Reference no: EM133045487

The Syman Beach Resort's competitive strategy is "To use superior guest service to differentiate the Syman Beach Resort properties, and to thereby increase the length of stay and return rate of guests, and thus boost revenues and profitability." HR manager Raisa Chowdhury must now formulate functional policies and activities that support this competitive strategy and boost performance, by eliciting the required employee behaviors and competencies. As she considered what to do next, Raisa Chowdhury, the Syman Beach Resort's HR director, knew that employee selection had to play a role. The Syman Beach Resort currently had an informal screening process in which local hotel managers obtained application forms, interviewed applicants, and checked their references. However, a pilot project using an employment test for service people at the Le Meridien Hotel had produced startling results. Raisa found consistent, significant relationships between test performance and a range of employee competencies and behaviors such as speed of check-in/out, employee turnover, and percentage of calls answered with the required greeting. She knew that such employee capabilities and behaviors translated into the improved guest service performance the Syman Beach Resort needed to execute its strategy. She therefore had to decide what selection procedures would be best.

Raisa's team, working with an industrial psychologist, designs a test battery that they believe will produce the sorts of high-morale, patient, people-oriented employees they are looking for. It includes a preliminary, computerized test in which applicants for the positions of front desk clerk, door person, assistant manager, and security guard must deal with an apparently irate guest; a work sample in which front-desk clerk candidates spend 10 minutes processing an incoming "guest"; a personality test aimed at weeding out applicants who lack emotional stability; the Wonderlic test of mental ability; and the Phase II Profile for assessing candidate honesty. Their subsequent validity analysis shows that scores on the test batteries predict scores on the hotel's employee capabilities and behavior metrics. A second analysis confirmed that, as the percentage of employees hired after testing rose, so too did the hotel's employee capabilities and behaviors scores, for instance (see the strategy map), in terms of speed of check-in/out, and the percent of guests receiving the Syman Beach Resort required greeting. Raisa and the CFO also found other measurable improvements apparently resulting from the new testing process. For example, it took less time to fill an open position, and cost per hire diminished, so the HR department became more efficient. The new testing program thus did not only contribute to the hotel's performance by improving employee capabilities and behaviors. It also did so by directly improving profit margins and profits.

Case Questions:

1. Provide a detailed example of a manager work sample test. Also briefly explain the two personality test items you would suggest they use, and why you would suggest using them.

2. How would you suggest Raisa try to confirm that it is indeed the testing concepts and not some other change that accounts for the improved performance.