Hotel Paris’s performance appraisal system
The Hotel Paris’s competitive strategy is “To use superior guest service to differentiate the
Hotel Paris properties, and to thereby increase the length of stay and return rate of guests,
and thus boost revenues and profitability.” HR manager Lisa Cruz must now formulate
appraisal policies and activities that support this competitive strategy, by eliciting the
required employee behaviors and competencies. Lisa knew that the Hotel Paris’s
performance appraisal system was inadequate. When the founders opened their first hotel,
they went to an office-supply store and purchased a pad of performance appraisal forms.
The hotel chain used these. Each form was a two-sided page. Supervisors indicated whether
the employee’s performance in terms of various standard traits including quantity of work,
quality of work, and dependability was excellent, good, fair, or poor. Lisa knew that, among
other flaws, this appraisal tool did not force either the employee or the supervisor to focus
the appraisal on the extent to which the employee was helping the Hotel Paris to achieve its
strategic goals. She wanted a system that focused the employee’s attention on taking those
actions that would contribute to helping the company achieve its goals, for instance, in
terms of improved customer service
Both Lisa and the firm’s CFO were concerned by the current disconnect between (1) what
the current appraisal process was focusing on and (2) what the company wanted to
accomplish in terms of its strategic goals. They wanted the firm’s new performance
management system to help breathe life into the firm’s strategic performance, by focusing
employees’ behavior specifically on the performances that would help the Hotel Paris
achieve its strategic goals. Lisa and her team created a performance management system
that focused on both competencies and objectives. In designing the new system, their
starting point was the job descriptions they had created for the hotel’s employees. These
descriptions each included required competencies. Consequently, using a form similar to
Figure 9-3, the front-desk clerks’ appraisals now focus on competencies such as “able to
check a guest in or out in 5 minutes or less.” Most service employees’ appraisals include the
competency, “able to exhibit patience and guest support of this even when busy with other
activities.” There were other required competencies. For example, the Hotel Paris wanted
all service employees to show initiative in helping guests, to be customer oriented, and to
be team players (in terms of sharing information and best practices). Each of these
competencies derives from the hotel’s aim of becoming more service oriented. Each
employee now also receives one or more strategically relevant objectives for the coming
year. (One, for a housecleaning crewmember, said, “Martha will have no more than three
room cleaning infractions in the coming year,” for instance.) In addition to the goals- and
competencies-based appraisals, other Hotel Paris performance management forms laid out
the development efforts that the employee would undertake in the coming year.
Instructions also reminded the supervisors that, in addition to the annual and semi annual
appraisals, they should continuously interact with and update their employees. The result
was a comprehensive performance management system: The supervisor appraised the
employee based on goals and competencies that were driven by the company’s strategic
needs. And, the actual appraisal resulted in new goals for the coming year, as well as in
specific development plans that made sense in terms of the company’s and the employees’
needs and preferences
1. Choose one job, such as front-desk clerk. Based on any information you have
(including job descriptions), write a list of duties, competencies, and performance
standards for that chosen job
2. Based on that, and on what you learn in this course, create a performance appraisal
form for appraising that job
