Introduction
Employee development according to Burbach and Royle (145) falls under one of three broad categories. For that matter, the first category defines employee development to be the combination of standards and procedures of human resource management that include recruitment, selection and their development career wise.
On the other hand, the second category according to the definition postulated by the same Burbach and Royle (175) view employee development to be the creation of a huge talent pool which ensures that there is both quantitative and qualitative flow of employees in the organization. Moreover, the third category for the meaning of employee development relates to an unqualified resource that needs to be administered basically to performance levels.
Nonetheless, it is acknowledged by Burbach and Royle (226) that talent management needs to be based on identification, selection and thereafter nurturing these key performers, sourcing, development and allocation of replacements of the key personnel. In addition, allocation of required resources to key talents based on their potential value to the organization also forms part of employee development.
Therefore, the paper covers component of employee development program at Four Seasons by covering recruitment, selection, orientation, training and ways of lowering voluntary turnover rate in the organization.
Components of employee development program at Four Seasons
Recruitment
In respect to recruitment exercise in any organization, the initial step should start with attracting human resource to the organization. There are several approaches that an organization can apply to attract people to its workforce. These approaches relate to internal factors to the organization that affect attraction of talents to its human resource base (May 28).
Moreover, the organization’s size and its standing in the business environment is one of the ways that an organisation can use to attract talents. Any organization is always rated in the society in relation to its job security, upward mobility for its workforce, its culture and employees’ work life.
These serve as major determinants in attracting talent in the organization. Therefore, an organization that is characterized with upward mobility of its workforce will always attract talents while that one that is characterized with poor mobility will find it hard to attract talents to its workforce.
In addition, management style used in the organization also serves as another factor that determines attraction of talent. An autocratic style of management will tend to repel talents. On the other hand, democratic and participatory style of management tends to attract talents in the organization. For that matter, in relation to Four Seasons, it has tried to use a participatory and democratic style of management which have been a big boost in attracting talents to it workforce.
Selection
Nonetheless, recruitment and selections methods all play an important role of employing relevant people in the organization. Recruitment methods are those approaches that are geared towards attracting people to apply for opportunities present in the organization. On the other hand, selection methods are all those efforts that are used to select the best people from the potential pool. However, there are several recruitment methods that are used by organizations in sourcing talents.
These include developing relationship with career and guidance departments in institutions of learning, collaboration with professional organizations and working with recruitment firms. The benefits of developing relationship with learning institutions such as universities and colleges is to sell the organization to young professionals and to make them aspire to work with the organization.
On part of collaborating with professional organizations, the organization benefits in a manner that it is assured to recruit and select from authorized professional practitioners in the field. Additionally, recruitment firms on the other hand help the organization to have a large pool of people to select from.
However, in respect to Four Seasons, its goodwill in the public domain serves as the major talent attraction method. Employees who have long been retired from the organization still rate the hotel as the best employer. Therefore, this makes other people to be attracted to work with the hotel.
However, after having a recruitment pool, selection methods are used to select the best personnel for the organization. These methods include personality tests, interviews and psychometric tests (May 73). However, all these selection methods have one common benefit of establishing intelligent quotient of a candidate in a specific or a general field of knowledge.
Moreover, the intention of all these methods are the same since all are intended to establish and recruit the best people with the highest level of skills, knowledge and experience for an organization. In respect to the Four Seasons which is our case study, it is these recruitment methods to ensure that it recruits the best people to its workforce.
The Four Seasons has used a range of these selection methods. These include behavioural interviewing which is always intended to determine the behaviour of the recruit. Moreover, it also applies four stage interview processes that further intend to establish competencies and attitude of recruits before they are hired. The organisation is dong this to determine whether attitudes of recruits are in line with the organization’s long term strategy.
Orientation
On the other hand, Jankowicz (243) provided that once an individual talent has been attracted to the organisation and recruited, it is relatively important to undergo an induction process. This process has several crucial purposes in the organization. These purposes of induction include;
- Acting as an avenue through which new recruits are able to learn expectations of the organization.
- Being the process through which the organization’s culture is inculcated in the new recruit.
- Acting as a platform through which the new recruit is able to learn both the internal and external environment of the organization
Therefore, in elaboration, it acts as an avenue through which new recruits are able to learn expectations of the organisation. Through learning of the business processes, new recruits of Four Seasons are in a better position to learn how business is conducted in order to achieve the set goals and objectives. This also helps them to be in line with business strategy.
Secondly, through the induction process, the organisation’s culture is able to be inculcated in the new recruit. New staff is able to cope with the culture of the organisation. This is important since it helps one to become part of the wider community of the organization. For instance, a culture of “treating others as you will wish to be treated” is usually developed in the new recruit to make him or her be part of the entire Four Seasons community.
Thirdly, Jankowicz (209) opined that an induction programme also plays an important role of helping the new recruit to learn both the internal and external environment of the organization. Mostly, new recruit will be a person who is new in the environment both internally and externally.
The induction process helps him or her to adapt to these new environment by familiarizing with it before settling down for meaningful engagement. This process hence helps the new recruit to be consistent with the requirements and expectations of the Four Seasons and its clientele.
Consequently, these three purposes of induction have benefits to an individual and to the organization as a whole. To begin with, it is evident that the induction process acts as an orientation process to the new recruit. This is a benefit since it enables him or her to learn the operation of the organization and to adapt to the new environment.
Moreover, it also benefits the new recruit by providing on job training before he or she is left to perform these duties on his or her own. On the other hand, it is beneficial to the organization since it advances the culture of the organisation to the new recruit. In addition, it also acts as a platform through which the organization advances its expectations to new recruit.
Training
On-line discussion is a blended strategy to learning that facilitates collaborative efforts amongst people in both local and international levels. Therefore, employees are enabled to learn and to share ideas from each other in a virtual environment.
Nonetheless, the other aspect of on-line discussion is the flexibility that participants enjoy since they are able to communicate on-line and not necessarily being at specific venue. Since Four Seasons has given its employees the opportunity to develop their skills without interference, on-line training becomes one of the way that they advance their career knowledge in the field of hotel and catering.
Costs related to voluntary turn-over and new employees recruitment
Employee turnover in the organization is caused by various factors. However, the turnover may be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary occurs when employees opt to leave which may be as a result of boredom in the current position, increased compensation and better opportunities. As a result, turnover has negative consequences that may be in monetary terms of non monetary.
Monetary consequences include costs incurred in recruitment, separation processing of employees, training of new hire, loss of morale in the remaining workforce that may result to a lowered productivity (Jankowicz 94). In respect to Four Seasons, the voluntary turnover has been maintained at 18 percent which results to 2,092 new jobs every year.
This means that the organization is incurring a lot of cost in training new recruits to its workforce which in the long run is not beneficial to the economic performance of the organization. For that case, there are several costs related to voluntary turn-over and new employees’ recruitment. The table below shows costs associated with processing costs of separation, hiring costs for replacement, costs on training new recruits and costs that are related to low productivity due to the turnover.
Table 1: costs associated with voluntary turnover in Four Seasons
In relation to this, it can be concluded that employee voluntary turnover in the organization have various cost related issues that affect the organization negatively. This implies that in this event, the organization is the biggest looser hence efforts must be done to ensure that the rate of voluntary turnover is kept at a much lower rate to minimize these costs.
Ways of lowering personnel turn-over
In terms of lowering employee turnover, it is relatively important for the organization to employ good strategies in recruitment and retention procedures. For instance, in recruitment, a position must be defined and quantified with proper measurable results (Jankowicz 36). For that case, it is important that during recruitment exercise, the right people for the position must be the one to be hired. This helps to reduce turnover on the pretext that the current job description is not suitable for the holder of the position.
Moreover, it is important to empower employees. This can be done through giving them authority for them to be in charge of activities that involve their positions (May 73). This makes them to believe that they are valuable in the organization hence high chance of staying longer in the organization.
In addition, developing faith, trust and respect to the employees is also another way of lowering personnel turn-over. This helps to boost their morale which is key in retaining them for a long term purposes in the organization. Moreover, recognizing and appreciating achievement of the workforce is also paramount in upholding morale of the workforce.
Works Cited
Burbach, Frank, and Royle, Johnson. Talent on Demand? Talent Management in Germany and Irish Subsidiaries of a US Multinational Corporation. Personnel Review 39.4 (2010): 414-431. Print.
Jankowicz, Ann. Business Research Projects. London: Thomson Learning, 2005. Print.
May, Tony. Social Research: Issues, Methods and Process. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001. Print.