Banff Aspen

Lodge
Case Analysis

Raman
Where do we
position this
hotel?– team
management
model with
relatively high
paternalistic
control

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Work dynamics –
manufacturing ambience

Interdependence
=> tasks, workflows Congeniality and
and individual self-initiative
trust.

Interest and Sustained

empathy in Consistency of
customer service. effort

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 1) Ski season===Time
2) Finite window period=== Decision
making window
3) Competitors ===Scare labour
Contingencies
resources and alternative employers
4) Brand identity and employee
and challenges
projection –right kind of talent
5) Labour market –sellers or buyers?
in manpower
4 6) Requiring Cultural fit=➔identifying
and determining hiring criteria, and planning
applying those criteria to evaluate a
series of applications
 Some questions for
you to think about
• 1. What are the key success factors for the Aspen?
2. What are the requirements for the Front Desk staff?
3. If you were to develop hiring criteria based on these
requirements, and apply them to the applications the
protagonist Barr is reviewing; Whom would you
interview?
4. What questions would you ask at the interview?
5. Analyse strengths and weaknesses in the Aspen’s
HRM process. Provide recommendations for
improving the human resource planning, recruitment,
selection, and onboarding/training processes.

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30/01/2023

• Customers and their profiling –skiing

guests, corporate meetings and families.
• How should they be served?
Who lie at • Intuitively

the heart of • Proactively

• Silently
6
any • Effectively and efficiently
• Good service--- good reviews—
business? new clients
 Who is this hotel’s ideal
employee

• Barr’s focus on exceptional customer service should be replicated by the staff he hires. Therefore, staff
who empowered to meet customers’ needs and to create an exceptional experience must be friendly
and
innovative and must demonstrate initiative in their care for guests
• Do we have them?
• How many of them?
• Who are falling short?
• Who need to be replaced or fired?
• Who are retiring?
• What is the KSA matrix do we have to meet each role’s requirement?

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 The complexity of the function and role determine
recruitment and selection method and decisions
Doing a
sound job
analysis
at the
macro-
organisati
onal level

Multiple
Employme
nt
contracts

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 • Multiple nationalities visit the hotel
which is strategically located and
Who is the hence require multilingual staff
ideal front • Fluctuating and long working hours
• Performs varied task demands from
desk staff? managing check in-billing-check-out,
reservations, phone calls, customer
preferences.
• Provides the best First impression of
hotel
• Liaisons with other staff and
communicates initial preferences
• The basis of word-of-mouth
9 recommendations

30/01/2023
 What • Key criteria include customer-service
experience, attention to detail, ability to

criterion work under time pressure, ability to

interact with people from other countries

are
and cultures, demonstrated ability to work
in teams, and flexibility o perform a range
of tasks.

required These criteria would help the Aspen meet the

for the
key success factors for the accommodation
industry: a multi- skilled and flexible
workforce, and excellent service that

front desk generates word-of-mouth recommendations

from guests who have received excellent
customer service.

role?
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30/01/2023
 Sort the order of the questions
and improve them

1) We have your résumé in front of us, but could you briefly tell us about yourself?
2) What do you know about the Banff Aspen Lodge?
3) Tell us how your experience as...(cite specifics) has prepared you for a customer-service position in a hotel. What
languages do you understand and speak?
4) I see that your last job was.......... What did you like best about that job and dislike most about it? Why?
5) Describe how you work when under pressure. Give an example of a volunteer or work experience that demonstrates this
ability.
6) Do you consider yourself a team player? Give an example of a volunteer or work experience that demonstrates your
ability to work effectively on a team.

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Questions continued

7. ) What are the first things you would say and do when a customer arrives at the Front Desk and asks to
check in?
8.) A potential customer calls in to the hotel and presses you to add two days to her reservation next
summer, even though the hotel is fully booked for that weekend. How would you handle the situation?
9.) A guest arrives at the Front Desk clearly upset. The guest speaks very little English, and you do not
speak the guest’s language. How would you handle the situation?
10.) Upon checking out one morning, a guest who has stayed for a week demands a one-week voucher the
next summer. Citing a dirty room and a toilet that overflowed several times, he threatens to call the powerful
people and lay a complaint. How would you handle the guest’s demands?
11.) A guest asks you about your favourite things to do or places to see in Banff. How would you respond?
12.) What questions do you have for us?

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 ➢ Barr’s approach to human resources planning is ad hoc,
relying on the knowledge of individual department

What are the heads. This is not sustainable in the long run.

challenges ➢ It is too individualised resting on few people .

➢ Banff had an under-supply of talented committed
existing? What people to work in the service sector.
➢ Barr should encourage his management team to track
are the employees’ status (i.e., Canadian resident with no visa
limitations or international employee in Canada on a
suggestions for working visa), competencies and skills, and future
travel plans if known to profile the person holistically.

Hotel to improve
These data should be kept current.
➢ Internal labour supply estimates must also be

HR Planning, evaluated, indicating which employees were likely to be

leaving and when, and internal candidates who
could fill vacancies either temporarily or permanently.
recruitment and The tight labour market significantly narrows the
possibility of hiring current Banff residents.

selection

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 What kind of recruitment profile do we need?
• Customer, culture, trainability and attitude fit.

• The Aspen has already branded itself as an employer-of-choice in Banff. This label is evidenced by the hotel’s reputation
for an excellent corporate culture, Barr’s open-door policy and support of management and staff,
the low staff turnover rate, and the breakfast room employees who had worked with the Aspen for years.

• The Aspen offers competitive wages, employee housing, opportunities for further advancement an education, winter and
summer season incentives, and a loyalty bonus after one year. At the mature organisational life cycle internal
recruitment is preferred for process continuity.

• However, relying only internal recruiting without a Plan B means that because of its relatively small size. Of greater
impact is the current state of the labour market in Alberta generally and Banff more specifically.
External recruiting allows the Aspen to build the diversity of cultures and languages required to meet the needs of
international guests and allows access to a larger pool of diverse candidates.

• Alberta has a low job vacancy rate (2.0 per cent generally, and 3.7 per cent in the accommodation and food service
sector in the national parks regions) There is also a higher unemployment-to-job-vacancies ratio (4.8 unemployed
individuals for every job vacancy), Barr will need to look beyond Banff’s pool of candidates and word-of-mouth referrals
alone and cast its net wider.

• For example, Barr could advertise in trade publications. He could also advertise in different cities and conduct
interviews when he travels to trade shows. He could reach out to travel agencies in countries that have a reciprocal
Working Holiday program with Canada.
 Validity refers to the extent to
which the interview predicts
success on the job.
Two
important
terms Reliability refers to the
consistency of the interview
process over time and across
raters.

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 1. A mixed (semi-structured) interview that
What
interview
combines predetermined, structured
questions with candidate-specific
questions based on information provided
in the résumé.
Barr must ask- questions about what a

measure
candidate would do, he could improve the
validity of the interview by describing
situations and asking applicants how they
behaved in such situations in the past.
One of the key qualities Barr looks for is

must be
cultural fit, which is important given the
key role excellent customer service plays.
2. People who seek out positions in the
16 hospitality industry in Banff are generally
people who either are part of the Working

used?
Holiday program or simply like to travel
and so move on after working for a few
months and people looking for more
substantial role.
 Onboarding and
training

• The Aspen uses a combination of job shadowing, formal

training, and ongoing onboarding activities.
Department managers do some of the training, and Barr
provides additional training to ensure that the hotel’s
culture is reinforced.

It is not clear whether the Aspen has an HR specialist. If so,

that person should also explain matters such as working
hours and vacation time on the first day of work.
Aspen may or may not evaluate its orientation program. If
not, it should be assessed based on the timeliness of
information and benefits (e.g., high levels of customer
service from the outset, few errors) versus costs (e.g., time
spent).

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 It is also not clear whether any formalised ongoing training
occurs at the Aspen. The relatively short tenure of many of
the employee's, ongoing training has not been emphasised.
It is also not clear whether the performance of many current
employees is evaluated formally.
If it is, these evaluations should be used to identify any
performance deficiencies (e.g., “can’t do problems”) that
could be remedied through training.

Onboarding
and training
Continued
WHAT HAPPENED
Hiring for the Front Desk and other areas at the Banff Aspen
Lodge remains an ongoing issue because of
the transient nature of the industry. The Aspen continues to
develop its HRM practices to ensure that it hires
candidates who fit well with the hotel’s culture of excellent
service.
Due to the inclusion of disguised information in the résumés,
it would not be helpful to report which
applicants were interviewed and whether they obtained the
job

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 Key learnings
from this case
• Interdependent domino effect of recruitment decisions-Selection and
recruitment make or break an organisation.
• Will you work for a wrong company?
• Importance of structured HR Planning and Job Analysis.
• Commitment, loyalty, skill versus cost of recruitment process and pricing
the potential recruit

• The recruitment channel also impacts the quality of recruitment

• The importance of context and stakeholders
• Challenge of sustaining and synchronising individual and organisational
branding
• Securing and bringing in talented committed employees
• What next after recruitment?
• Career pathways
• Onboarding, financial and non-financial set of interventions, managing
employee perceptions and setting in places effective policies within the
organisation

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 Questions
•Comments ?
? •Takeaways?
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