Holiday Inn London-Bloomsbury is situated off Russell Square in the elegant Western End of London. It really is within walking distance of lots of world renowned theatres, museums, golf clubs and shopping centres of the city, as well as being close to offices and businesses of central London. The hotel stands opposite Russell Square underground train station, which is on the Piccadilly Line and provides direct links to all or any Heathrow Air port Terminals (1-5), the Emirates Stadium and is roughly 7 minutes from significant travel cable connections such as Euston and Kings Cross tube stations and St. Pancras International Terminal for the Eurostar. The hotel boasts 311 guest rooms, including business and executive suites, the Junction Club and Restaurant and the Callaghan's pub. It also has extensive seminar and situations facilities with 3 banquet halls which can take up to 600 guests at the same time, and 11 more compact meeting rooms. The house is one of the state hospitality partners for the 2012 London Olympic Video games as part of Holiday Inn being one of the major sponsors of the event.
ORGANISATION STRUCTURE
The organisation composition of Vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury shows a thorough plan that depicts the duties and tasks of employees in each position within the company, who they lead and deal with and who they report to. An efficient company usually has an easy organisation framework where each worker is aware of his/her tasks, tasks, privileges and decision making ability. Please see Exhibit A for an in depth plan of the company framework of the hotel.
HUMAN RESOURCE WITH THE BLOOMSBURY
As part of IHG, the vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury comes after Human Resource policies laid down at the IHG hq is Denham, UK. Over the past time IHG has released lots of employee related changes in the company. To accomplish their mission of creating 'Great Hotels, Guests Love', IHG outlined some key factors to enable employees identify with the business. The five 'Being successful Ways' which require each staff to be team focused, action oriented, passionate towards their careers and savvy, are as follows:
Do the proper Thing
Aim Higher
Show We Care
Celebrate Difference
Work Better Together
From these guidelines it is evident that IHG employs a soft way towards people management as opposed to dealing with employees like any other learning resource. According to Price (2000) the Harvard Model of Human Source Management emphasises the 'individual' element whereas the Michigan Model focuses on the 'tool' aspect. The Harvard Model addresses issues of motivating employees, expanding an company culture, creating a highly effective praise system and monitoring employee effect in decision making, which are some of the key motives of IHG's Individual Resource regulations.
IHG needed an important step towards planning its growth by determining the business's Human Tool requirements. The business is convinced that effective Individual Resource practices can offer a proper competitive edge for global progress. IHG tied up with Hewitt Associates LLC to critically assess and analyse the company's costs, source of information allocations, technology, and delivery channels. This research by Hewitt allowed IHG obtain "an in depth and alternative picture of where HR works gets done; how effectively and effectively it gets done; and where HR is currently concentrating their time and attention. " (Hewitt. . . . check research)
Hewitt Affiliates facilitated IHG prioritise tackling issues by aligning advice for their Individuals Source of information strategy and organisational framework to their global business goals. This resulted in "specific changes to the HR company model and infrastructure that reduced both cost and risk while promoting a culture of progress and development through better skill management and associate proposal. " (Hewitt. . . . . . . . check ref)
IHG's new employee handbooks have paid special focus on giving employees their own space within the work environment. The company created advertisements which portray the office as a location where employees have 'Room to Grow' within the organisation through inter-departmental training, job sharing and shadowing older members of staff. Another idea of 'Room for being Yourself' allows employees to excel in areas other than their day-to-day careers in the hotels, such as playing a drum or leading the hotel's sports team in the local hotels competition.
Equal Opportunities Employer
"Discrimination is defined as prejudice plus electric power, where prejudice is often viewed as the opposite of tolerance departing underlying power relationships unaddressed. " (Spouse, 1991) Regarding to Price (2000) discrimination creeps into an organisation when employees who have "the energy to recruit, promote or compensate other employees, choose to exercise their capabilities in ways which intentionally or unconsciously show a inclination" for a specific specific or group against another. Vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury can take pride in being an Equal Opportunities Employer and is particularly stringent in taking action against any reported occurrences of discrimination within the hotel. Among IHG's Being successful Ways features is to Celebrate Difference since the company recognises the benefits associated with being an Similar Opportunities Workplace.
Goss (1994) says that in the real world, organisations have a complex concern in their hands while interacting with behaviour towards equality of opportunity. Goss also says that another problem is typified by tokenism in certain organisations and Price (2000) advises an example that is all too common in real life where an organisation, in its efforts to demonstrate determination towards promoting Equivalent Opportunities, appoints a woman in an all-male decision making body.
According to Molander and Winterton (1994) every company committed towards an efficient Similar Opportunities environment, including IHG, will include some of the following policies:-
Allocate overall responsibility for policy to a specified senior executive
Agree with staff representatives
Communicate effectively with all employees
Base policies and decisions on the current and exact employee survey
Audit Human Reference practices for similar opportunities implications
Set Equivalent Opportunities aims within the Individual Resource strategy
Allocate training and development resources to fulfil objectives
Human Resource Development
According to Price (2000), several organisations regularly concentrate on employee development programs in an effort to locate superstar performers who are then groomed and developed for mature positions. Sadler and Milner (1993) declare that development programs will include four unique features for his or her most appealing employees:-
A sense of quest within the organisation, which could stimulate them more than economic imbursements and job security
An organisation framework that induces and embraces creativity
A performance management system that recognises and rewards specific and team efforts
A clear statement of purpose that links tactical objectives of the organisation with the desire to excel.
IHG targets developing a balance in employee development through all these celebrity performer method and the more traditional recruitment of managers in other organisations or through their own management training programmes. A good example of the use of the legend performer development programme is apparent in the vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury where in fact the Employee of the Year champion is slated for advertising each year, inspite of the actual fact that they may be relatively inexperienced in general management compared to management trainees in the hotel.
Performance Management
According to Armstrong and Baron (1998) there are two essential factors that justify performance management. First of all, employees will attempt and perform better when they know about expectations and have been involved in specifying the same. Subsequently, employees' abilities to meet performance goals derive from their capacities, skills, support provided by the management and organisational operations, systems and resources open to them.
The writers Armstrong and Baron (1998) further declare that performance management is crucial to organisational success but is also a significant part associated with an employee's profession when there's a direct website link between good performance and increase in payment, motivation and opportunities for career progression.
IHG has an extensive performance management process where employees are evaluated and appraised twice per annum and must set their own Development Plan for the next 6 month diagnosis period. Aside from each individual's Personal Development Plan, there are team goals and objectives set by Minds of Departments because of their entire team to accomplish. Such targets could involve upselling executive rooms, breakfast and room deals, gymnasium and internet utilization offers and increasing Priority Team enrolments for leading Office team, to providing expensive wines and cocktails, food and beverage packages and Xmas special offers for the Restaurant, Pubs and Conference Sales team.
HUMAN Reference ISSUES ON THE BLOOMSBURY
In spite of the business's best efforts, Getaway Inn London-Bloomsbury has lots of Human Reference issues that have still not been dealt with or fixed effectively. A number of the key issues of staff management, change management and redundancy have been reviewed below.
Restructuring and Redundancy
According to Price (2000), since the 1980s companies have been restructuring their organisation hierarchy to be able to spend less and increase efficiency. However, the newest financial downturn has resulted in an unprecedented go up in downsizing labor force and delayering organisational composition. After all its efforts to check out a Harvard modelled delicate style of Human being Resource management, Holiday break Inn London-Bloomsbury has had to holiday resort to the Michigan modelled hard management style by causing redundancies, cutting staff costs and reducing management levels in its hotels in which to stay business. This process contradicts its plans of caring for employees and grooming and developing them for advertising within the organisation.
Kettley, (1995) in his book titled 'Is Flatter Better? Delayering the Management Hierarchy' argues that restructuring and delayering in organisations upsets not only the employees who show up victim to cost cutting but also "unsettles skills, jobs and relationships of employees" who continue to be with the business.
Staff Turnover and Substitute Staffing
The hospitality industry is perpetually plighted by a relatively high turnover of personnel in comparison to other industries hiring people. However there have been some companies (for example, Four Times Hotels and Resorts) which may have regularly resisted the trend and continued to hold on to their workers for considerably longer than the industry average. Holiday break Inn London-Bloomsbury on the other hand has been obligated to invest seriously on recruitment and training credited to high staff turnover. Before 12 months there have been a total of 34 changes in top and middle management in hotel businesses departments itself, including a new General Manager, Functions Manager, Front side Office Supervisor and two Revenue Managers. Aside from being expensive, every change in management also disrupts workflow as recently recruited managers make an effort to implement their own unique style in each job and expect employees to improve their styles to match new ideas. Being truly a global company, IHG also offers a high ratio of employees being transferred internally between properties worldwide which make the Bloomsbury hotel a goal for a number of work placements, management traineeships and internships, resulting in a high flow of employees getting started with and leaving the hotel.
In an attempt to stifle the high personnel turnover and to be able to handle busy times of the year, the management at Holiday break Inn London-Bloomsbury often make an effort to balance the traditional staffing methods with alternate staffing such as supplementary staff, agency individuals, part-timers and zero-hour contract staff. Part time work will suit a lot of women with children and now is becoming increasingly more prominent amongst male employees who want to supplement their full time income elsewhere. Some supplementary personnel are employed at the Holiday Inn to ease the strain of regular workers rather than offering them overtime work. Another approach to staffing the hotel uses is job showing where part-time workers are hired to displace a complete time job vacancy. Trip Inn also uses various businesses providing trained, momentary personnel solutions because of their conference and occasions facilities, restaurant and pubs and housekeeping departments.
Change Management
IHG has initiated a worldwide rebranding process for the vacation Inn brand and intends to rebrand all existing Trip Inns with new logos, brand signage, modern designs in hotel rooms, lobbies and restaurants and also provide new training programs for all those employees. The 'Stay Real' program has been developed especially to assist staff training, strategy performance and teach them about the hotels they work in, tell them about encompassing areas and improve guest handling skills. The Stay Real program being truly a new IHG brand standard has to be completely put in place at Vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury by May 2010 making all employees and the hotel ready for the rebrand. Quality inspections, spot assessments and online testing for employees are currently being completed randomly by executives from IHG head office and external realtors doing work for IHG to examine whether the hotel is ready for the change.
Overload of Brand Standards
Holiday Inn London-Bloomsbury is the flagship property for IHG in the city of London, and therefore is obviously under the attention of the mother or father company in conditions of sticking with brand standards, pursuing standard operating methods and meeting goals. Quality inspections, Secret Guest scores, Guest Satisfaction Traffic monitoring System (GSTS) scores, Priority Club regular membership enrolment goals are just a few dimension indices that are constantly being watched and every action of employees is scrutinised through studies, results and online testing. In April 2010 IHG shown the 'Hotel of the entire year 2009' award for all IHG hotels in United Kingdom and Ireland to the Bloomsbury hotel, thus giving inspectors more reason to check on for faults in the hotel and its own employees.
Poor Staff Satisfaction Review Scores
TNS-Sofres Function conducted an Employee Satisfaction Review to gauge satisfaction in their jobs and their future plans within the company. Having received an extremely high score for a similar Guest Satisfaction Study, it was a delight to discover a relatively low Staff Satisfaction Survey rating compared to other Getaway Inns in the location and also lower than its own results in the previous 2 yrs. Such a situation could be attributed to lots of factors:-
The impact of the monetary downturn which led to redundancies and therefore increased workload of employees who had been retained in the hotel. There have been also no pay increases as promised at the beginning of the previous financial 12 months.
Being on the right track for IHG popularity awards in the local level on the basis of Guest Satisfaction Ratings, the management pressured employees to perform at their optimum all the time, and any flaws or misjudgements were handled stringently.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Holiday Inn London-Bloomsbury comes with an impressive working environment, where employees should take decisions and possession of situations and solve them independently. Employees are highly trained and skilled to be able to handle visitor problems and other operational barriers. Professionals are in sync with their employees and generally their relationships are amicable and trusted. Employees follow IHG policies of the Winning Ways school of thought by working along, helping and caring for every other, celebrating and embracing variety, aiming higher at creating better keeps for guests and a much better working environment for fellow workers and most notably, always striving to do the right thing.
In spite of the best efforts of the global organisation, the hotel's Individuals Resource division and senior management, there are numerous HR conditions that still have to be addressed and have been discussed recently. This section highlights some suggestions to the problems that have been analysed.
Reward Management
Armstrong (1996) says that performance in the workplace and its relation to rewards is a intricate, sensitive and questionable portion of management which includes been argued for and against "at both useful and theoretical levels. " He continues to convey that praise management does not simply require compensating employees for his or her hard work, but is also necessary to "attract, inspire and maintain talented people. "
According to Torrington and Hall (1995) organisations require compensation management for a number of objectives including:-
Prestige to be gained from being truly a star performer
To be competitive to ensure a sufficient way to obtain employees
For control over workers
To motivate and improve performance of employees continuously
To control costs.
The management at Vacation Inn London-Bloomsbury should look into creating a competent and effective compensation management system based on performance in an effort to retain the company's best employees, stimulate all staff to achieve set focuses on and create a competitive and high performance working environment. However, the management should also pay attention to employees who are underperforming or not undertaking at a consistent level, and provide extra workout sessions, smaller, more achievable targets and even more frequent appraisals, instead of just conforming to IHG's placed standard methods.
Appraisal and Feedback
Feedback is actually a report a worker receives at the end of an performance diagnosis period. Organisations have various ways of gathering information to form an judgment on an individual's performance. However, Murphy and Cleveland (1995) have determined some drawbacks with the traditional responses process where managers discuss their views of performance with junior employees. In a normal opinions system, appraisees tend to disregard negative feedback, nor want to be "lectured independently performance. " In some cases the appraiser may possibly also have a distressing task of performing as judge and counsellor simultaneously. Matching to Kettley (1996) responses is more commonly accepted by appraisees when it's targets development and works more effectively when extensive competencies are graded rather than specific job related skills.
IHG could expose the idea of a 360 degree feedback and performance assessment process which would help employees to get a more wholesome report on the performance. Feedback from more than simply the management's point of view makes it more genuine, genuine and is also used more very seriously by the appraisee. Aside from being far better with junior employees, another important feature of the 360 degree feedback is that front lines employees have the ability to present their views on management, which would assist in overall development of the company. Kettley (1996) observes that with an effort including the 360 degree reviews, there may be problems of mature level management bureaucracy and other down sides of anonymity through the opinions collecting process with agitated employees being tempted to include intemperate responses.
Employee Retention
Price (2000) says that the two perfect concerns for an company associated with high staff turnover are:-
The high cost of recruiting and training employees
The loss of key skilled, trained and talented workers which could be highly disruptive to the organisations long-term goals
Hill and Trist (1955) recognized that employees have a tendency to leave an company in the first yr of employment rather than when they have got completed a reasonable amount of service. This design could be attributed to a few organisational procedures:-
Induction problems - The first impression of the company upon a newly employed person may be considered a deciding element in whether he/she decides to remain with this company for an extended period of time
Differential transit - Inside the first season to 1. 5 years, employees are usually on probation, assessed frequently and also gauging their own career prospects. By the end of this period, a second induction crisis may lead to further attrition.
Settled connection - Attrition rates following the second induction crises are lower since employees have the ability to settle in their assignments within the organisation.
The management at Holiday Inn London-Bloomsbury should focus on building a recruitment and selection process which targets individuals for long-term employment, with a comprehensive development and development plan, that would appeal mainly to employees who are looking to create a career in the hospitality industry, rather than hiring many of men and women who look at occupation in the organisation as a non permanent financial solution.
From the various theories of Individuals Tool management styles and operations it is noticeable that IHG and Holiday Inn London-Bloomsbury have had the opportunity to successfully put into practice a number of guidelines within the complete organisation and within the average person hotel itself. Being honored the 'Hotel of the Year 2009' prize by IHG in UK and Ireland, it is good to say that the hotel has been enhancing constantly in its operational departments and helping functions. Following the company's Being successful Ways regulations and striving to set-up 'Great Hotels Guests Love' the Holiday Inn has identified its employees as the most crucial tool and the strongest tool in its success. Keeping employees satisfied, rewarding their efforts and making every work to reduce attrition rate of the organisation's most effective and skilful staff members has become their goal as the hotel goes into another year wanting to retain its status as one of the better in the city.
