Since the summer of 2013, I have been working as the front desk clerk for a hotel located in the heart of campus. For the sake of my employment, I will not disclose the actual name of the hotel on the internet. Unknown to many, the hotel is comprised of 74 rooms located on the 3rd and 4th floors of the student union. Due to the relative size of the hotel, the staff consists of only 14 individuals. This is excluding those who manage accounting and human resources because I am unfamiliar with their roles.
Working at the hotel has given me perspective on teamwork and structural organization. In the textbook, we learned that organizations exist to achieve a certain goal through division of labor. Within the 14-member staff, there is one manager, six supervisors, and seven student workers. Our manager is only in office Monday through Friday in the lenient window of 8am to 5pm. The supervisors are the full-time workers who cover the 24 hour day by splitting up into three shifts (day, night, graveyard). Lastly, the student workers are scheduled to help the supervisors covering 6am to usually 10pm depending on the number of expected arrivals of the hotel that night.
The structural form is of dual authority. The manager usually oversees everyone, but since he is not in office every moment of every day, the full-workers are the "temporary managers" in a sense as they rotate in and out of the office. And then they have authority over the students. This arrangement, as we read from chapter five, only works when a task is divisible, because it reduces the boss's span of control. Obviously, as a small hotel, our main objective is to provide the best customer service. And in order to produce that, we must do our job efficiently, not make critical mistakes, and communicate effectively within the office. Thankfully, there are only three layers to this structure, so accessing the manager from the lower level (students) is not an obstacle.
According to Katzenbach and Smith's take on high-performing teams, we are actually lacking in some of these features. When we discuss the aspect of developing the right mix of expertise, I feel that this is something that should be applied at the hotel. As a student worker, I've encountered many moments when some supervisors could not solve some issues that other supervisors would find trivial and easy to fix. However this supervisor is also the best with interacting with customers, but problems could arise the next day from his mistakes which will in the long run, hinder our customer satisfaction. Effective teams are known to seek out the full range of necessary technical fluency.
Furthermore, the point made about high-performing teams developing a common commitment to working relationships is something that the staff struggles with.
"Team members must agree on who will do particular jobs, how schedules will be set and adhered to, what skilled need to be developed..."
First in terms of doing our given job, there is one specific supervisor who is notorious for not doing what he is told, as we mentioned above. For example, after every shift, supervisors are to check the balances of credit card transactions to make sure the numbers match up. If one supervisor does not do it and numbers are completely askew, the next shift has to fix it which is harder to do as more time passes. Next issue--scheduling. Not following the schedules is not a huge problem unless it is the breakfast shift. Since there is only one supervisor in the office at 6am, the student must show up to set up breakfast at 6am. Otherwise, the supervisor will have to close the office and set it up themselves. And this becomes a complication for the people who need to check out at that time. The guests have to wait and this in turn does not fulfill our goal for better customer service. I know this has happened a few times because students refused to wake up. Lastly, I feel that the necessary skills that need to be developed is not too enforced by our manager. There are many instances when I would be on the phone and wouldn't know what to say in certain situations.
We need more vertical coordination--specifically in action planning. As staff, it's important to have the knowledge of how to make it easier to assess how a job is done than measure product. In the textbook, the authors used McDonald's as an example of how the workers there have a specific way to greet people like with a smile and a cheerful welcome. Our boss unfortunately does not stress this type of interaction with people so some students sound extremely unenthusiastic with the guests.
Structurally, I feel that our hotel could use some improvement. This could be fixed with the manager's enforcement of better and effective training, rather than learning as time goes on by experience. We will constantly "falter and fail if group structure constantly generates inequity, confusion, and frustration."
Let me make some observations about "the market" before getting into your post. Ten years ago there was no iHotel, which I suspect now gets a lot of the customers that would previously have ended up in the Union. Also, if the visitor has business on the Engineering Quad, then there are some chains on University that offer an alternative to the Union. A little further away, on Neil Street and Kirby there are other private hotels. This wasn't always the case. But now that it is, I wonder what the continued rationale for the hotel at the Union is. Other campuses do have them too. (I've stayed at ones at Purdue and Iowa.) But do they remain necessary as a business, given the alternatives.
ReplyDeleteYour story is more about dysfunction then functioning well, especially in your mention of that one supervisor who does not follow the rules. You don't comment on whether the manager is fully aware of this and, if so, whether the manager has been addressing the issue or ignoring that. It is definitely harder for somebody lower in the hierarchy to help improve the performance of somebody who is higher up, especially if there is a history that explains the behavior. For example, the person may have a grievance that wasn't addressed properly, has since festered, so he doesn't follow rules as a reaction to that.
One thing you might have commented on more is whether the others who work for the hotel have a sense of team among them. Is there reasonably good communication and a spirit of cooperation? Or does each person simply go about their own work individually. The way individuals are on different shifts could reduce this sense of team and contribute to the poor function of that one supervisor.
Thanks for the comment, Professor Arvan. Yes, I realize that it was story about dysfunction so I guess it was more a story of a moderately successful team overall. Concerning the awareness of my manager, the rest of supervisors would all inform him about the certain supervisor's work ethic, but I am actually unaware of how our manager dealt with that situation. I would assume that our manager would have had a discussion with him about it as he does with everyone who creates an issue.
DeleteIn regards to teamwork, I'd say we are reasonably good with communication. In a typical work day, the students would usually take care of anyone who comes to the desk and the supervisor would take care of the phones. If the student has an issue then the supervisor will help him/her. Tasks are delegated well most of the time so overall the hotel management is very efficient.
One thing I failed to mention is the logbook, which is where the supervisors write down any issues going on during their shifts. This keeps all the supervisors up to date logistically. There is also verbal communication during the rotation for about five minutes to go over anything worth mentioning.
Thus, like you mentioned, it's hard to have a sense of teamwork with the rotations, but I still believe there is good communication and cooperation.