Introduction
All organisations establish their unique people management strategy with a view of enhancing the achievement of their objectives effectively. Hospitality organisations, in particular, consider this to be an important aspect because they offer services.
This implies that their employees are the actual meeting point between the organisation and its external consumers. This paper analyzes the internal consumer strategies for three companies: British Airways, Hilton Hotel, and the Wembley Stadium.
Hilton Hotels Corporation
Hilton Hotels Corporation has commissioned a third party, Kenexa, to develop its people management programme. The main expectation of the hotel is to develop an HR talent programme that will be aligned to Hilton’s HR vision. Kenexa employs use of focus groups, critical incident questionnaires that focus on existing HR talent, together with the general managers, as well as job analysis with the aim of identifying HR talents (Hilton Hotels and Resorts, 2013).
This strategy also entails formulating a success model that would enhance goal achievement for Hilton. Kenexa has on its part established a web-based solution whose main mandate is to evaluate HR candidates with respect to the trait clusters that are associated with four HR talent types; technical expert, change agent, strategic partner, and team member champion.
Another program aimed at people development strategy at Hilton is referred to as the Top Gear development program that mainly targets the HR professionals. The program operates by allowing up to 20 HR professionals to attend four models, with the main aim being to enhance their competencies on the talent curve blocks. The end objective of this programme is to promote the professionals in order to manage even bigger roles, such as being regional HR managers (Hilton Hotels and Resorts, 2013).
British Airways
The British Airways focuses mainly on motivation as a significant part of its people management strategy. The company invests heavily on its internal customers by ensuring that the best and highest levels of value and service are available. The company has put more attention on the working environments of its employees; where a move to open corporate offices has seen the company set up a state of the art facility at Waterside (British Airways, 2013).
The new office facility at corporate business park mainly seeks to ensure that employees operate in a serene environment in order to motivate them into producing more. This is in tandem with the company’s vision of ensuring that it motivates its human resource towards achieving greater success and results towards serving its customers.
Part of the investments aimed at creating a unique working environment that motivates the workers at Waterside include ‘hot desking’, as well as ‘cyber surfing’. These facilities are open and available to the more than 3,000 workers based at the facility. This highlights the company’s main strategy of achieving greater motivation for its entire workforce.
British Airways also established and maintains an employee strategy that seeks to enable the workers become part of the company’s owners. Through the scheme, more than 70 percent of the employees at British Airways own shares of the company.
This makes the employees part of the company’s owners (British Airways, 2013). Thus, as owners of the company, the employees have a greater motivation to serve their customers with greater diligence and quality service. Good results for the company mean better returns to the shareholders, who also include the workers.
The Royal Caribbean International
The Royal Caribbean International cruise line has mainly adopted an internal people strategy that focuses on talent development. The company has partnered with external companies, both in the HR and IT sectors, with the view of helping it develop its human resources towards achieving optimum capabilities and results.
Royal Caribbean International has partnered with Agilysys, which is an IT firm, with a view of helping it enhance workflow and design (Royal Caribbean International, 2013). The incorporation of IT into its HR management is aimed at allowing the workers an improved opportunity of utilising their skills and capabilities towards improving service delivery.
With a huge labour force that exceeds 60,000 workers and large vessels that require greater coordination in serving customers and managing operations, the workers’ input cannot be realised without IT capability. The management, thus, allows the workers to utilise the improved systems for their service delivery, while at the same time providing an opportunity for them to grow through direct participation and cooperation.
The IT system solution, while enabling greater service delivery and quality, allows the workers ample time to think of new ideas on how they can improve overall performance. The company delivers regular performance reports to the employees in order to help them establish particular areas where their performance is weak.
This helps the workers to self-evaluate themselves and determine improved means and methods through which they can improve on their performance and allow growth in their skills.
Proactive and Reactive Strategies
Proactive strategies involve the daily interventions employed by an organisation for purposes of minimising chances of challenging behaviour occurring. It is a preventative kind of strategy mainly focusing on conditions preceding the behaviour. Proactive strategies target the reduction of future probability of certain behaviour.
Reactive strategies, on the other hand, are course of actions and plans that are employed only once following the occurrence of behaviour or an event. They are the consequences suffered as a result of behaviour, with their main purpose being to prevent the behaviour from persisting while at the same time minimizing the damage.
Proactive strategies are of a better-quality compared to reactive strategies owing to their capability of enabling the organisation to enjoy the freedom of enjoying its own decisions. In other words, the company does not act out of necessity after a certain situation has already occurred. Organizations that employ proactive strategies are better placed to seize and retain a good initiative in competition with their market or industry rivals.
Application
Proactive and reactive strategies are applied on the basis of preparation and accountability. In fire management, for instance, fire departments apply both kinds of strategy as a means of protecting property and people from being affected by fire. Firemen apply proactive strategies when teaching safety courses to families and children. However, they adopt a reactive strategy for purposes of saving people’s property and lives when reacting to put out fire.
Conclusion
Companies employ several people management strategies that are aligned to their objectives in order to enhance service delivery and attainment of their end objectives. Hilton Hotel employs a talent management strategy that focuses on building the capacity and skills of its employees in order to improve on the general service delivery of the company. British Airways, on the other hand, employs a motivation strategy that focuses on enabling the employees to improve their performance through establishing a serene working environment, services, and tools.
References
British Airways (2013). Information. Web.
Hilton Hotels and Resorts (2013). About Hilton. Web.
Royal Caribbean International (2013). Our company. Web.