Reference no: EM132875758
LAS VEGAS GAMBLES ONLINE
Talk about daunting challenges! Imagine this assignment: Your boss tells you that you are responsible for hiring almost 10,000 new workers. But that's the easy part. You have to have them all prepared to start working on the same day, their job skills have to be impeccable, and there can be no mistakes. Oh, and just to make it interesting, you are not allowed to use a single sheet of paper! Sound impossible? Well, that's just what a team of Las Vegas executives was asked to do. In the few years since it opened, the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas has become one of the gambling mecca's most popular destinations. But before it opened, and behind the scenes, the Bellagio also gave human resource (HR) managers new insights into how to staff a new organization. The task facing the resort's HR executives was daunting: They had to hire 9,600 workers in 24 weeks and have everyone trained and on the payroll when the first customer walked through the door. The firm's HR team not only pulled this feat off without a hitch - it did it without using a single sheet of paper! Arte Nathan, vice president of human resources for the Bellagio, observed that "for us, hiring 9,600 people was like Desert Storm." With the precision of a full-scale military operation, the Bellagio team designed and implemented one of the most sophisticated HR selection systems ever devised. To apply for a position, applicants called and requested an appointment. They were then scheduled in batches to arrive at the resort's hiring center, where they filled out an application at a computer terminal. One hundred terminals were kept busy 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. As applications were submitted, employees at the checkout desk conducted unobtrusive assessments of the applicants' communication skills and overall demeanor, eliminating about 20 percent of the applicants. Next, came 27,000 interviews. For example, a hiring manager could sit at a PC and call up the highest-rated desk clerk candidates. The database system would rank order the candidates according to predetermined criteria. The manager could then call in, for example, three applicants for each open position for face-to-face interviews. As interview consisted of a set of structured questions. During an interview, the manager would discretely evaluate the responses to each question on a hidden keypad. These data were then fed back into the database. If a manager wanted to hire a particular applicant, he or she could pull up a screen and check "Conduct background check". A team of investigators would then verify employment, military, and education history; for some jobs, a drug test was mandatory. About 8 percent of the applicants were rejected at this stage because falsified information on their applications. If a manager was ready to offer a job to a particular individual, another screen was used to check "Yes," When this happened, the applicant was invited to a job-offer meeting, which is when people actually offered jobs. If they accepted, they then completed various required documents - again, in electronic form - for benefits and income tax purposes. They were also scheduled for relevant training sessions. And when the big day came and the Bellagio officially threw open its doors, 9,600 new employees were in place and ready to work. The massive hiring plan at Bellagio almost staggers the imagination. But in reality, many firms must routinely plan to hire large numbers of people in a coordinated fashion. Las Vegas itself reflects a microcosm of this task with each massive new casino that is opened. The Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, and the similar mega-resorts have had to do the same thing as the Bellagio. In other outposts, Disney must hire thousands for each new employees to staff each theme park it opens, Toyota must hire thousands for each new factory it builds, and Royal Caribbean must hire thousands for each new cruise ship it launches. Wal-Mart, however, is in the midst of a hiring explosion that may eventually make these examples truly passe. Wal-Mart has announced a goal of hiring 1 million new people over the next five years. About 800,000 of these will be to fill newly created jobs, while the other 200,000 will be replacements for retirees and other employees forecasted to leave the firm. That's akin to hiring the state of Rhode Island or the city of Dallas. So what does the giant retailer plan to do? For one thing, may need to up its pay grades a bit and offer more benefits. For another, it plans to step up its college recruiting for potential new store managers. And it hopes to entice the spouses, children, and other relatives of its current employees to join its ranks. If Wal-Mart is successful, it may end up revolutionizing not only the retailing industry but the HRM function as well.
1. a. Staffing measures are described as either objective or subjective. Explain the statement given.
b. Discuss THREE (3) features of structured interviews that improve the shortcoming of unstructured interviews.
2. Discuss the limitations of self - assessments, peer assessments and talent management as the predictors used in internal selection.
3. Read the case thoroughly and answer all the questions given.
a. Identify the challenges of hire massive numbers of people in this case.
b. Discuss the methods of final choice in decision making that suitable to be use in this incident from the most to the least effective.
c. Based on the situation, explain FOUR (4) relevant suggestions for Bellagio in order to retain their employees in the organization.