Human Resources Planning
A struggling organization in the hotel services industry is looking to hire a new director of HR. The Rosebudd chain of 5 hotels offers services that are intended to make customers feel like they are staying in a family-run hotel. The employees know one another’s names, and they offer customers small perks such as a bottle of water when checking in, and various levels of room turn down services. Customers fill out what turn down services would like done in their room (ranging from nothing to fresh towels, new bedding, replenish toiletries, etc.) on the room card and hang the card on their door in the morning.
During your interview for the job of director, HR, the operations director and the managing director both agreed that they want the HR function to be more strategic, but they expressed different ideas for how they think the HR function can become strategic. The operations director wants the HR function to adopt a best practices approach to implementing HR policies. She believes that Rosebudd Hotels should hire consulting agencies with expertise in implementing best practices in recruitment and selection, employee development, training, and compensation, and follow their advice. The managing director believes that Rosebudd Hotels should look at what the other hotels chains are doing with their HR and emulate those practices.
What is your advice; do you go with what the operations manager wants to do, what the managing director suggests, or do you have another idea? Provide a rationale for your decision around how to make the HR function more strategic at Rosebudd Hotels, and base that rationale in the course materials.
The restaurant industry has obviously been through some very difficult market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coffee shops like Tim Hortons and Starbucks have suffered in particular, as people are not going out for coffee as much and are not at work as much to pick up a quick lunch or midday coffee. Tim Hortons reported that business was down by more than 11% in 2020 year compared to previous year, and Starbucks was in a similar position.
If you worked in corporate HR for Starbucks Canada, and were put in charge of estimating the demand for baristas over the next 2 years, how would you estimate the demand?