, 2010). 1.1. Internal and external drivers of the Business Partner Model: SNOW Mountain Hotel will be having different types of drivers of their Business Partner Models. Drivers are segmented into internal and external segments. Internal drivers can be outlined as core processes, success of innovation, administrative experts and employees’ skills and knowledge (Martin, 2009). On the other hand, SNOW Mountain Hotel will be having the external drivers like the economic prosperity of the customers, cultural traits, political condition, labour tradeoffs etc. these factors are affecting the business partner model of the firm (Noe, 2006). 1.2. importance of Business Partner Model: The model is developing the human resources available in the organisation; moreover, it increases the value of the businesses. SNOW Mountain Hotel will be able increase the feasibility of their strategic orientation in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia near Vancouver area. In addition, the hotel will be able to make the incorporation of hard and soft policy of the HR measures. They are able to reinforce the bottom-line performance of hospitality staff (Quinn, 2014). According to Ulrich (2009), business partner model mitigates stress from the management by developing the hospitality service skills. SNOW Mountain Hotel can increase the efficiency and service quality of their accommodation, cooking and hospitality staffs. With the help of this model, the firm can recognise, develop and brush up their loyal employees. HR management or administrative persons are reviewing the employees and reporting the data spreadsheet. HR partners are outlining the strengths of the workforce so that the hospitality tasks can be effectively allocated among the employees. On the contrary, weaknesses of the employees are recognised to train and develop them to increase the efficiency of employees. HR partnership model is helpful for the SNOW Mountain Hotel in developing the skill training and penalizing act (Seibert, 2013). 1.3. Potential disadvantages of implementing the model There are certain limitations of the model, they can be segmented as: Confusion: Such model is creating certain uncertainty between the workforce. Business partners have the roles like strategic player, employee guide, administrative professional and change agent of the organisational set up (Super and Murray, 2010). External experience: SNOW Mountain Hotel can face the challenge like different personal beliefs of HR practitioners, which might be opposed as because of various organisational experience they are posing. Line manager relations: Line managers are one of the crucial peoples of SNOW Mountain Hotel who will be developing the service segments, whereas, HR business partners are failed to develop proper relationship with the line managers. Such limitations are reducing the implementation of HR business partner model in the hospitality and care service industry (Gilmore and Williams, 2009). 2. The use of centralised shared service centres 2.1. Explanation of shared service centres Shared services or shared services centre (SSC) can be defined as the group of people, procedure and technology. Mainly, this concept in SNOW Mountain Hotel service is focused on certain predetermined hospitality operations. Online or web based technologies are used by the hospitality firms to reach maximum customers (Lindvall and Iveroth, 2011). E-commerce set up is interlinking the multiple business units around the world. Hospitality service are shared among the international set ups. Clouds are helping the firm in making the display of the hospitality support. They can provide highest customer support and the development of the hospitality service set up. 2.2. Internal and external drivers for developing shared service centres Process: It is an internal driver of developing shared service centres. SNOW Mountain Hotel will be developing such centres to increase their hospitality support in the peak seasons. Operational process will be increased with excellent resourcing of materials involved. People: Employees are crucial part of service provisions of the hospitality firms. Shared service centres are helping the SNOW Mountain Hotel in allocating work and evaluating employee performance (Raudla and Tammel, 2015). Technology: ERP systems and cloud database are highly used in the hospitality industry (Raudla and Tammel, 2015). Shared service centres are developing proper idea on the technological aspects of various hospitality services. Technology negotiates the level of satisfaction and comfort of the employees. 2.3. Benefits of the shared services centre of SNOW Mountain Hotel service: Positional strategy The hotel can run multiple locations at lower cost by reducing the labour costs in the multiple locations. Allocation of job as per effective skill: HR management of the firms is able to allocate the jobs among the skilful employees. Effective job delegation will be increasing the efficiency of SNOW Mountain Hotel as if their employees are able to serve people as per their skill set (Howcroft and Richardson, 2012). Cost benefits: Shared service centres are helping SNOW Mountain Hotel in sharing the resources in various branches. Thus, the organisational bottom line can be able to perform in lower cost levels. IT system improvements: Shared setups are using the ERP solution in terms of meeting multiple numbers of clients frequently. SNOW Mountain Hotel can use the single platform for keeping their records and meeting customer requirements (Wang, Chen and Zhang, 2012). In addition, SNOW Mountain Hotel will be enjoying more advantages of the shared service centres like reserves on transportation, infrastructural development and various other indirect costs. Such policy helps the firm in using floor space effectively and reduces maintenance costs. Shared service networks are developing class of the hospitality service. Such set ups are helping SNOW Mountain Hotel in developing streamlined processes and reduced timelines. Networks are maintaining common service level agreement (SLA) so that the hospitality service will be matching the customer expectation (Noe, 2006). 2.4. Challenges of shared services Shared service networks of SNOW Mountain Hotel will be facing the highest challenge in terms of employees and service structure. The HR management must be careful in developing the plans for such setups along with expectation level of the firms. Stakeholders many a time deny change. Thus, change management teams are playing crucial role for making transition in organizational structure. It is tough to control the processes in the shared service networks and hierarchy of SNOW Mountain Hotel gets affected (Seal and Herbert, 2013). 3. Devolution of HR Responsibilities to the Line Managers 3.1. Meaning and aim of devolution HR responsibility to the line managers SNOW Mountain Hotel has to manage various employees in their hospitality channel. They have more than 25 landmark hotels in various areas of Canada and the US. Moreover, they are having 558 guest rooms, 28,000 square feet area for the conference space, entertainment and refreshment facility like the health club and spa treatment, they are also having one golf course to refresh the customers. Human resource management have to be concerned in meeting the customer requirement and develop skills of employees. Thus, SNOW Mountain Hotel is distributing the HR responsibility among the line managers (Kuvaas, Dysvik and Buch, 2014). Administrative burdens are reduced from HR managers, they are provided with value-added actions and roles. SNOW Mountain Hotel strategic activities are sharing organisational values among the employee and service staffs. HR managers are required to pose relevant skills which will help them in achieving business objectives and motivate the employees (Martin, 2009). Line managers are communicating with the peers easily so that they can deploy proper training among the new recruits and the employees requiring development. Therefore, it is observed that HR responsibilities are shared among the line managers. In addition, line managers of SNOW Mountain Hotel are disseminating the knowledge about the new technology that are introduced in the hospitality set ups (Ryu and Kim, 2013). 3.2. Benefits SNOW Mountain Hotel will be enjoying certain benefits of distributing HR roles among the line managers. Hospitality service systems can be reinforced and responsibilities of the employees effectively shared by the line managers. They are having the power to manage individual staff and service teams. Line managers of SNOW Mountain Hotel will report to the upper management about the performance off all other employees and teams as per the service criteria (Martin, 2009). Line managers of SNOW Mountain Hotel are also playing the role of team leaders and supervisors. They are executing the employee management on daily basis and service quality of the hotel staff are increasing gradually. SNOW Mountain Hotel is able to control the operational costs effectively. Line managers are sharing technical expertise among fellow team members so that they are able to increase their efficiency (Super and Murray, 2010). HR responsibility of the line managers will increase feasibility of assigning jobs, responsibility and rosters. These managers can monitor the performance of the service staffs with the quality. Moreover, line managers are having practical experience of dealing with service customers or clients, so they can guide their fellow quite well and compute operational performance of the service staff (Wang, Chen and Zhang, 2012). 3.3. Drawbacks: However, there are certain limitations of sharing HR responsibility among the line managers. SNOW Mountain Hotel will be facing different challenges. Line managers will be creating complexity in developing daily working schedules. This will hamper the daily performance of employees. Again line managers are unaware of the various crucial legal policies regarding the human resource management. Legal frameworks are crucial for obtaining ethical business practises in hospitality operations (Kuvaas, Dysvik and Buch, 2014). Segmented HR administration will be limiting the overall management growth in SNOW Mountain Hotel. Strategic goals sharing is tough for the firms moreover, they are facing the challenge of sharing responsibility in peak season and off season. In the hotel group, the HR department is facing certain complexity as because of the diversity among the 115 accommodation facility, 93 bistro, lounge and bar, and more than 210 retail outlets. Conclusion From the current study an in-depth analysis of the SNOW Mountain Hotel is obtained. Their HR policies, application of Business Partner Model, centralised shared service centres and allocation of HR Responsibilities among the Line Managers policies are discussed in the study. It is observed that the SNOW Mountain Resort have to serve more than 4 million international guests per year. Thus, their staffing policy is crucial for meeting the clients’ requirement with highest satisfaction. They are appointing 250 employees in the off season and 640 employees in the peak seasons. Business Partner Model is helping the SNOW Mountain Hotel in recruiting efficient new staff. Centralised shared service centres and HR Responsibilities sharing among the line managers will be helping the hospitality firm in meeting international clients with their service requirements. Reference list Gilmore, S. and Williams, S., 2009. Human resource management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howcroft, D. and Richardson, H., 2012. 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