Centre name MUBARAK COMPLEX COLLEGE

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OWEN KHOZA
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 SUNBIRD HOTEL AND RESORTS

Sunbird hotel and resorts is a Malawi’s leading hotel chain with nine properties including four city hotels
in all three regions of Malawi namely; sunbird capital, sunbird Lilongwe, sunbird mount soche and
sunbird mzuzu, and the preferred brand in the hospitality industry is loved for offering excellent and
personalized services to local citizens and international customers. The hotel is large in size, as it has the
minimum of 1001-5000 employees and a revenue of $129million. It operates in both stable and
competitive markets in three cities of Malawi; Blantyre, Lilongwe, and mzuzu. Sunbird hotel offers
various and good services which recognize it as the best hotel, some of the service include; good
accommodation, hall for large meetings, and bar & restraint. Its competitive members include; amaryllis
hotel, golden peacock hotel, SMAMA hotel, and five star hotel. According to our customer segments, our
targeted customers are those people who are willing have our services, for example, local citizens,
international customers, churches and non-governmental organization.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.0. HR function
1.1. Types of business
1.2. Contribution of HR function

2.0. Ethical approaches

2.1. Impacts of ethical approaches
2.2. Benefits of ethical and responsible approaches

3.0. Talent retention

3.1. Causes of staff turnover
3.2. Effects of staff turnover
3.3. Measures and techniques that are used to reduce staff turnover

4.0. Flexible working

4.1. Methods of flexible working
4.2. Types of flexible working
4.3. Advantages and disadvantages of flexible working

5.0. Reference list.

 20 Marks

(600 words)

1.0. Human resource department at sunbird hotel plays a key role in developing, reinforcing and
changing the culture of sunbird hotel organization. Pay, performance management, training and
development, recruitment, and on boarding and reinforcing the values of the business are all
essential elements of business culture covered by HR at sunbird hotel.

1.1. HR function contributes to different types of business. The following are different types of
business organizations toward the contribution of HR:

 Private sector.
These are organizations owned by individuals who are called sore traders or a group
of shareholders who have invested their money into an existing business. The
purpose of private sector is to make profits. The private sector is divided into the
following sub-groups:
 Small medium enterprises, these are business organizations with not less
than 250 employees and a total balance sheet of less than $13,573,450.
 Multi-national corporations, these are companies that offer their products
and services into two or more countries and having its headquarters in one
country.
 A global company, these are companies that trade with many countries and
has no headquarters, each company operates on its own but they all use one
brand.

 Public sector.
Public sector organizations can be categorized as below:
 Regional governments, these are those organisations responsible for
countries economy, education and welfare of people.
 Publicly owned organizations, these are organizations that accountable by
the government but they run enterprises on their own without having
government support.
 Public service providers, these are organizations that operates at national
level for example ministry of health, but they have to deliver quality services.
Mostly the public sector is funded by taxes and are managed by government
ministers.

 Voluntary sector.
Voluntary sector organizations are either charities who are funded by donations
from the public to help those who are need, cooperatives who are owned by its
members and is funded by the same members and then they share profits, and also
campaigning organizations that are formed to force government into something
according to public demand.

All these listed types of business, for a business to succeed there is a need of HR
contribution.
1.2. The following are the ways that HR function has contributed towards the achievement of
the business objective of sunbird hotel and resorts:

 By recruiting and selecting highly talented employees that are wealth for their
positions and individuals that are good fit for Sunbird Company and the team.
 By training and developing the recruited talented individuals to enable them to
complete their assignments in order to improve sunbird’s quality services and
making it competent
 By creating and maintaining company’s brand and culture, as we all know
organization’s culture plays a vital role on achieving organization’s objectives.
Promoting and reminding everyone of the vision and mission of the organization is
essential for organization achievement.
 By making sure the safety and health of workers.
Thinking of working place in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we first must
make sure that everyone has their basic needs cover, thus; comfortable working
space reasonable temperature and access to food and water. In addition HR should
also have an open-door policy to hearing feedback and managing workplace.
 By ensuring performance management, performance appraisals are important not
only because they allow to track performance overtime, but they can also help
identifying areas for performance improvement and opportunities for growth. The
HR team at Sunbird Company is often responsible for tabulating and verifying the
results and taking or suggesting corrective action when required.
 By ensuring succession planning, as a key player in choosing employees for
advancement and management positions, human resource at sunbird take into
account not just performance but also reputation, feedback and leadership skills.
This ongoing process links to recruitment as well, as the team should make plan and
be aware of current and future staff demand.
 Question 2 20 Marks

(600 words)

2.0. The ethical business contributes to the business goals as the employees will feel motivated and
they will work with efficiency and effectiveness. Ethic to HR department at sunbird, basically deals
with the affirmative moral obligations of the employer towards employees to maintain equality and
equity justice. In other words we can say; ethical are policies that must be followed by any member
on the organization, for example; codes of conduct, discipline approach, organization culture and
organization behaviour.

2.1. The following are the impacts of ethical approaches to HR at sunbird:

 Positive impacts.
These are impacts that can affect organization positively, and the following are
positive impacts of ethical approaches to HR at sunbird:
 Increase employee performance, this is due to availability of ethical
approaches at sunbird and this is how employee performance is affected as
employees do what the organization needs to achieve its objectives.
 Job satisfaction, due to the existence of ethical approaches at sunbird,
employees are even satisfied for their roles as they all respect each other and
there is no criticism of those working in upper roles to lower workers and this
makes any employee at sunbird to be satisfied by his or her working role.
 Organization commitment, according to our organization culture and
behaviour at sunbird, employees are told to be committed their roles so that
we can simply achieve our goals as organization, and due to culture of our
organization, we don’t support those workers who are the liabilities of
company but we only support those workers who company’s assets.

 Negative effects.
These are impacts that can affect organization negatively, and the following are
some of the negative impacts of ethical approaches to HR at sunbird hotel:

 Cost, thus developing, implementing and maintaining an ethic compliance

program within organization is expensive and time consuming. Ethics policies
need to be continually updated to reflect changes in workplace laws and
changes company culture as the organization grows. Proper administration of
ethic program often requires the hiring of an ethics officer and the
commitment of the company financial and personnel resources. Companies
with international activities like sunbird hotel, not only to have to adhere to
domestic laws but have to monitor compliance with the laws and norms of
behaviour in other legal systems and other cultures.
 A danger of building up false expectations, this can happen in unexpectedly
to the new recruited candidates as when they join company they are told
how to do things on a working place and they are told and taught the
organization behaviour and culture. By telling the good ethical approaches
existing on the company, those qualified candidates can have too much
expectations on the better ethical approach and when they have stayed
 sometime on the organization and meet bad ethical behaviour they get
disappointed and they start thinking that the whole explanation of good
ethical approaches it’s a lie and start thinking that the company gave them
false hopes and this decrease their confidence.

2.2. The ethical and responsible approaches has benefited different organizations, and the
following are the benefits of ethical and responsible approaches to HR at sunbird hotel:
 Promotes team work and cooperation.
An organization that introduces the workplace ethics program aligns the behaviour
of employees. At sunbird hotel this fosters partnership and trust. More over when
employees know supervisors expectations they perform better in their working
positions.
 Protects company assets.
A company prevent property theft and falsification of documents by implementation
of workplace ethical standards. Work ethics also help to protect sunbirds from loss
of income due to employees taking false sick leave.
 Provides emotional security.
Recognizing the importance of ethics at the workplace helps employees to feel
secure because there is no harassment from other workers and the supervisors treat
employee with respect.
 Question 3 30 Marks

(900 words)

3.0. Talent retention are the practices implemented to keep talented and skilled employees within the
organization as this is important for the success of an organization. And talent retention techniques
are strategies used to keep talented and skilled employees within the organization. Talent retention
techniques are used to reduce staff turnover. Staff turnover is defined as the ratio of the number of
leavers in a specified period to average number of employees employed during that same period of
time multiplied by hundred percent.

3.1. According to Carrel, Elbert, and Hartfield, staff turnover maybe caused by low remuneration,
job dissatisfaction and unfair treatment. The following are some of the causes of staff
turnover experienced at sunbird hotel:
 Employee expectations.
New employees have expectations but when these expectation are not met, they
start withdrawing from work using sick leave and all kinds of excuses. Employees set
expectations about rewards and compensation to be received if certain levels of
performance are achieved. If employees see that hard work and superior
performance are recognized and rewarded by the organization they will such
relationship to continue.

 High labour demand.

When the demand for labour in an industry is high, an opportunity for changing jobs
in that specific industry becomes high (neo, et al, 2006:33). As we all know, business
it’s a competition and the employees also look for green pastures, and when they
see other opportunities with good conditions than our company they leave.

 Employee recognition.
Robbins (2003:102) states that individuals at all levels of the organization want to be
recognized for their achievement on the job. Their success do not have to be
monumental before they deserve recognition but the praise should be sincere. If
employees’ achievements are not recognized, they start feeling like they are not
wealth enough for the organization.

 Lack of staff training and development.

For an organization to be successful in providing service delivery it is essential for
management to introduce, manage and evaluate programmes with the aim of
developing personnel, their knowledge, skills, attitudes, their own personal growth
and fulfilment. The planned development of the organization will promote staff
development. If employees are not offered an opportunity of training and
development they can see themselves as company’s liabilities and not valuable
organization’s assets.

 Poor employee orientation.

Orientation is the personalised training of the individual employee so that he or she
becomes acquainted with the requirements of the job itself. The aim of the
 orientation is to be effective and show productive work performance by the new
employee. Orientation process aims at reducing anxiety, creating a positive attitude
towards the employer, so when a new employee is not oriented feels unwelcomed
and he can decide to leave the organization.

3.2. Staff turnover affect the company on the working basis. Staff turnover effects are results
that come after the number of work leavers on organization. The following are some of the
effects of staff turnover at sunbird hotel:
 Decreases productivity.
Employee turnover can cause employee productivity rates to go down at sunbird,
which means that business may fall short of its goals if staff turnover becomes an
issue. If staff turnover is high, our company is likely to spend more money on
employee recruitment and replacement costs rather than focusing on our efforts on
increasing employee productivity hence improving our services.

 Recruitment costs.
Turnover can increase recruitment costs, which will be a huge cost to sunbird hotel.
It could mean having to hire and train new employees, paying them higher salaries
for longer time before they become as efficient as their experience counter parts.
Overall a business employee turnover huge, so high employee’s turnover at sunbird
could be avoided for this reason alone.

 Lower company morale.

One of the biggest issues that business face due to staff turnover is low employee
morale. When an employee leaves the company, it’s important for those remaining
at the film to try and boost their own morale so that it doesn’t spread like a wild fire
and cause addition employee turnover.

 Lost sales.
If employee turnover becomes high, it may be difficult to achieve company goals.
When employee productivity decreases due to staff turnover, companies lose out on
revenue that could have been gained by an efficiency workforce.

3.3. Measures and techniques that are used at sunbird to reduce staff turnover.

 Planning training and development programs.

Planning training and development programs displays company’s commitment. A
resource company like sunbird, help the employees by projecting a career path,
thereby giving a purpose and setting direction. Managers implement an individual
development plan to help employees reach short and long term career goals and
improve current job performance.

 Salary incensement.
As considered, sometimes employees leave organization due to the amount of salary
they receive. To reduce staff turnover at sunbird we discussed to increase the salary
of workers so that they could support their lives and families in good terms.
Sometimes it can be our competent offering higher salaries to their employees
playing the same role at our company, so it’s a good idea sometimes to increase the
employees’ salaries.
 Offering fringe benefits.
Fringe benefits are addition to compensation that companies like sunbird give their
employees. Some fringe benefits are offered universally to all employees of a
company while others may be offered only to those at executive levels. Some of
these fringe benefits are offered to compensate employees for costs related to their
work while others are geared to general job satisfaction. Some of the common fringe
benefits that we , sunbird, offer to our employees are; health insurance, life
insurance, tuition assistant, child care reimbursement, cafeteria subsides, below
market loans, employee discounts and personal use of company-owned vehicle.
 Question 4 30 Marks

(900 words)

4.0. Flexible working refers to non-tradition working arrangements that take into account an individual’s
personal needs, often involving some degrees of working from home. A flexible work arrangements
empowers an employee to choose what time they begin to work, where to work, and when they
will stop. The idea is to manage work-life balance and benefits of flexible working agreement to
reduce employee stress and increased overall job satisfaction. At sunbird hotel we also use flexible
working skills as the business runs 24hrs per working days, therefore workers shift working hours to
ensure their healthy and home time.

4.1. Flexible working methods that are kindly used at sunbird hotel include the following:
 Part-time working.
Part-time work is a flexible work arrangements which means working less than full-
time hours. It usually means fewer days per working week and employees are
normally considered to be part time if they commonly work fewer than 30hrs per
week, and somehow workers work in shifts and those shifts are often rotational. For
example employees work schedule in a part time work arrangements can consist of;
three 8-hour days a week, five 4-hour days a week and etc. The advantage of this
method is reduces absenteeism and tardiness, and its disadvantage is that it may
cause under-staffing at times.

 Agency working.
This is a method where a temporal work agency supplies workers to temporarily for
a company. For example a secretary of sunbird hotel may have an agreement with
an employment agency to do work for an office while one of their employees is on a
leave. The advantage of this method to employees is that they use it to work more
flexibly to help balance domestic responsibilities and its disadvantage on a working
organization is that there is no cultural fit of employees.

 Job sharing.
This is a method of flexible work arrangements in which two people work part-time
schedule to complete the work one person would do in a single full time job.
According to Cynthia Thomas Calvert, there are two types of job sharing which are;
“twins model” in which the job sharing employees work together on the project
seamlessly, and the “island model” in which the job sharing employees work
independently of one another one another on different tasks. The advantage of this
method is that there is the flexibility of part time hours, and its disadvantage is that
is a possible disruption of work flow.

4.2. Different types of flexibility can be used by organizations like sunbird hotel to enable them
to meet business objectives. The following are the four types of flexibility identified by
Blyton in 1996, and are used by sunbird hotel and resorts.

 Numerical flexibility
This is defined as the process through which organizations react to changes in
demand for their products or services by adjusting the amount of labour they
 employ. This is achieved through; over time, part-time work, variable working hours,
fixed time contracts or pay offs. Sometimes increasing labour can be made by
offering new technological ways in order to serve more customers. Sunbird hotel use
this model when customers demanding our services are high, mostly when non-
governmental organizations meetings are actively taking place in our hotels or
international customers have come in high number and are demanding.

 Temporal flexibility
According to Torrington et al (2009), temporal flexibility is the type of flexibility that
involves the pattern of hours worked to be respondents to the needs of both
employers and employees, thus where the number and hours worked varies. Sunbird
Hotel Company, use this type of flexibility to cover maternity leaves, or long-term
sick absence. Typical forms are flexitime, overtime, shift working, zero-hours
contracts, and annual hour’s contracts.

 Functional flexibility
This is the concept in organizations where employees can work different functions.
This is accomplished by making employees malt-skilled so that they can perform
various types of tasks whenever required. An example of functional flexibility, an
employee works in function “Y” and he also knows the work of function “X” and then
a project or services to work on has come up in function “X” and there is less man
power there, in this state the employee who works in “Y” can go and assist in
function “X” so that the project could be finished in time.

 Financial flexibility
This refers to the ability of an organization to respond in a timely and value
maximizing manner to unexpected changes in the organization’s cash flow or
investment opportunity set. This model is important to the determination of
structure of the organizations capital and can be applied to maintain the dept
capacity.

4.3. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of flexible working experienced at
sunbird hotel:

 Advantages
 Increased productivity; a lot of employees feel more productive when they
are allowed to work “remotely” as one of the method of flexible working. By
allowing flexible working hours, employers are also free to introduce agile
working in the form of staggered hours and alternative shift pattern to
become more available to customers.
 Reduces stress and burnout, for example working in hotel like sunbird, there
is shift patterns. This helps employees to have enough time of resting and
good time their families.
 Promotes a heathy work-life balance; introduction of flexible working
strategies is an excellent way to help promote healthy work-life balance in
employees.

 Disadvantages
 Can lead to less productivity, actually using these flexible working strategies it
cannot be easy to track the working progress of those workers who are using
 home working method of flexible working, hence it can lead to less
productivity.
 It may not always equal high paying jobs, in those positions where they earn
a lot of bucks.
5.0. Reference list
1. www.sunbirdhotel.com
2. 4UPHR-study guide
3. Human resource and leadership journal by DR. Juliana Namada and DR. Damary sikalieh.
4. CIMA and the IBE, (2008), Managing responsible business.