HR Planning at the City Hotel

The City Hotel is located in the middle of a medium-sized city. It caters mainly for business trade
during the week and for holiday trade during the weekends and in the summer. In the summer
and at weekends there is, therefore, a greater demand for catering and waiting staff as there is a
greater demand for lunches. During the same periods there is a lesser demand for housekeeping
staff as the customers are mostly longer-stay. The hotel has been gradually improved and
refurbish over the past five years, and trade, although reasonably good to begin with, has also
gradually improved over the period. There are plans to open an extension with a further twenty
bedrooms next year.
Note 1
There has been a particular problem in recruiting kitchen assistants, waiting and bar staff. This is
partly due to local competition, but also to the fact that early starting and late finishing times
make travel very difficult. Often there are no buses at these times and taxis are the only available
transport. One or two hotels in the area have begun a hotel transport system, and the City Hotel
management have decided to investigate this idea in order to attract a higher number of better
quality applicants. A second problem has been identified as the lack of availability of chefs and
receptionists of the required level of skill. It is felt that the local colleges are not producing
potential staff with sufficient skills, and therefore the management of the City Hotel have
decided to consider:
1. A training scheme, either run internally or in conjunction with other hotels.
2. Better wages to attract the better trained staff from other employers.
3. Investigation of other localities and the possibility of providing more staff.
Note 2
Having mapped the environment, the hotel management looked at the demands and responses for
each priority area. For customers the beginnings of the list are shown in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Demands and responses for the customer factor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Customer demands
Responses
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Polite staff
Our staff pride themselves on being
courteous
Staff understand that we
are busy
Sometimes we need facilities

We will make procedures quick and simple,

people and staff will respond to needs
immediately
We will be flexible and enthusiastic in

we have not arranged in

our response
advance
And so on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note 3
The management of the City Hotel decided that one of their key objectives over the next three
years was to become known for excellence in customer service. This was seen as a key tool to
compete with adjacent hotels. Managers used brainstorming to identify the staff behaviours that
they wanted to see in place, and summarised their ideas in the format in Table 3.2.
Table 3.2 Behavioural expectations chart: organisation goal excellence in customer service
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Behaviours needed
How to create or reinforce
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Address customers by name
A customer service training course to be
developed
Smile at customer
A group incentive bonus to be paid on basis of
customer feedback. Customer service meetings to
be held in company time once per week
Respond to requests,
e.g. room change in
positive manner
Ask customers if everything
is to their satisfaction
Answer calls from rooms
within four rings
And so on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In addition to this a suggestion scheme was instigated to collect ideas for improvement in
customer service. A payment of 50 to be made for each successful suggestion.
Note 4
The City Hotel management has plans to open a further twenty bedrooms in a new extension
during the coming year. On the basis of this simple model the additional staff required could be
worked out as follows:

Fifty-five bedrooms requires 60 staff.

The ratio of staff to bedrooms is therefore 1.09 staff per bedroom.

If the same relationship were maintained (i.e. without any economies of scale) the
additional number of staff needed would be: 20 bedrooms

1.09 staff = 21.8 extra staff needed. Thus total staff needed would = 81.2 full-time
equivalent staff.

Note 5

The managerial staff at the City Hotel exercised judgements on the

following human resource planning matters:
1. Management considered the probable reasons for the relationship
between people demand and time. It was felt that this was most
probably due to the gradual improvement in the hotel over the last
five years. Since this improvement had virtually reached its
potential it was felt that the relationship between employee
demand and time would change.
2. Judgements had to be made on whether the occupancy of the new
wing would immediately justify all the additional staff to be
appointed.
3. The management considered that since the weather had been very
poor in the preceding summer, the bookings for the following
summer period might be slightly down on the last year and this
shortfall might not be made up by increasing business trade.
4. Judgements were made as to whether staff could be better utilised,
with the effect that the additional numbers of staff projected might
not be so great.
Note 6

The managers of the City Hotel decided to encourage greater staff

flexibility and interchangeability. This interchangeability would be
particularly useful between waiting duties and chamber duties. At the
present time waiting duties are greatest at the weekend and least during
weekdays, whereas chamber duties are the other way around. The effect
of this is that waiting staff and chamber staff both have a number of
hours of enforced idle time, and the feeling was that there was some
overstaffing. By securing flexibility from staff (by paying a flexibility
bonus) it was felt that the smooth running and efficiency of the hotel
would be considerably increased. It was calculated that the nine chamber posts and eight
waiting posts could be covered by sixteen combined posts (all FTEs).
Note 7
Managers of the City Hotel assessed the levels of customer service at present by collecting
questionnaire data from both staff and customers and conducting a series of interviews with staff.
They also asked in what areas service could be improved and asked staff how this might be
achieved. As well as specific targets for improvement, they found many examples of systems and
organisation that did not help staff give the best customer service. Staff understood that getting
the paperwork right was more important than service to the customer in checking out and in. The
paperwork systems were over-complex and could be simplified. Also, shift-change times were
found to correspond with busy checkout times. Plans were developed to improve systems,
organisation and communication.
Note 8
The statistical analysis of staff (Table 5.3) was aimed at occupation, age and full-time equivalent
posts. This analysis was used primarily for three main purposes:
1. Full-time equivalents needed to be worked out so that this figure could be used in other
manpower planning calculations.
2. To consider the occupational balance of staff and to give information which would be
useful from the point of view of staff interchangeability.
3. To plan for future retirements and, in consequence, look at recruitment plans and
promotion plans.
Note 9
At the City Hotel eighteen staff had left during the preceding year. The annual labour turnover
index was therefore worked out to be:

(*The average number of staff employed over the year is different from the maximum number of
staff that have been employed and were desired to be employed.)
Note 10
At the City Hotel, of the eighteen staff that had been recruited over the year, three had been
replacements for the same kitchen assistants job, and two had been replacements for another
kitchen assistants job. The stability index was therefore worked out as:

(*At exactly one year before there were only 69 of the desired 72 staff in post.)
Note 11
A histogram (Figure 5.1) was plotted of leavers over the past year from the City Hotel. It shows
how the majority of leavers had shorter lengths of service, with periods of employment of less
than six months being most common.
Figure 3.1A histogram of the lengths of service of eighteen employees leaving the City Hotel in
the previous year
Note 12
Analysis of the age distribution (Table 5.3) indicates that there may be some difficulties with
promotions. In particular, a problem was identified for management promotions. There are four
general managers, the youngest being 21. In the past such a junior manager would have been
promoted after two years service, which they had just completed. The ages of the other
managers indicate that there will be no retirements in the immediate future and management staff
turnover has, in the past few years, been low. In view of this it was thought likely that the junior
manager would leave shortly. This was not desired since they were particularly able, so ways of
dealing with this promotion block were considered, such as creating a new post, which might
retain the junior managers services until a promotion became available.
Table 3.3 Staff by occupation, number and age

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are no direct activities relating to this worked example, however there are some associated
activities:
Case study activity:
Break the students into small groups to begin to prepare a human resource plan based on the
information in the City Hotel case study. It is essential that students have pre-read the case and
are very familiar with its contents.
Ask groups to specifically design, for the City Hotel, the following in outline:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

supply plan, *
organisation and structure plan
employee utilisation plan
training and development plan,
performance plan,
appraisal plan,
reward plan,
employee relations plan
communications plan

Although a number of clue are given in the case study as to activities that can be included in the
plan, there has been no attempt to make these complete, to integrate them or to consider the
knock on effects of one plan on another.
The task for the groups is to propose an integrated set of outline plans for the year ahead with an
assessment of the financial and other implications supported by a sound rationale.
Specifically stress that each of these plans must not conflict with any of the others and that they
should be mutually supportive. Students should be able to describe their plan in about 50 words
for each area, as the emphasis is not on the detail but on integration and implications.

Allow plenty of time for groups to discuss, as this is a demanding task. Report back could be in
either of two forms:
Option 1
Give each group the opportunity to present their plan to the whole group and allow for time to
question and compare different approaches to the same issues. (The groups may have decided to
meet in the meantime to do further work). This timing will be more appropriate to part-time
students already employed in the personnel function. For full time students you may wish to
delay presentation until towards the end of the course, and use this as a framework for their
ongoing interpretation and application of each session.
Option 2
The case could be used as an individual or group assignment to be presented in written form.