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Improving Performance at The Hotel Paris

hotel paris case study

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150 views2 pages

Improving Performance at The Hotel Paris

hotel paris case study

Uploaded by

houtarou28042000
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Improving Performance at the Hotel Paris

The New Performance Management System


The Hotel Paris's competitive strategy is "To use superior guest ser- vice to differentiate the
Hotel Paris properties, and to thereby increase the length of stay and return rate of guests, and
thus boost revenues and profitability." HR manager Lisa Cruz must now formulate appraisal
policies and activities that support this competitive strategy, by eliciting the required employee
behaviors and competencies. Lisa knew that the Hotel Paris's performance appraisal system
was inadequate. When the founders opened their first hotel, they went to an office-supply store
and purchased a pad of performance appraisal forms. The hotel chain used these. Each form
was a two-sided page. Supervisors indicates whether the employee's performance in terms of
various standard traits including quantity of work, quality of work, and dependability was
excellent, good, fair, or poor. Lisa knew that, among other flaws, this appraisal tool did not force
either the em- ployee or the supervisor to focus the appraisal on the extent to which the
employee was helping the Hotel Paris to achieve its strategic goals. She wanted a system that
focused the employee's attention on taking those actions that would contribute to helping the
company achieve its goals, for instance, in terms of improved customer service. Both Lisa and
the firm's CFO were concerned by the current dis- connect between (1) what the current
appraisal process was focusing on and (2) what the company wanted to accomplish in terms of
its strategic goals. They wanted the firm's new performance management system to help
breathe life into the firm's strategic performance, by focusing employees' behavior specifically
on the performances that would help the Hotel Paris achieve its strategic goals. Lisa and her
team created a performance management system that focused on both competencies and
objectives. In designing the new system, their starting point was the job descriptions they had
created for the hotel's employees. These descriptions each included required competencies.
Consequently, using a form similar to Figure 9-3, the front-desk clerks' appraisals now focus on
competencies such as "able to check a guest in or out in 5 minutes or less." Most service
employ- ees' appraisals include the competency, "able to exhibit patience and guest support of
this even when busy with other activities." There were other required competencies. For
example, the Hotel Paris wanted all service employees to show initiative in helping guests, to be
customer oriented, and to be team players (in terms of sharing information and best practices).
Each of these competencies derives from the hotel's aim of becoming more service-oriented.
Each employee now also receives one or more strategically relevant objectives for the coming
year. (One, for a housecleaning crewmember, said, "Martha will have no more than three room
cleaning infractions in the coming year," for instance.) In addition to the goals- and
competencies-based appraisals, other Hotel Paris performance management forms laid out the
development efforts that the employee would undertake in the coming year. Instruc- tions also
reminded the supervisors that, in addition to the annual and semiannual appraisals, they should
continuously interact with and up- date their employees. The result was a comprehensive
performance management system: The supervisor appraised the employee based on goals and
competencies that were driven by the company's strategic needs. And, the actual appraisal
resulted in new goals for the coming year, as well as in specific development plans that made
sense in terms of the company's and the employees' needs and preferences. Questions 9-22.
Choose one job, such as front-desk clerk. Based on any in- formation you have (including job
descriptions you may have created in other chapters), write a list of duties, competen- cies, and
performance standards for that chosen job. 9-23. Based on that, and on what you read in this
Dessler Human Resource Management chapter, create a performance ap- praisal form for
appraising that job.

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