Human Resource and Cross Cultural Diversity of Holiday inn

Introduction

This report is a research about human resource and cross cultural diversity of Holiday inn. Almost all professional’s work with different cultural backgrounds and communication styles. Developing communication skills with different people requires honesty, trust and respect. In this report the main objective will be about how holiday inn manages its employees and the aspects of managing cultural diversity. There will be descriptions about the HR policies and how holiday inn overcomes its problems relating to HR.

Company background

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Holiday Inn is a subsidiary of Intercontinental Hotel Groups (IHG).IHG operates 7 brands of hotel worldwide and the headquarters are in the UK. The chain includes

1. intercontinental hotels and resorts
2. crown plaza hotel and resort
3. holiday inn express
4. stay bridge suites
5. holiday inn hotels and resort
6. hotel indigo
7. candlewood suites

Holiday Inn is a stylish hotel which offers refreshing simplicity. Holiday Inn is the most recognized hotel brand in the world with a global reputation for service, comfort, value and location. After the prelaunch of Holiday Inn, today it has come up with its many chains and sub branches like holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Club Vacations and Holiday Inn Garden Court. With over more than 3000 branches worldwide and 65 in the UK it has become the largest hotel chain.

Its main aim is to full fill customer’s desire and employees need. That’s why holiday inn has come up with value offers; priority club rewards occasion’s offers for the comfort of its customers. For easy access it also provides online booking, lend rooms for meetings, conferences and many other such facilities for more comport and ease of customers. This hotel is conveniently located and you can find them through out the world or just outside the Airport. Today, Holiday Inn is proud to be an Official Olympic partner 2012 in London. This will include hosting the world’s athletes and welcoming them to Holiday inn family. They also be providing flexible employment so that they can earn while train.

History of the Company

The foundation of Holiday inn was in 1952. It was opened in Memphis, Tennessee by Kemmons Wilson. He also wanted to provide less-costly accommodations for families. So he teamed-up with Wallace E. Johnson. Kemmons Wilson first came up with the idea to team-up following a road trip to Washington, D.C. He claims to have been so disappointed with the quality of the roadside motels he encountered, that he wanted to do something that would bring change. The name of the Holiday Inn franchise was originally provided as a joke by architect Eddie Bluestein. Bluestein was making reference to the Bing Crosby movie. The chain grew dramatically in 1957, following the chain’s official renaming as Holiday Inn. Within one year, there were over fifty Inns throughout America. In 1968, the 1000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio; Texas. In 1970’s The Holiday Inn chain led the motel market, putting a huge amount of financial pressure on more traditional hotels. It also set the standard for copycat competitors like Days Inn, Ramada Inn, Best Western and Howard Johnson’s. When Wilson was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1972, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inn hotels worldwide. The decision to include indoor pools at many of the chains, further brought customers flocking through the doors.

Wilson retired from his work with Holiday Inn in 1979. Holiday Inn lost its dominance over the market in the 1980s. In 1988, the franchise was bought by Bass Brewers, which would later become the InterContinental Hotels Group. Two years later, the Holiday Inn Hotels located in the United States were also purchased after Wilson sold his remaining interest in the company. Holiday Inn is still a name that can be used by leasing the brand franchise from InterContinental who holds the rights to it. In January 2002; the company produced a new 130-room “Next Generation” prototype hotel to rebuild the brand. It included a bistro-like restaurant and an indoor pool. The first of these prototype hotels, the Holiday Inn Gwinnett Center, was built in Duluth, Georgia, in 2003.On 24 October 2007; IHG announced a worldwide prelaunch of the Holiday Inn brand. The prelaunch is “focused on delivering consistently best in class service and physical quality levels, including a redesigned welcome experience [and] signature bedding and bathroom products…” The first prelaunch Holiday Inn opened in the USA in the spring of 2008. Currently there are more than 2,500 prelaunch Holiday Inn brand hotels around the world and the Holiday Inn global brand prelaunch process is on track to be completed by the end of 2010. In September 2008, IHG announced the creation of a new timeshare brand, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, a strategic alliance with The Family of Orange Lake Resorts. Holiday inn relaunch was the biggest relaunch ever in the history of hotel industry.

Jane Bednall from Holiday Inn said: “The Holiday Inn relaunch is all about focusing on what matters most to our guests – a modern, contemporary hotel with friendly efficient service and offering a great night’s sleep. We’ve teamed up with Diversity to bring this to life for our guests in a fun and entertaining way and to mark our 100threlaunched hotel in Europe. The “Dance Inn” not only shows off what a relaunched Holiday Inn hotel looks like, but also gives people some great moves for the dance floor.”

Features of Holiday Inn

1. 9 Floors
2. 120 Guest rooms
3. 68 Double Bedded rooms
4. 52 Single Bedded rooms
5. 8 Suites
6. 1 Special rooms for disables
7. Downtown
8. Cocktail Longue
9. Gym
10. Swimming Pool
11. Travel Desk
12. 3 Restaurants
13. Car Rental desk
14. On-site business facilities
15. Kid Suites room

Organizational Chart

Holiday inn organizes its management in a very authentic way. The organizational chart is a vertical one where the General Manager is the main head of the organization and if in absences of him/her the executive secretary is in charge. The chart shows a centralized power and formal control system. This essentially indicates that there is a routine task for every department and strictly emphasis on its rules and regulations. This helps to smoothen in the operation of the organization which clearly defines who is responsible for what. Also, helps to provide a consultation on what the organization core and culture is about and how to proceed the organization infrastructure to support those needs.

The HR holds the responsibilities in formation of the hotel and its employees. HR has

HRM Activities

There are certain rules and process to be carried out by the HR department for a refined performance in the hotel by the employees and the heads themselves.

Planning

Planning is a process to accomplish goals. It should be real depending upon the activities. Holiday Inn basically follows 5 planning rules.

a. Long term plan

Long term plan is achieving respect from every traveler by being the number one choice and to earn revenue for the establishment of a better business.

b. Short term plan

It’s main focus to be friendly and caring with all its customers and to give comfort feeling of stay.

Normally, Holiday Inn focuses in short term plan. The plans are made accordingly to its financial matters entirely by the management department. Furthermore, the term “Manning” is also applied by the HR manager in the hotel. In this process the HR has to maintain a proper record of employees working in a specific year and to maintain the number of employees.

c. Benchmarking

As Holiday Inn is a franchise of Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), it has to maintain a standard of benchmarking of hotels competing against ING.

d. Contingency Planning

Every organization has a contingency plan for every department. For Example, In Holiday Inn, The contingency plan in the HR department is, if the chief chef leaves the hotel for any reason the hotel will hire a trained chef for a certain period of time under contract basis until Holiday Inn finds its own chef.

By having a contingency plan it helps the organization to avoid halt of operations during emergencies and helps to cope with unexpected situations and developments.

e. Participatory Planning

This plan refers to involvement of every staffs and workers in the hotel to formulate and carry out a plan. Different employees inspire different plan which helps for further decision. The HR is responsible to make sure every employee has an implemented plan, this leads for a better efficiency of work in the hotel.

The main objective of planning is to focus on future demand and to get the right people with right number of employee in the organization. The Human resouces Process needs to be implemented which helps for future personnel needs , cope up with sudden and future change, create highly talented personnel and internal expansion with good reputation of the company.

Job Analysis 

HR plays the major role in job specification, description and performance standards. The first step is to complete a formal job analysis for each position. Holiday inn evaluates the information provided by concerned department heads. The observation and interviews are the major sources taken care by the HR department.

Holiday inn has a certain rules for job analysis where step by step process is implemented.

Firstly, they check the job information with accuracy then write a job description based in the information proved and determine the skills, abilities and knowledge that is required.

In this process all the involvement of employee is untaken for collecting job related information’s, duties and responsibilities. Mainly job analysis is considered as gathering information, processing them, giving job description and specification.

Holiday Inn makes its analysis by observations, interviews and questionnaire’s where specialists are assigned in co operation with manages, supervisors and employees. To design a job, the specialists are required where HR plays the role in recruitment, Selection, training and other practices in the Hotel of employee. Lastly, the job analysis form or samples is printed with job title, job description, reporting person duties and responsibilities.

Employee Recruitment

Employee recruitment in simple term is recruiting qualified employees. There are certain regulations to be followed by the HR manager for recruitment process. The HR manager is responsible for designing and implementing the process that will fulfill the industry’s needs. Furthermore the HR is responsible for finding sources of applicants, writing and placing the advertisements, contracting agencies and schools.

Holiday Inn divides its recruiting process in two terms:

Internal Recruitment:

This type of recruitment is mostly in practice in Holiday inn. Here, it focuses in present employee’s application for required position. Then if there is any reference from current or former workers is taken under consideration.

External Recruitment:

External recruitment is a difficult part for the HR manager. Finding a candidate from outside the organization needs a lot of thinking. The effectiveness and success of the organization depends on the external recruitment process. External recruitment done in this hotel is placing advertisements in new papers/radio/television, contacting universities/colleges/institutes or agencies, walk-in interviews, etc

The HR department of Holiday in practices its recruitment process in six stages.

1. Planning
2. Strategic development
3. Searching
4. Screening
5. Evaluation
6. control

Selection

Different hotels have different selection process. It basically depends upon the managerial policies. Selecting a candidate is a long process from the time of interview to final contract. HR manager has all the responsibility to hire the person/candidate with the best abilities, skills and knowledge. The format of Holiday Inn in selection process is

1. Taking application forms
2. Screening the forms
3. Interviews selected forms( job interview and personal interview)
4. Testing( oral and written tests)
5. Selection in probation ( which takes 3 months time)
6. Background and reference check
7. Physical examination
8. Hiring on the basis of permanent or part-time contract.

Once a candidate is hired his/her performance is evaluated every month by the supervisors. Holiday inn selection is made positively supporting the diversity and selection is made according to the requirement of the job.

Orientation & Placement

After the selection process is over Holiday inn introduces each employee to its new job, co workers and organization. This is done for the comfort of new employees. Orientation about every department and every employee is given which normally takes 2-3 weeks. Placement is giving the right job to the new candidate. Mainly assessment classification is placed for newly hired employee.

Training & Development

Training and development activities are carried on in order to implant specific skills, knowledge and ability in an employee. Holiday inn believes that effective training is the success of a hotel.

There are two techniques which holiday Inn implies:

On-Job Training:

This type of training requires planning and supervision for effective development in practice and employee oriented capabilities. This training is cost effective. Assigning workers in sales, food & beverage department, check in, check out positions are practically done in training. Furthermore, list of sequel steps are that should be correctly followed and required materials/tools are provided for effective training. In the end, feedback from every candidate is undertaken and evaluated.

Off-job Training:

The three main focus of off-job training is in-house, external and independent.

Where, in In-house lectures, demonstrations and technical knowledge is provided.

External focuses on discipline concerned with hospitality and finally independent focuses on training methods controlled and managed by the learner himself. Which includes, computer assisted learning and interactive visual learning.

The training process of Holiday inn is categorized as:

1. Assessing training needs
2. preparing the training plans
3. specifying training objectives
4. designing the training program
5. selecting the structural methods
6. completing the training plan
7. conducting the training
8. evaluation the training
9. placing further training (if required)

This process helps in developing the potential in every employee to make a long term successful career.

Performance Appraisal 

Performance appraisal is the actual performance of an employee, behavior on duty and potential for future. It is generally done for the promotion or termination on an employee. There are different methods of appraisal in different hotels but commonly used is rating scale method which is either done on day to day performance or questionnaire.

Challenges of performance Appraisal In Holiday Inn

1. create an Excellence in culture and environment for every employee
2. encourage the employee to make their own decision without the fear of failing
3. provide and implement new challenges
4. Developments of growths for skilled employees.

The main process of Appraisal is:

1. To set objectives of Performance Appraisal
2. Establish job expectation
3. Design an Appraisal programmer
4. Performance interview
5. In use of appraisal data.

360 DEGREE PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS

360 DEGREE appraisal involves process of receiving feedback from people whose views are considered useful for future. 360 degree feedback is typically provided in a form indicating skills, behavior, and scoring judgment process.

Employee Relations

Taking in consideration, with the ride of misbehaviors and unethical practices taking place in age, gender, religion discrimination and harassment, there needs to be a fair treatment to every employee. The HR department acts in involvement as liaison between entities, agencies and employees who should properly address and resolve the issues. For better performance, positive relation between organization and employees should be well maintained. Holiday inn basically concerns better relation of employees in the following:

Employee remuneration

The HR department determines the remuneration policy. In holiday inn, the external and internal factors are taken under consideration which deals with factors like cost of living, labour laws, economy, ability to pay the employees, performance appraisal, incentive payments. The hotel provides incentives to its well being employees which is decided by the HR manager.

Employees Benefits and services

The benefits and services provided by the hotel is Insurance, social secutity, worker’s compensation and even pay for not working hours such as annual leaves, sick leaves, casual leave, maternity leaves.

The furthermore services provided are:

1. One time free lunch and twice tea break
2. Discount on hotel rooms and food
3. Appreciation letter
4. Award for employee of the month.
5. Employee Welfare

The term refers in taking care of the worker’s. it also refers in recognizing the value of workers, motivating them, building up local hotel reputation and minimizing social evils. The HR department has one more role to participate in and keep the record of health of every employee.

Industrial relation:

Holiday inn firstly established its relation with Gulf Oil Corporation in 1963, which was a long tern contract but ended up in 1982. In the past, the hotel went through many conflicts due to its name and logos. After the relaunch of Holiday Inn and becoming a subsidiary of Intercontinental Hotel Groups, it became success in establishing its reputation again in the hospitality industry.

Today Holiday inn has many contacts with many other industrial brands such as a collective agreement with national automobile, aerospace and transportation of Canada. IHG announced in August 2010, that it has signed a franchises agreement with Alianza Fiduciara for building up a new branch of Holiday Inn in Columbia. There are more than 55 holiday inn brand in German’s and some is under constructions. Holiday Inn plays a major role in participating in IHG’s guest’s loyalty programmer.

Managerial Diversity

Managerial diversity is simply the differences between people of different gender, ethnic group, personality, color, background, education and so on. The Hr manager needs to effectively deal with the change, adaptability and communication of the employees in the organization. Holiday Inn is ready to spend resources in the management of diversity. But there are some challenges of diversity which arises such as communication which is a major problem in an organization, the resistance to change, which majority of the employee do not accept. The implementation of diversity in workplace is important aspect to think for the HR. holiday Inn one of those hotels which allows every employee to express its views and ideas.

Recommendations

When strengthening competitiveness take place many industry choose internal management actions including training and education and announcing employee pay role which is a lot of burden for the HR department. In Holiday Inn, to achieve progress there should be innovation of culture within the organization, which can help to cope up with arising challenges. The HRM should participate on more advice of management at all levels about implication of various practical policies. Programs such as job enrichment, incentive system should be purposed. More female worker should be introduced without any discrimination. The communication barriers needs to overcome and should be ready participation on adapting change. Many workers refuse to accept the fact of cultural changing in workplace. There should be proper tranined, motivated and more importantly flexible workplace. There is a very lengthy process of recruitment which should be minimized. Involvement of every employee should be taken in consideration of executive diversity. The hotel should permit the employees to join the crew on a permanent basis. Lastly, the hotel should participate in some corporate social activities as it is a part of the social well-being.

Conclusion

Hotel industry has similar work policy. Holiday Inn is a well known hotel which changes according to traveler’s need. It has made ease for every customers with online reservation facilities. The good HR policy will not only be the policy which only considers HR function with care but consider them as a culture of hotel policy. In Holiday Inn, employee care is the first policy. This gives a comfortable feeling to the employee which motivates them to work with interests. The working environment is quite friendly which helps employees to discuss their problems without hesitation. There is no discrimination made regardless age, gender, color, nationality, disabilities and so on. The responsibility of HR is much higher in Holiday Inn. The problem arising in HR department is systematically resolved .The cultural diversity is sometimes the major problem which should be taken under consideration .Lastly, as economy became global the work force becomes diverse .The Hotel’s success depends on how it manages the diversity in the work place. Therefore, evaluation of organization diversity policy and plans for the future is completely necessary.

References

1. http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/12514/careers_and_job_hunting/how_hr_works_to_get_the_job_done.html
2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/27129689/Holiday-Inn
3. http://www.scribd.com/doc/20896686/Holiday-Inn-HRM
4. http://www.qualobster.eu/doc/Definition%20of%20Diversity%20Management.pdf
5.  http://www.scribd.com/doc/22945926/HR-Practices-in-Hotel-Industry
6.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_inn
7. http://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?pageid=409
8. http://download-reports.blogspot.com/search/label/Hotels%20and%20Recreational%20Business
9. http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1168259/Holiday-Inn.html
10.  http://www.answers.com/topic/cross-cultural
11. http://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?PageID=57&NewsID=2370
12. http://www.lrb.bc.ca/cas/WTI19.pdf
13.  http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4050312.html
14.  http://www.diversityworking.com/employerZone/diversityManagement/?id=9

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