Erica, the Human Resource Manager, was frustrated by many of her hotel staff speak Spanish in the hallways and rooms as they were cleaning them. The Sawmill Hotel, where Erica works, is situated in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its target market includes sports enthusiasts attending nearby professional (Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, Wild) games, but also business professionals and families. This four-star hotel features an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a message center, three stores, two restaurants, and a beauty shop. The total staff includes about ten managers, 30 cleaning assistants to take care of rooms, ten front desk specialists, and 25 who are involved with the stores, restaurants, and beauty shops. All are required to focus on customer service as their number-one value. Erica hires everyone in the hotel except for the Chief Executive Officer, Vice President of Finance, and Vice President of Marketing. For the rest of the managers, the 30 cleaning assistants, and the store, restaurant, and beauty shop workers, she advertises for openings with the local job service and the Minneapolis Star Tribune (with the associated website). A typical Tribune ad for a cleaning assistant reads as follows: Cleaning Assistants Wanted, Sawmill Hotel, $9-$11/hour. Prepare custom rooms and prepare laundry. Contact: Erica Hollie, Human Resource Manager, 555-805-1234. As a result of the advertising, Erica has obtained good help from the local target market. Twenty-seven of the 30 cleaning assistants are women. Twenty of the 30 have a Hispanic background. Of the Hispanics, all can speak English at varying levels. Rachel, the lead cleaning assistant, believes that maximizing communication among employees helps the assistants become more productive and stable within the hotel system. She uses both English and Spanish to talk to assistants under her. Spanish is proper with many assistants because they know Spanish is much better than English. Spanish is also the "good friends" language that allows the Spanish speakers to catch up on each other's affairs freely, and that motivates them to stay working at the hotel. The use of the Spanish language among cleaning assistants has been a common practice for the two years since the hotel opened.

In the last few months, top management decided to have an even greater focus on customer service by ensuring customer comment cards are available in each room and at the front desk. Customers can also comment online about their stay at the hotel. There have been several customer complaints that cleaning assistants have been laughing about them behind their backs in Spanish. One customer, Kathy, thought staffers negatively commented about her tight pink stretch pants covering her overweight legs. Other customers have complained they didn't know asking staff for help was easy given the amount of Spanish spoken. In all, about 15 out of 42 complaints in a typical month were associated with the use of the Spanish language. Though bellhops and front desk clerks are typically the workers who handle complaints first, Erica, the Human Resource Manager has the primary responsibility to notify workers about customer complaint patterns and to set pol icy in dealing with the protests. The prevalence of com plants concerning workers speaking Spanish each month led Erica to make a significant change in policy concerning the use of Spanish. In consultation with top management, Erica instituted the following employee handbook policy effective immediately: "English is the main language spoken at the hotel. Any communication among employees shall be in English. Use of Spanish or other languages is prohibited unless specifi cally requested by management or the customer." In an e-mail explanation for the new policy, Erica stated the number of complaints that had come from the use of Spanish and the need for customer courtesy and communication. Chapter 3: The Legal Environment and D1vers1ty Management 7g Rachel immediately responded to Erica's e-mail by stating that the new policy was too harsh on the native Spanish-speaking assistants at the hotel. She thought that a better approach was to allow her assistants to communicate with each other in Spanish but by quietly doing so away from customers' earshot. If there is a general discussion in front of a customer, it is recommended to speak English. There should never be discussions in any language about customer appearances. Though Rachel grumbled, the policy stuck because Erica and top management wanted to stop customer complaints. As a result of the policy, 10 of the 20 Spanish-speaking assistants quit within two months. These were high-quality assistants who had been with the hotel since the start. Their replacements came from a job service and have not worked out as well in their performance.

What are three illegal behaviors that Mr. Brian exhibited in this interview? How was it illegal, and how could he have avoided it?Explain

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Its important to note that the information provided doesnt explicitly state that Rachel exhibited il... View the full answer