Department of Marriott Human Resources for Employees: Background
A company requires physical and human resources for its operations; human resources are the greatest asset that an organization can have; without it, business transactions cannot be affected (Tocher and Matthew, 2009). It ensures that the business is running in the right way currently, as future strategies are set. Successful leaders or managers can combine available strengths and weaknesses of their human capital for the good of the organization (Bandt and Haines, 2002). How well the human resources are sourced, developed and retained in an organization is the work of determines the competitiveness of a company.
Developing an efficient team is the role of human resources department supported by top and line managers; the process starts with human resources planning, to appraisal, motivation, rewards and ends with the termination of an employment contract. Terms of employment vary with different organizations and so do the human selection, contracting and recruitment; however, there are some similarities among industry players.
The hospitality industry is a labour-intensive industry, for a business to be successful in the sector, there is a need to have an efficient human resources management (Alexandral, Frank and Erin, 2006). Marriott International is an international chain of hotels that have been a success in the industry, the success of the company has been highly been attributed to its well-managed human resources team. This paper discusses human resources management at Marriott International.
History of Marriott
Willard Marriot and his bride, Alice, established Marriott International in 1927; the two started by putting a beer stand in Washington D.C., the beer stand was a micro establishment that could only accommodate nine people. It was named “Hot Shoppe” where they prepared hot fast food like tacos, tamales and chilli. These food items were mainly served to clients during the winter months. In 1929, Marriott International was officially incorporated as Hot Shoppes, Inc. It experienced fast growth. In 1953, the company was listed as a public company. It laid its competitive advantage in world markets on product diversification.
The company opened Twin Bridges Marriott located in Arlington, Virginia; this was the first hotel opened by the company. With its fast-growing pace, Twin Bridges Marriott went international in 1966; this happened after the company took over the running of an airline-catering kitchen in Venezuela. It later changed the name to Marriott Corporation in 1967. The company later engaged in a series of takeovers that enabled it to grow into a billion-dollar corporation.
In the year 1998, Marriott International was listed in the stock market as an independent public company after which it started to focus its attention on business and leisure lodging. To ensure success in such a new venture, the company sold its superior living facilities in 2002. Marriott International continues to diversify its operations. Nonetheless, the leadership of Marriott International started with the two founders, Marriot and Alice. Today, the company’s top management entails six executives operating at the senior level; it has also thirty-six corporate officers (Marriott International, Inc. Official website, 2011).
Vision and Mission of Marriott International Company
The vision of the Marriott International Company is to be the leader in the global lodging industry; it aspires to be the world leader in providing excellent services in the hospitality industry. To achieve this vision, the company strives to provide the best services in the world within the hotel and lodging industry. The mission statement of the company affirms that company’s commitment to being the best and provider of excellent lodging and food services. It achieves this by treating its workers in the best very ever so, that they can offer extra-ordinary services to the company’s customers (Marriott International, Inc. Official website, 2011).
Competition main competitors
It is important to note that Marriott International already operates in the sixty-eight nation of the world. This makes it possible for the company to offer its services to a large number of customers across the globe. However, it must be acknowledged that the company faces stiff competition from similar companies operating in the same industry both locally and abroad. Many of the company’s competitors are already spread across eight or more countries. This means that the competitors are enjoying a wider customer base than Marriott International. The main competitors of Marriott International include:
Starwood Hotels: this group of hotels provides similar services to clients. The hotel already has 297 hotels in Europe alone. Besides, it operates in countries found in the American continent, the Middle East and parts of Africa. It is therefore evident that Starwood Hotels get more revenues than the Marriott International due to its large base of operation spread across the continent.
Choice Hotels International: this is a group of hotels with international franchises totalling right over five thousand hotels. These franchises operate under different brands such as Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn and Cambria Suite amongst others. This company is also bigger than Marriott International and enjoys a higher level of revenues than Marriott International.
Intercontinental Hotels: this is deemed the largest hotel in the world judging by the number of rooms it has. It operates in more than a hundred countries across the world. This, therefore, implies that it is the largest competitor to the Marriott International (Marriott International, Inc. Official website, 2011).
Department of Marriott Human Resources for Employees: Management
Marriott International human resources department is concerned with people at work and their relationship with their employer. The company has a human resources principle of “The Spirit to serve”; the spirit that the company wants to instil in its human resources team.
The company has a well-managed human resources team that aims at developing an orchestrate team; it understands that in the hospitality industry, the quality of service by the human resources is of crucial benefit to the company. A company’s human resources department is responsible for looking at its staff’s welfare. The department is responsible for planning, deploying, employing, training, retaining, and dismissal of employees (Armstrong, 2008). Marriott human resource department is manned by a robust and well-experienced team; the following are the main functions of the team:
Human Capital Planning
Human resources planning is an attempt to forecast how many and what kind of employees are required or will be required and to what extent this demand is likely to be met; Marriott human resource managers have the role of creating frameworks of determining the human capital to be used within their organization (Weaver and Maria 2001). The department does so with a consultation with relevant departments to establish the human capital demands they have.
It involves the comparison of organization’s current human resources, (this is done by an analysis of the level at which the company can satisfy its labour demands) the likely future needs (this is calculated by making futuristic analysis and considering the seasons that the industry is). Consequently, it is involved in the establishment of programs for hiring, training, redeploying and possibly discarding employees. Human resources planning is a continuous process as long an organization is operating; in the hospitality industry, the human capital management needs to be special because of the seasonal business (Andrew and Dirk, 2004).
Steps in Human Resources Planning as adopted by Marriot
When the company HRD is planning the human resources, the following is the process involved:
- First, it determines/establishes the organization’s objectives. An objective is a result that an organization is aiming at. This could be, for example, to increase sales by 10%, increase production or reduce costs by a given percentage and so on. Most objectives cover products, markets and methods; analyzing of the season ahead is also crucial.
- Derive the demand for the labour required to achieve the stated objective. This is done through the projection of demand. Some of the methods used include regression analysis and correlation analysis; the tools of analysis may be bought or developed internally.
- Compare the demand for and supply of human resources, that is, both internal and external supply, the management is involved in collection of human resource data in the industry and knowing how well the labour markets either internationally or domestically can supply them.
- Lastly, establish programs for hiring, training, recruitment, redeploying and possibly discarding employees depending on the results obtained above, that is where the demand is greater than the supply recruitment or hiring programs should be established; this is the role action that the department does, the main aim is to have well-experienced professionals in different areas (Ardichvili and Khalil, 2004)
Guidelines for Making Human Resources Planning Effective
To plan the human resource the company follows a guideline process as follows:
- the human resources plan should be made in the light of the overall organizational plan; it involves having employees who are aligned to the needs of the company
- Appropriate time horizon should be allowed. The plan should score a great percentage of top management support, the time between hiring and getting an employee is good enough that the company does not have a deficit at any on point
- A good information system should be maintained, that is, an adequate database should be there to support the plan.
- Relevant groups should participate in laying down the plan to reduce resistance
- the costs of the plan should not exceed the benefits of the plan (Bruce and Fottler, 2005)
Department of Marriott Human Resources for Employees: Selection and Recruitment
After planning an employment exercise, the next step is to advertise for posts. Advertising may be internal or to the external market. When advertising the role that a successful candidate will play if deployed is well explained; minimum qualifications are given in the advert and duration for application. The company’s communication department has the role of advertising for posts as advised by the human resources department (Dyer, 1999). After the application has been received, they are sorted and short-listed. Successful candidates are contacted. Different companies have the different selection and interviewing methods depending on the skills they want.
Some conduct oral interviews others aptitude test and other a combination of the two; in the case of Marriott, the interview method depend with the level of the post advertised (Conwaym and Briner, 2005). The recruitment and selection of appropriate staff are the foundation of any quality-conscious firm. In the past, professionals were recruited on the bases of technical criteria such as qualification, experience and membership of the appropriate association. Although these criteria are still important, technical skill is only a part of the overall service delivery, which also include functional criteria such as marketing and business skill and the ability to foster client relationship (Vendemiati, 2004).
Marriott International is a customer-centred firm it takes into account all these criteria and considers recruitment as the first stage of retaining loyal, well-motivated and happy employees. Technological changes call for competent and skilled employees thus organizations should plan for recruitment and selection to ensure that their employees match the current technology. During the interview, the panel should ensure that they learn the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate. This will assist them in making the final decision (Deetzb, 2003).
Training and development
Marriott International understands that a professional employee, like any other member of staff, has a limited set of skills that require continual upgrading in the phase of changing market demands and technology. Only by updating these skills using well-developed programs, can professional firms ensure that they equip their staffs with the skills needed to respond to future business expectation. Marriott International management ensures that employees are well motivated; highly motivated employees are more productive.
The employee must be appraised appropriately to enable the human resources department to establish the areas that need to be improved. Those who have attained the expectations of the management should be rewarded accordingly. For example to remain competitive and maintain efficiency in today’s hospitality industry, Marriott International focuses on the kind of employees that they deploy. They should vet new entrants. Marriott International human resource managers ensure that he should understand sales person capabilities, as well as how to utilize them for the benefit of the company (Visser and Dirk, 2007).
After entry the story does not end there, training follows. To have an effective sales team, they must be enthusiastic and hold a positive attitude at all time. This will only be attained if the sales manager develops measure to assist his team to be enthusiastic and positive minded. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm”. As much as possible staffs that can influence or persuade effectively should be deployed. (Deckop and Deckop, 2006).
Human resource Retaining and reward system
As the employees meet Marriott International goals and expectations, an organization to realize that the employees also have their targets that they want to be met. (Swanson and Elwood, 2009). The human resource department must come up with measures that are aimed at retaining the employees. One of these ways is to make the working environment as comfortable as possible. Remuneration and reward of employees are other ways that can be used. By reward, we mean that the efforts of the employee are recognized. Marriott International retains its employees to tap their talents and experience. They make better quality food staff give their customer a better experience (Stephen and Timothy, 2010)
Human beings spend most of their times working either informal jobs or informal jobs. Job satisfaction means that employees are loyal to their employees and believe that now they are working for the best employer. An employee who is satisfied with his job ensures sees working not as punishment but as a task that they have to undertake in life. Organizations should have a well-defined career path; it motivates an employee to know what his organization has to offer now and in the future. The job description is an element of satisfaction where employees should know what is expected of them.
Satisfaction is the result of all human resources efforts to maintain their employees. Organizations should have good employee relations; it refers to the body of work that is concerned with the maintaining of the relationships that exist between the employees and their employers, which contribute to acknowledgeable production and level of motivation. Employee relations concern itself with the prevention and solving of conflicts in which individuals are involved that come about or have effects on the work situations.
In this approach, Marriott has focused on socio-emotionally (non-economic returns); an approach is a dynamic approach and nothing is seen as static. It is an open-minded approach; in this approach, the company’s human resources aims at looking at the interests of parties, employer and employee. The employee works to satisfy his employer and the employer understands the employee as a business partner who needs to be well compensated and satisfied with his job. Here the employees work hard to meet targets set by the employer and the employer compensates them appropriately. Both parties look into the present and the future. The employee demands for employee’s loyalty and employees demand a continued improvement of their status (Smith and Mazin, 2004).
On the other hand, Marriott international aims at maintaining good human resource relations. Employee relations concerns all the issues regarding the relationship that exists between the employee or a group of employees and the employer and this is a much wider term and that is the reason it is used on a common basis in the human resources departments of the organizations (Weiss, 2008). Employee relations can be concerned with several things such as pay, disciplinary cases, etc. On the other hand, industrial relations are quite specific and concern themselves with unions. Employee relation is contract relations, which the employer and employee have.
Elements that shape employees’ psychological contracts can broadly be divided into individual and company factors. About the company, some policies are set to ensure that employees are satisfied at work; this is the work of the human resources department. Policies may affect the contracts either negatively or positively. When the policies are clear and well-implemented then employees are more likely to be satisfied with their employers. Their performance will be enhanced. The policies determine monetary and non-monetary gains that employees derive from the employer. Decisions and the management styles adopted by a company influences organizational culture and on its part, organizational culture affects the organization’s perception (LaFromboise and Wayne, 1983).
Performance appraisal and employees engagements at Marriott
Employee involvement is bringing about a setting in which individual persons have an impact on decisions and measures which affect their respective jobs. Marriott human resource management has enacted frameworks that facilitate good communication within the company; employees are encouraged to participate in different activities and functions.
Involvement of the employees in all aspects of work decisions and carrying out plans brings up ownership and commitment, boosts the retention of the best organization’s best employees, and brings about an environment in which people come up with a choice to contribute to work and be motivated (Kohl, Milton and Jacqueline, 2004)
The way to make the involvement of the employees in the process of decision-making and in those activities that bring about a never-ceasing improvement is a strategic feature of participation. Marriot has developed some mechanisms like work teams, non-stop meetings on improvement, suggestion system, processes for corrective measures, discussions held periodically with the supervisors, and events that bring about improvement (Sassower, 2008).
Essential to the majority of the processes of employee involvement is communication, offering training on team effectiveness and solving problems. More so, another important issue is coming up with a system for recognizing and rewarding the employees and regularly dividing the benefits among the employees derived from the efforts of employee involvement.
The human resource management is believed to the crucial connection in a contemporary performance management program, which boosts an effective employee relations program. The modern (contemporary) performance management program concerns itself with achieving the favourable outcomes that are evaluated on their impact and not the quantity. Instilling the idea in the employees as being champions and as being an important part of the organization brings about positive outcomes and among these positive outcomes is the general improvement in the performance of the organization.
In the current situation about the job market, both the private and public sectors alike are competing for “talents” as the basis for carrying out the recruitment of the employees, developing them, and retaining those who turn to be talented. Putting this into consideration, any particular organization should be in a position to employ a strategy and put in place a management system that will have to boost the business’s performance for it to grow bigger than its competitors do. For this organization to utilize its assets optimally, it should with intelligence and efficiently handle the working conditions of its employees.
These employees should be allowed to participate in the process of making those decisions that are related to the work they carry out to improve on the structure of the organization. Also, the duties structure among the employees makes the performance of the organization much stronger. Therefore, the management needs to have an understanding of the employee characteristics for the organization to be successful (Hill and Stewart, 2000). Developing the employees of any organization, as well as building them, enriching, motivating and enhancing them heavily relies on the organization’s leadership, authorization as well as the vision the organization is having. In general, terms, human resource management that is employed strategically will greatly assist in bringing about the improvement in the performance of the organization (Rousseau, 2006).
Employee’s motivation at Marriot
Motivation is the drive an individual has; it makes him persevere to attain set goals either in life or in an organization. People have different personalities and so are they motivated by different things; Marriott human resource department ha the role of motivating its staffs. A motivator is not static but changes with among others age, economic status and social status. An organization requires both human and physical resources to attain its set goals and objectives (Harold and Michael, 1994).
Motivation is a continuous process; attainment of one-goal leads to another need, the end is a beginning. No one factor of motivation can work all along, but a combination of the different motivational system is required. A motivation system/process is a combination of the variable with the expected result as an increased enthusiasm and morale in once work. Human resource department is mandated with this task; however, it spans more than human resources. The way an organization is structured, the kind of organization culture adopted, power distribution and employees relations are variable of motivations. Employees may be motivated by an internal and external stimulus (Freeman, 1993).
Motivation can be seen as an altruistic approach to respecting human dignity, but more are the benefits that accrue to an organization. Research has shown that a well-motivated team leads to high employee productivity and increased customer satisfaction. Job performance is considered as a function of motivation and ability:
Job performance = f (ability)*(motivation)
Ability can be facilitated through learning and experience; motivation is attained by putting into consideration all factors that can make employees enthusiastic and vigil in their works. A well motivational plan has:
- An appropriate rewards system
- An effective punishment system good enough to deter the future occurrence of an unacceptable practice
- There are well-set goals and individual employees responsibilities well defined.
- There is fair treatment of people; leaders are not the centre of knowledge but give their juniors a chance to express their views.
Line managers and top management support the motivational policies set up by Marriott human resource management team (Garengo, NStefano and Umit, 2005).
Labour rights and legislation
The company has several establishments in different countries; HRD department has the role of ensuring that their policies abide by the country of operation labour rights in regards to industrial relations, wages, employment contracts, pension schemes and dispute resolution.
HRD is assisted by legal experts employed with the role of ensuring that the company complies with legal requirements of different countries. However, the policy of the company that before something gets out of hand, then line managers, human resources officers and top management should have tried to seek for a solution (Hill and Stewart, 2000).
Respective responsibility of hr functions and line management
The operation of human resource management is only successful with the assistance of top and line managers, top managers give the department power and the required resources to operate while the line managers advise the department on the needs of human resources that are there in the company (Raymond, Hollenbeck, Gerhart and Wright, 2009).
. They have the role of giving the numbers and the quality required within the company at any one point. Human resources team are not active in all groundwork, they are in a separate office where they work through the reports they get from the line managers, the policies they implement are to some extent exercised by the line managers, for example, the line manager has the role of motivating their team from a non-monetary standpoint. They ensure that all things are for the benefit of the company.
In Marriott Company, line managers can be categorized as the supervisors, heads of section and the operating duty managers at one day, they have close interaction with the employees thus have a better understanding of the needs and issues that employees may be having. The different departments’ line Kitchen, serving, room services, the compound have line leaders who are mandated with the task of advising HRD on the right policies and strategies. On periodical bases, they are involved in human resource planning and management teams so that they can offer insightful information on the way forward in the organization (Legge,2004).
One of the major roles of line managers is to mentor and develop human resources in his organization; they need to understand the potential that their company has and devise mechanisms to develop and tap intellectualism in the human resources. Marriot has placed the duty of talent development within the organization to the line managers, they are supposed to grow the people and give direction to the company on the best approach to use in motivating and creating a strong human resources management team. Every human resource has some potential in him that need to be developed, natured and exploited; it is the work of leaders to undertake these roles. Talents within a team need to be managed effectively to facilitate innovation and invention; this is how a team leader can have orchestrated robust team (Wheeler and Maria, 1997)
Conclusion
The success of Marriott International in the hospitality industry has been attributed to the quality and expertise of its human resources management, the company operates a robust HRD team that looks into all aspects of the company’s human capital. The human resources department has the mandate of ensuring that adequate employees are available at all times. It has the mandate of planning, deploying, employing, training, retaining, and dismissal of employees. To manage human capital effectively, the HRD is assisted by of line and top managers; the hospitality industry business fluctuates with seasons, Marriott’s HRD has the mandate of ensuring the fluctuating demands are met effectively.
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