Translating Strategy into HR Policies and Practices Case*^,

Improving Performance at the Hotel Paris

The New Performance Management System

The Hotel Pariss competitive strategy is To use superior guest service to differentiate the HotelParis 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 Pariss performance appraisal system was inadequate. When the founders opened their first hotel, they went to an office-supply store and purchased a pad of performanceappraisal forms. The hotel chain used these. Each form was a two-sided page. Supervisors indicated whether the employees performance in terms of various standard traits including quantity of work, quality of work, and dependability was excellent, good, fair, or poor. Lisa knewthat, among other flaws, this appraisal tool did not force either the employee 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 employees 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 firms CFO were concerned by the current disconnect 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 firms new performance management system to help breathe life into the firms 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 hotels 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 employees 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 hotels 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 performancemanagement forms laid out the development efforts that the employee would undertake in the coming year. Instructions also reminded the supervisors that, in addition to the annual and semiannual appraisals, they should continuously interact with and update 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 companys 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 companys and the employees needs and preferences.

Questions

1. 9-22. Choose one job, such as front-desk clerk. Based on any information you have (including job descriptions you may have created in other chapters), write a list of duties, competencies, and performance standards for that chosen job.

2. 9-23. Based on that, and on what you read in this Dessler Human Resource Managementchapter, create a performance appraisal form for appraising that job.