Hotel Case Study: The Berkeley Hotel

The Berkeley Hotel is a 5 star luxury Hotel based in central London. This year the company has decided to invest in improving the facilities and it is scheduled in the first half of January a building refurbishment of the lobby, the bar and one of the restaurants. Thus, for a period of six months, a part of the building will be closed to the public and the hotel’s capacity will be reduced by the 30%. The works are going to expand the departments (bar and restaurant) by renovating and adding space in which there will be extra tables/covers. This means that, at the end of the refurbishment, more staff will be required, however, at the moment the workforce required is not as much as they currently have. Therefore, the company and the HR have to

In this case, the main HR challenge represents the allocation of casual workers in relation with a volatile and unpredictable consumer demand. Hotels quite often are recruiting workers on a daily basis in order to meet their fluctuation of labour required. In this way, the employment of temporary workforce is aligned by fluctuations in customer demand and the size and number of extra bookings of events scheduled. Tight labour cost-control practices are considered to be a key characteristic of HRM in the UK hotel industry. The consequence has been low levels of training provision, skill utilisation and a pronounced lack of interest in functional flexibility

In the hospitality industry there is a trend in hiring in highly skilled positions part time and casual workers with the opportunity to become permanent. When this happens, companies should implement several HRM strategies such as: trainings, career development and better salary for this group of employees (casual workers). Moreover, this situation is in continuing evolution. In a luxury hotel segment, HR departments have introduced for casual workers, formal policies for equal employment opportunity, health and safety and trainings in order to build a stronger team working and building a sense of belonging to the organisation. Hence, functionally flexible employment practices may have positive outcomes for employees, particularly for permanent position seekers, establishing a sense of belongings to the company and albeit within a context of higher work effort.

This constitutes the main challenge that the Berkeley has to face in the next future. This condition implies that the company need to induce a more flexible structure and preserve the short term performance. The HR department together with the company has to implement these strategies by putting particular efforts with investment aimed to retain and develop this category of