Castle Resorts & Hotels HRM - Math Problem Example

Introduction: Castle Resorts & Hotels specializes in hotel and resort condominium management. Castle was founded in 1994 to provide hospitality management services for hotels and condominium resorts in the Pacific Region. The company is a wholly owned, fully consolidated subsidiary of The Castle Group, Inc. Castle’s portfolio spans a wide range of resort properties from mid-market hotel to upscale condominium resorts. Services offered include full hotel and resort management, sales and marketing, reservations, accounting and hospitality design services. Castle manages over $2 billion in real estate assets. Castle Resorts New Zealand was formed as a division of The Castle Group, Inc. to strategically grow and expand throughout Oceania. The New Zealand division manages The Spencer on Byron Hotel at Takapuna Beach on Auckland’s North Shore, Castle’s first venture into the New Zealand marketplace. Castle Resorts New Zealand provides a competent, stable and experienced management team for The Spencer on Byron Hotel and for future expansion of properties in Oceania. The Spencer on Byron Hotel opened in July 2001 at Takapuna Beach on Auckland's North Shore and has since earned praise for its exceptional design, innovation, location, and friendly efficient service. The hotel is the first business class accommodation provider on Auckland's North Shore and stands tall overlooking the beautiful views that Auckland has to offer. The Spencer on Byron Hotel is proudly managed by New Zealand Castle Resorts and Hotels, a subsidiary of Castle Group, Inc. which was founded in Hawaii in 1994 with just 220 rooms. Today, the Castle Group manages more than 2,500 hotel rooms and condominium units and employs more than 500 resort, hotel and corporate staff throughout the Pacific. All the staff at the hotel are proud to have achieved Excellence in the 2003 and 2004 Tourism awards. Mission Statement: “Castle Resorts & Hotels is committed to offering more value, more variety and more aloha both in and outside of Hawaii. The key to Castle’s customer and stakeholder satisfaction is our entire team’s belief in our corporate mission statement. Simply put, Castle’s mission is to provide the very best value and guest experience in order to achieve customer and owner loyalty, and to increase stakeholder value.” The Spencer on Byron is the tallest structure on the North Shore of Auckland, with 23 stories dominating the skyline, and commanding a spectacular panorama of Auckland City and harbour with 4 star luxury accommodation, with 249 studio, single bedroom and two bedroom fully equipped apartments, each with its own spectacular view, and all the features of a major resort hotel- All weather Tennis Court, Gymnasium, Heated Lap Pool, Jacuzzi, Petanque pitch, Restaurant and Bar. Full conference facilities for up to 500 guests, underground secure parking etc and 2 minutes walk to the spectacular Takapuna beach; this is the ideal location for corporate and holiday accommodation. We also cater for weddings, conferences and Xmas functions for corporate. Only 8km from Auckland's CBD via the motorway or Devonport and the relaxing harbour ferries. Shuttle buses run from the door linking to all the popular Auckland attractions - The Sky Tower and Casino, Kelly Tarlatans Underwater world, America's Cup Village. The Golf course is only 5 minutes drive away and several championship courses are within 30 minutes drive. Customer Experiences: “Stayed at the Spencer on Byron during our recent trip to New Zealand. It's everything and more! All the rave reviews are true! It's a stroll from Takapuna Beach. We were on the 10th floor and had a great view of the Auckland skyline. The staff was nice. Concierge was helpful. Room was clean and spacious! High speed internet is available in the lobby. You can purchase time cards at the reception. There is a library in the lobby also. The gym is suitable. The pool & spa area nice also. We had breakfast onsite and it was a nice plentiful buffet. Within walking distance there are shops and small eating establishments for the budget travellers. We highly recommend this place and look forward to staying here again! It's far enough from the city that it's quiet and enjoyable!” Another family adds: “We returned to Auckland after ten days touring. Five teens and two adults. The Spencer was everything you could ask for. Washer/Dryer in room, stereo CD player, separate bedroom, swimming and fun location across from Auckland and near the beach. The kids loved the pool and we loved the spa. And did I mention the view. Wow!” HRM at the hotel: Spencer on Byron has a separate well managed HR department which not only do Human Resource Management but also takes care of the administrative work in the hotel. Spencer on Byron existing performance appraisal system and salary administration program is itself an adaptation from other hotels. Under the existing plan, the supervisor rates the employee on the scale of one to five, with five designating exceptional performance and one indicating unacceptable performance. Pluses and minuses are allowed (excluding scores of 1- and 5+), thus supervisors effectively choose from thirteen different rating categories. The scale is absolute, i.e. the rating assigned to an individual is to reflect only that individual’s performance independent of the performance of other employees. In spite of such a comprehensive system below are some on the employees quotes about the performance management system. “Managers are afraid to give experience people a 1, 2 or 3 rating. It’s easier to give everyone a 4 and give new people a 3” “I could walk on water and spit gold quarters and my supervisor wouldn’t give me a 5; he never got a 5 so why should I get on?” “What’s the use of killing yourself? You still get the same rating as everyone else, and you still get the same increase. It’s demoralizing and demotivating.” “I’m the one who carries the department, and yet I get the same increase as everyone else. It’s just not fair.” The recruitment process at Spencer on Byron is also very diverse. Each candidate short listed for the interview is interviewed on the telephone before he is offered to come for a formal interview. Telephone interview eliminates candidates who are theoretically capable but practically lack expertise in their field. After the telephonic interview the selected candidates are called for a formal interview with the HR manager, who mainly observers the candidates’ behaviour and whether they are fit for the job. Final selection is made by the department head, for which the vacancy is and for which the candidate is interviewed. Selection is on the basis of Grade points of 1-5 allocated on several criteria. Intervention Plan: Best practice organisations in the hospitality industry : A number of recent articles in the general HRM literature is indicative of the increasing interest in ‘best practice’ HRM and its link with commitment, organisational performance, service quality, productivity and profitability (Redman and Matthews, 19981).Usually couched in terms of ‘bundles’, the HRM practices that are offered in support of a high commitment and performance model are generally fairly consistent. For example, Redman and Matthews (1998) outline a range of HR practices which are very similar to those initially introduced as best practice by Pfeffer (1998)2. Thus, Redman and Matthews suggest the following key practices that are likely to support organisational strategies aimed at securing high quality service: Recruitment and selection – Redman and Matthews note the need to ensure the recruitment and selection of staff with the correct attitudinal and behavioural characteristics which will support a quality approach. In particular, there is a need to ensure ‘fit’ between the individual and the organisation’s business goals. A range of assessments in the selection process should be utilised to evaluate the work values, personality, interpersonal skills and problem-solving abilities of potential employees to assess their ‘service orientation’. Retention – The need to avoid the development of a ‘turnover culture’, which may of course be particularly prevalent in the hospitality industry. For example, the use of ‘retention bonuses’ to influence employees to stay. Ordinarily these would be used in conjunction with a number of the other HRM practices described here. Teamwork – Redman and Matthews believe that the use of semi-autonomous, crossprocess and multifunctional teams is likely to positively affect service quality. This is likely to require a culture change from traditional organisations where people were compartmentalised according to functions, something which is particularly true in hospitality. Training and development – for example, the need to equip operative level staff with team working and interpersonal skills to develop their ‘service orientation’ and managers with a new leadership style which encourages a move to a more facilitative and coaching style of managing. Appraisal – Redman and Matthews support the move away from traditional top down approaches to appraisal and support things such as customer evaluation, peer review, team-based performance, and the appraisal of manages by subordinates. Generally, all of these performance appraisal systems should focus on the quality goals of the organization and the behaviours of employees needed to sustain these. Rewarding quality – it is suggested that there is a need for a much more creative system of rewards and in particular the need to payment systems that reward employees for attaining quality goals. Job security – the use of organisational restructuring, de-layering and re-engineering are suggested as often being fatal for quality initiatives. Conversely promises of job security are suggested as being an essential component of any overall quality approach. Employee involvement and employee relations – generally by seeking greater involvement from employees the emphasis is on offering autonomy, creativity, cooperation and self-control in work processes. The use of educative and participative mechanisms, such as team briefings and quality circles are allied to changes in the organisation of work which support an ‘empowered’ environment. Performance Appraisal: The evaluation of individual performance is an inevitable part of the organizational life. Everyone is constantly evaluated by his or her boss, peers and subordinates. Much of the evaluation is informal, but most organizations have a formal appraisal system designed to collect systematic information about the performance of employees. The formal system usually includes a form on which the supervisors indicate their evaluations of subordinates’ performances. The form may be a blank sheet on which the supervisor notes his or her views, a guide for setting objectives and checking their attainment, or a series of ratings on how the subordinate goes about his or her job. Regardless of the format, appraisals become par t of the individual’s formal record and are used to make decisions about his or her career. Supervisors are usually expected to sit down with the subordinate once a year to discuss the appraisal. For a number of very important reasons, almost all organizations maintain appraisal systems. They are a source of data needed for manpower planning, and a means of influencing employee performance and fulfilling the moral obligation of letting people know where they stand; increasingly, appraisal systems are important as a protection against legal suits by employees who have been fired or demoted. Despite their value, managers and subordinates alike seem to be ambivalent about performance appraisal systems. Managers recognize performance appraisal as a potentially useful tool for improving the performance of the subordinates and the effectiveness of their organizational unit; yet they also sense that performance appraisal inherently poses some danger to the motivation of their subordinates and their relationship with them. Like tax payments, performance appraisal is something managers feel obligated to do, but don’t really want to. On the other hand, subordinates want and often ask for feedback about how they are doing because they want to know where they stand, but they prefer feedback that is consistent with their image of themselves as good performers. Thus both managers and subordinates have ambivalent feelings about performance appraisal and share natural tendency to underplay or avoid dealing with the negative aspect of the procedure. Performance appraisal is both a system of papers and procedures designed by the organization for use by its managers and an interpersonal process in which manager and subordinate communicate and attempt to influence each other. Many of the problems in performance appraisal stem from the appraisal system itself: the objective it is intended to serve, the administrative system in which it is embedded, and the forms and procedures that make up the system. This is the same problem encountered by the Spencer on Byron’s management. The performance appraisal system followed here is usually not used by the supervisor adequately, as evident from some views of the employees. As the employees are graded on a 1-5 scale most of them are graded on an average which everyone else is getting. This de-motivates hard working employees as in the end they are going to get the same salary increase as the rest of them. Sometimes in order to make his/her subordinates happy the supervisors rate their sub-ordinates on a high scale. Although such practices help maintaining a good relation between the supervisor and subordinates but I certainly eliminates the element of competition from the workplace. All the reception staff no matter how well they do with the customer services and no matter how much effort they put in get the same grade. Also the floor managers are awarded the same grade which leaves them with no motivation to work extra. Recommendations: In order to avoid such biased an inaccurate measures on performance, this whole system should be re-evaluated. Spencer on Byron’s HR team should try to formulate such a system which ensures a check and balance between the supervisor and the subordinates. I would recommend that all these performance appraisals and comments of the supervisor should be kept confidential. Infact the appraisal sheet given to the supervisor for evaluation should also be customised to each department, and therefore should not have questions that the supervisor should be filling himself. It should have a set of questions, which should be formulated based on the incidents that have happened throughout the year within the department, that are asked to probe the main cause of the incident. This way neither the supervisor nor the subordinate would be able grade on a bias. This process would certainly take a lot more time for the HR personnel to prepare such report, but would be a better predictor of performance. A separate sub department within the HR department should be formed which looks into these matters. Their job is to record all the incidents reported throughout the year, probe to find the possible causes and attitude of the employees towards the cause and constantly monitor performance. At the year end this department will make the questionnaire for the department as well as submit the report maintained throughout the year. Read More