Gaylord’s Palm Hotel has attained worldwide recognition from its success in service delivery standards of high quality. Success of Gaylord’s palm hotel lies heavily on organizational culture focused mainly on its employees and later translated to service delivery aspects. Organization culture entails its mission, values, and goals developed by an organization’s management and communicated directly to all its members. Culture formulates basic focus and drives towards customer satisfaction in service delivery aspects.
Culture Creating Meaning to Members
At Gaylord’s Palm hotel culture acts to motivate employees towards the best suitable performance in service delivery (Al-Sada, 2017). The organizational goal formulated at Gaylord’s Palm hotel entails ‘legendary guest service’ provision. To achieve this, management further broke down legendary service provision in employee terms to imply ‘flawless service.’ With such an established goal, employees have to strive in each work to provide the best quality work ever. Employee motivation is achieved through constant drive and focus in members to attain a specific level of performance established through culture and values created.
Moreover, culture communicates organizational commitment towards all its employees. At the hotel, the hiring process of employees is guided by guidelines of ’10’s.’ Hiring culture establishes an atmosphere of at most best suited only employees being hired in the process thus resulting in a feeling of satisfaction by existing employees. Culture creates a sense of employee belonging to the organization. Besides, organizational commitment can be illustrated whereby, Gaylord’s hotel formulated an acronym ‘STARS’ to refer to members of the hotel. Such an acronym creates a sense of management commitment in that, every member of the organization feels that his or her role in an organization is recognized.
‘STARS first, always,’ formulates a guarantee communicated to all employees emphasizing management commitment to employees. Culture also creates a sense of unity among employees; through a reminder that serving guests has no difference with serving each other. Gaylord’s hotel has effectively achieved this through a reminder of an important aspect of ‘STARS’ that entails teamwork element. Culture at Gaylord’s entails unique rituals mostly practiced by employees in celebration of various milestones achieved. For instance, once an employee achieved a promotion, every other member of staff would take part in congratulatory rituals; this boosts staff morale through culture.
Culture and controls
Culture in an organization acts in place of traditional modes of supervision. Culture stipulates values and ethical codes of practice followed by employees (Chang, 2015). Traditional modes of employee supervision entailed managers physically observing employees to determine whether members are acting by guidelines provided. Gaylord’s palm hotel established a culture entailing of specific values as guidelines for the employee service delivery process. Corporate values created at the hotel include; service, citizenship, integrity, respect, excellence, creativity and passion.
Rooted corporate values in employees according to Gaylord’s hotels’ guides actions undertaken. Employees are faced with unique situations in the delivery process, making it impossible to follow rigid rules and regulations. To avoid conflicts in such unique situations, guidance provided by established culture values dictate employee actions. Through culture, an organization enables an aspect of flexibility in controls as opposed to rigid values and personal supervisions.
Culture formulates and establishes internal control in human resource management and recruitment processes. Gaylord’s hotel culture formulates acronyms and unique guidelines followed in management activities. In the recruitment of human resources, Gaylord’s hotel follows a guideline dabbed ‘10’s’ which implies recruitment of only persons with unique drive to serve. Such a guideline regulates employment in terms of instructions on which particular type of employees to hire. Another acronym formulated at Gaylord’s hotel ‘STARS,’ dictates individual employee focus on daily basis. ‘STARS,’ acronym entails elements of; smiles, teamwork, attitude, reliability and, service. Employee adherence to ‘STARS’ ensures control in terms of individual human resource management.
Culture concerning success or failure at Gaylord’s hotel
Gaylord’s hotel success can be directly related to its proper brand image resulted from organizational culture (Alattas, 2016). Management at Gaylord’s has formulated a customer-centered culture accompanied by strategies on employee activity guidelines. A proper brand image can be witnessed in a situation whereby, a former client at the hotel wrote a letter describing her wonderful experience at the hotel. Such an instance implies positive mouthing from customers in referring others to the same organization.
Customer-centered culture at the hotel attracts and enhances final customer satisfaction based on a 60% level of satisfaction as per 2010. Also, the hotel’s hiring policy creates a proper brand image through guidelines and feels experienced during the interview process. Applicants not selected in the recruitment process give evidence of management commitment to employee needs contributing to proper brand image and proper success.
The establishment of proper culture ensures organizational success through attraction of best suit talent applicants. Gaylord’s hotel cultivated a culture of hiring ’10’s,’ which entails the selection of most prominent and qualified employees to serve. Applicants selected for employment at Gaylord’s must have a unique passion drive and commitment towards service provision. Based on the culture dictation of specific employee qualifications necessary for employment, culture contributes to organizational success. Hiring of best-qualified employees ensures high standards of individual productivity leading directly to profit realization and customer satisfaction. Gaylord’s hotel has a 40% employee retention rate resulting from well-established culture values. Employee retention is a major indicator of success in an organization.
Culture facilitates informal internal controls in organizations leading to eventual success. Internal control systems act to establish the required level of performance expected in the service delivery process. At Gaylord’s hotel, internal controls resulting from culture are utilized in the hiring process and employee supervision. Employees at the hotel are guided by values of culture in operations hence do not need direct supervision. Following values of culture set up ensures quality service provision and profit realization margins.
Most Salient Value
Service and creativity values from Gaylord Palm’s values stand out as most salient among the others. Gaylord’s Palm hotel undertakes service provision as a core in its operations. Values of service and creativity formulate basic principles guiding in service provision. As a value, service entails direct interactions between employees and customers. Service value guides on employee outlook, presentation process and, communication. To derive customer satisfaction, employees need to perfect their service value process; looking smartly dressed and addressing customer concerns wherever any arises. Service value relates directly to organizational culture in addressing elements of smile and reliability. An aspect of service value defines that employees need to smile and show delight in dealing with customers. On the other hand, creativity as a value entails employee innovation ability to improve customer service delivery process. Creativity imparts employees to readily take risks in actions that might lead to improved customer satisfaction. Besides, an employee is challenged to use his or her imagination and strive to collaborate with colleagues to deliver perfect services to customers. Creativity relates to an element of teamwork and service with passion in organizational culture at Gaylord’s hotel. Established culture at the hotel utilizes creativity in service delivery in terms of suggestions of strategies to improve final delivery to customers.
Requirement for Organizational Culture
An effective organizational culture entails elements of; employee inclusivity, management commitment, employee motivation, favorable work environment and, proper communication systems and formulation of mission, goals, and values ( Helms & Mills, 2017). Employee inclusivity element entails constant consultation and engagement of employees in addressing key elements of culture guidelines. Top-level management should be committed to establishing proper organization-wide culture and facilitating its use. Management forms the most vital component in establishing culture through necessary strategies and controls to ensure the rooting of culture.
A favorable environment at the workplace can only be created through management commitment towards achieving the desired culture. Enabling the work environment facilitates widespread culture throughout the organization in every department of the organization. Organizations need to formulate strategies that motivate employees to create loyalty among them. Employee loyalty ensures the flexibility element necessary in the formulation of culture. Strategies in employee motivation include; compensation, reward systems and, bonus systems. To ensure organization-wide establishment of culture, proper communication systems are necessary. Impart heavy communication of culture on employees to achieve rooting of organizational culture. Gaylord Palm Hotel has successfully achieved an effective organizational culture. For an organizational culture to be effective, all key elements mentioned above need to be established. Culture at Gaylord’s hotel was properly formulated through; establishment of values, hiring to build culture and, formulation of communication systems. Gaylord’s technique in the establishment of culture across the hotel’s organization covered all essential elements necessary for culture establishment.
Elements Necessary in Building of Organizational Culture
In my opinion, from Gaylord Palm’s organizational culture, elements of hiring to build culture and communication systems are significant in attaining strategic orientation. Attainment of strategic orientation in organizations relies heavily on manpower available; high employee skill ensures faster attainment of selected visions of the organization. To attain proper strategic orientation, human resource function needs to be of high quality. Recruitment of human resources at Gaylord Palm’s Hotel followed a process of only highly qualified applicants able to join the workforce. Recruitment of highly qualified employees ensures that an organization can attain strategic orientation through proper productivity from its employees. The skilled labor force provides ease in the implementation of management strategies necessary to achieve desired visions. Also, high-level employees provide ease in supervision and evaluations saving much of the time and resources used in such situations. Gaylord Palm’s Hotel attainment of effective culture through proper hiring of employees illustrates how skilled workforce benefits organizational visions.
On the other hand, the establishment of proper communication systems aligns organizational daily routines towards general strategic orientation needs. The communication aspect in organizations acts to create drive-in employees towards the achievement of certain specific visions. Linking up of organizational long term visions requires proper communication systems to focus employee activities towards periodic goals set up. Proper communications can be attained through; open-door policy, constant reminders and, reduced management hierarchy systems. Open door policy entails employees have the freedom to communicate directly with management and address various concerns. In an organizational setup, different write-ups and are erected outlining company visions. Hierarchy in management should be reduced to ensure freedom guaranteed to employees.
References
Alattas, M., & Kang, K. (2016). The relationship between organization culture and knowledge sharing towards business system success. arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.02460.
Al-Sada, M., Al-Esmael, B., & Faisal, M. N. (2017). Influence of organizational culture and leadership style on employee satisfaction, commitment and motivation in the educational sector in Qatar. EuroMed Journal of Business, 12(2), 163-188.
Chang, C. L. H., & Lin, T. C. (2015). The role of organizational culture in the knowledge management process. Journal of Knowledge management, 19(3), 433-455.
Helms Mills, J. C., & Mills, A. J. (2017). Rules, Sensemaking, Formative Contexts, and Discourse in the Gendering of Organizational Culture☆. In Insights and Research on the Study of Gender and Intersectionality in International Airline Cultures (pp. 49-69). Emerald Publishing Limited.