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1.Introduction
In any of the organizations or companies, jobs or tasks are mostly done by employees. In order to work more effectively, employees need to be motivated. Accordingly, motivation has been critical in any workplace which may lead to either success or failure. However, it might be complicated to understand or satisfy each person's needs and motivate them by the same method. In Shanghai, Portman Ritz Carlton hotel, which might be one of the most outstanding hotels in China, has won the Best Employer in Asia and Best Employer in China awards run by Hewitt Associates' and 21st Century Business Herald for the third consecutive time with a staff satisfaction reached 97%. This report uses the case of Portman Ritz Carlton hotel to especially examine how Human Resource (HR) managers can better apply motivation theories for higher employee satisfaction and staffs maintenance, especially the motivation theories used in Portman Ritz Carlton Shanghai to motivate employees and lead to a higher job satisfaction and economic benefit.
2.Background Information Associated With Human Resource Management (HRM)
Since China has introduced the “open door” policy in 1979, a great deal of changes has been brought to Chinese business environment, including an increased number of joint ventures and privately owned enterprises (Tan and Torrington, 2004, p.40). On 1st January 1998, the Ritz-Carlton Group opened up its market in China when it took over the operation of the Portman Shangri-La Hotel in Shanghai (Weldon and Chang, 2004).
As mentioned by Mark, who was the general manager of the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai, finding right people for right places were significant for the hotel with treating them with respect and offering them with great opportunities and constant training. In addition, as the director of Communications in this hotel, Michelle pointed out that in Chinese market, local employees' short-term mentality is the biggest challenge for building up the first class workforce. Apart from this, some other factors that influence the hotel's comprehension of HRM in current Chinese society are also evident, such as the dynamic competitive environment, the changeable world market, and the spreading Asian financial crisis bursted out in the summer of 1997 (Weldon and Chang, 2004). Thus, a number of effective HR practices should be forced to be implemented in organizations, especially in the fields of staff development, employees satisfaction and retaining, as well as the awareness of Shanghai's unstable job market.
In the mid-1997, the Regional Vice President, Asia-Pacific of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company - Mark DeCocinis had started to prepare for the handover of the Portman Shangri-La Hotel in Shanghai (Weldon and Chang, 2004). In recognition of the major problems relevant to the development of Ritz-Carlton hotel in this area, DeCocinis was not afraid with great anxiety, but saw the opportunity to make some small and conspicuous changes, which especially had impacts on employees motivation and development.
3.Overview of The Case
3.1 Business and Talent Requirements for the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai’s Success
As a premium hotel whose ultimate objective is to provide comfortable physical facilities and high quality care to its guests (Weldon and Chang, 2004), the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai had realized that this objective can only be achieved by satisfied and fully engaged staffs. According to the case, DeCocinis and his team has risen a three-level pyramid which were three goals of the organization. They are employee satisfaction, guest satisfaction and profits (Weldon and Chang, 2004). These goals are closely interrelated, and employee satisfaction is the basic requirement fir excellent guest satisfaction and financial outcomes.
More specifically, to those people who come to Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel to seek the secret of success, DeCocinis liked to draw an outline of a triple-pyramid interpreting that all is based on employees job satisfaction: "from the bottom up orderly are: job satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profit of the hotel, thereby, the most fundamental task of mine is to guarantee that all my employees can keep happy in their work everyday. Moreover, everything depends on their diligence."
In light of this president’s sagacious proposition, according to ‘the best employer survey’ by Human Resource Consulting Company, job satisfaction rate of Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel has been raised continually to 97% since the company’s scheduled operations (year 1998) till now.
Moreover, according to Maslow’s theory, every human being has hierarchy of five needs, and for every human being the level of their needs varies; therefore, to be human resource managers, recognizing different stages of employees’ needs and finding ways to satisfy those needs, the managers would succeed in winning the willingness and diligent participations. In case of Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, they are enjoying success of using Maslow’s theory of motivation in their management.
The crisis where their success of using Maslow’s theory was shown in 1998 when the hotel were facing the financial crisis, however, instead of caring about their salaries, most employees sticked together to overcome the risk. This event shows that those employees have already been satisfied with their lower needs such as physiological, safety, and social needs, thus the employees are looking forward to achieving higher-order needs (internal satisfactions) which include esteem, and self-actualization. Moreover, the fact that the employees of the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel is in the process of achieving higher-order needs can also be seen under the situations that other newly opened hotels asking employees to make turnovers by promising them to increase their salaries; however, no employees would like to quit their present jobs because of monetary reasons.
Considering the recruitment theories of this hotel, DeCocinis and his team seek for people who will fit with the organizational culture in order to ensure high service standards. All in all, to be concluded from the case, people who will share the same values with the organization, respect each other, seek a long-term employer-employee relationship as well as who have talents for their jobs.
3.2 The Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai’s Unique Value Proposal – We Are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen
Even though most other rivals in this market complained about the high employee turnover and talent quality insufficiency in Shanghai, the Portman Ritz-Carlton, as the Best Employer in Asia area, adhered to the principle in people management that is "Becoming ladies and gentlemen".
Under this principle, employees of this hotel are treated with respect and self-esteem like ladies and gentlemen. This has fostered trust relationship between staffs and managers that would create a harmonious work environment. In addition, employees are offered the appropriate tools and flexibility to conduct necessary things to service for customers. In return, staffs will obtain a sense of achievement by performing their jobs well.
3.3 Major Motivation Theories in The Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai
3.3.1 Well-Being Treatment
Regarding welfare of the company among all the peers of the same profession, it has already gained upper hand and formed a consistent policy about the interrelationship between salary and job performance. Staff can enjoy the highest treatment if only they work outstandingly.
The employees may be very pleased with the high salary and welfare; while the salary and welfare are not the most important factor to increase job satisfaction. Actually, in 1998, when the hotel faced the financial risk in Asia, a majority of employees did not care about their salaries, but helped the hotel to overcome the hurdle. The manager of human resource department, Ding Pin points out that some employees are persuaded to work for other hotels; however, few of them will leave Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, since their employees are mature and it is worthless for them to give up the culture, working environment and concept of the company.
3.3.2 Reward and Recognition for Employees
Besides the salary stimulating policies, recognition from employers should also do a contribution to employees’ job satisfaction, and even more motivational. Thus, recently, employees have increasingly generated more motivational factors such as achievement, recognition, growth, advancement and interest in the job, responsibility for enlarged task. These factors are yielding employees’ motivation rather than movement. Herzberg concluded that staff who felt satisfied about their work is inclined to attribute these factors to themselves. In contrast, dissatisfied workers tended to complain external factors like company’s policy, administration and supervision style. It is apparent that once the motivational factors are guaranteed, employees’ job satisfaction will be much higher.
From seeing through this, Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel paid more attention to give approval to staffs and guarantee the necessary praise they can get for their excellent performances. It obeys the two-factor theory which regards recognition as a representative motivator. In addition, managers should treat employees as the best they can reduce employees’ dissatisfaction and increase employees’ satisfaction in achievement and advancement. Obviously, only making employees feel well is not enough, if the company expects to achieve a high staff job satisfaction rate, they may be more concerned about the motivational factors and in the reality, it is true to a certain extent.#p#分页标题#e#
3.3.3 Training and Authentication Procedure
The training programs, aiming to train the employees of all the positions using the principles of a company and carry outs confirmations at the end of the year. Through those trainings employees would have the knowledge in those fields of work; as a result, they would be both proud and enjoy working.
According to the two-factor theory, work it self can increase the job satisfaction of employees. Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel offers a variety of opportunities for employees to broaden their sight. Consequently, employees can acquire knowledge not only about the hotel management, but also about traveling, English as well as computer science. Therefore, employees could have more useful techniques than before, and they may be much more confident when they are at work; in that case, employees will be satisfied with their work. Ultimately, job satisfaction will surely go up.
3.3.4 Communication
Most motivational theories talk about recognitions to be one of the motivational factors. For Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, the management teams have recognized their employees’ needs through the process of communications. Every morning all the employees of the hotel have meetings according to the departments, and during the meetings, every employees are free to talk about the things happen the other day, and even little problems they have in doing their jobs as to improve their performances and working conditions. For example, the spring uniforms for women employees were relatively thin for cool spring weather. For this reason many employees have complained to the management team to change to thicker cloth which would costs more and the hotel had took this matters into consideration and changed uniforms immediately.
4.Inspiration for Other HR managers
HRM administers the basic functions with talent recruitment and the development of strategies in retaining talent. In the short-run, Mark DeCocinis still believes that employee satisfaction is the key factor to effective HRM and business success. His advices for other HR managers can be summarized as three points: selection of right people by providing them training programs, treating them with respect and communicating with them frequently; focus on the positive rather than negative aspects and encouragement of those positive areas; as well as being modest leaders that can be able to bring better things to each country in which their businesses operated.
5.Conclusion
To conclude, this report gives specific analysis of various performances of the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel by using some motivation theories which are related to job satisfaction. Generally, motivation is essential for any business to survive and succeed; it is also the key to perform improvement. Actually, the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel successfully motivates its employees to manage their organization. According to the case, reward and recognition for employees, welfare treatment and training and authentication procedure are very well done by the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Shanghai. They triumphantly motivated employees by its perfect policies to increase job satisfaction. Also, the company is focusing on satisfying employees' current needs or beyond needs and achieving their employees’ higher-order needs including esteem and self-actualization while the employees had already achieved the lower order needs. On a whole, the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel has a very successful performance which may be a reference for other CEOs in this market.
Reference
“Asia Best Employers Awarded”, Asianinfo Daily China News, Dallas: Sep. 13, 2001, pg.1
David Murphy, “Meet Asia’s Best Boss”, Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong: April 17, 2003. Vol. 166, Iss.15; pg. 33
Tan, C.H. and Torrington, D. 2004, “Human resource management: East and West”, in Human Resource Management in Asia, Prentice Hall, Singapore, p.27.
Weldon, E. and Chang, M., 2004. The Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai: Asia's Best Employer Asian Journal of Management Cases, 2004; 1; 109
Available at: The IMD case collection at the ECCH,
http://ajc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/109, [Accessed 3 August 2007].
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