Starwood's WineBuzz Program - Essay Example

Starwood's WineBuzz Program Question 1 There are many ways that a hotel can use to make sure their employees receive what they need to continue to make profits for the company. In the case of the hotels in the article, it was imperative to make sure their employees had the best training possible. Many hotels are using a strategic and performance consulting approach to develop their training efforts. In the article each hotel had a different way of accomplishing their training. Each hotel was a high quality hotel and they needed to service their guests in a quality way.

They had to provide the type of service that would be worthy of a five star hotel and make sure that they had the staff that looked like quality and performed beyond the expectations of their customers. In order to do this it was important to systematically create the process they needed. The Broadmoor hotel did this by making training a priority for all of their employees. They started with "extensive new employee orientations and training" and they taught them how to great their guests, resolve any problems they had and how to respond to requests that guests may have no matter how large or small the request might be.

Rockresorts also made sure that their 1400 employees were trained in a way that improved their customer service, making sure that their employees felt confident in working with their customers and they were able to retain their employees because of their training. Many managers do not realize that simple things like employee training will transform a mediocre employee into a great one. The reason this happens is because most employees need to totally understand their jobs and what they are supposed to do.

This goes beyond specific duties to gaining an understanding of their place within the corporation. For a hotel employee is a good idea to make sure they have the big picture of what the hotel is attempting to accomplish, what is expected of the employee, what the customer expects and how they will organize and promote the company as they go throughout the day. When the company is forthcoming wit this information it adds to the strategic and performance approach. The more a corporation can help their employees stay motivated, the better the employee will do their job.

The Starwood was another good example of how to use a strategic and performance approach in developing training. They created "WineBuzz" in order to sell more beverages. Instead of teaching their employees how to sell more, they took them into a "Wine Camp" and taught them more about the wine. Since wine and beer sell to different people, they taught employees about the world of wine by taking them into the vineyards, how to serve it with certain dishes, something about viniculture and more.

This information was a very strong way of helping the employees understand how to talk about wine to guests. Most guests who order wine would want to know certain information about it so training staff to be able to discuss wine will keep them confident in that area. With knowledgeable employees being able to discuss wine and how to work with it customers would refer more people to the hotel and many would come just for this experience. Question 2 The purpose of Starwood's WineBuzz program was to increase the sales of beverages.

They realized that in order to do this, the guests wanted knowledgeable and well-trained staff to help them make choices of what to purchase for meals. Because this was important to the company and wine was different than beer, the company trained their employees in the fine art of wine. In order to test the effectiveness of this program they should have a multi-tiered way of evaluation. One good way to test whether it had made the goal of increasing sales is to keep track across the country of how many bottles and/or glasses of wine and other beverages were sold; if the amount went up and they increased their revenues than it could be said that they met their goals.

Another way to check the effectiveness is to test employees knowledge on a quarterly basis to make sure they are still up to par with their knowledge of the wines; this could be a mini-training to also introduce any new wine or new programs. There should also be customer comment cards designed to get pertinent information from the customers as to their experience in ordering beverages. Was it a pleasant experience? Would they recommend the hotel to their friends based on this information? and Are there any suggestions?

May be three questions that may be asked during the process. All information should be kept in a computer system so that regular reports could be gathered to test whether the WineBuzz program was working. Employees should be able to take an online refresher for areas that they felt weak in which would make sure that they made their quarterly goals. Another issue would be to see whether the beverages they were selling are doing well. Sometimes through an evaluation process a company can find which beverages sell the most and order more of those while eliminating those that guests are not ordering at all.

With employee feedback a corporation would know whether the "train the trainer" program was also effective. Question 3 Evaluations are difficult for anyone and for managers they can be more difficult because they are usually the ones who create the instrument and use it. It is very important for the manager to make sure that they are careful about how they create the evaluation and how they use it. Errors are often made because most managers will use a rating scale and these can be troublesome because although it should only be designed for job performance, they can often be used for those things that have nothing to do with job performance.

Some of the most common errors that managers have found include: Recency effect -- this error happens when a manager puts more weight on what is currently happening than what has happened in the past. Most evaluations are for an entire year so everything the employee has done should be counted. Central tendency error -- this error happens when managers feel that everyone should be measured within a narrow area within the scale. Leniency error -- some managers have difficult rating employees in a negative way so they have a tendency to rate everyone at the higher end of the rating scale.

Strictness error -- this error is the opposite of leniency and it has the manager rating everyone at the low end of the scale. Rater bias -- when a manager's bias or prejudices come into the evaluation they have committed a rater bias error. This can distort the rating either positively or negatively. Halo effect -- This can happen when managers have a particular employee they like or dislike; they can rate the individual high or low depending on the indivdiual's personality rather than their performance.

Contrast Error -- instead of looking at each individual's performance standard, the manager has a few groups that they have a tendency to rate people into. In other words they are rated "relative ot other people rather than to performance standards" (West 16-17). Work Cited West, Thomson. Performance Appraisal Problems. "Chapter 11: Performance Management and Appraisal" .16 May 2009 .