HR consultancy planning report about a UK hotel group mergers and acquisitions French hotel

Background:

Yooway hotel group own more than 60 hotel throughout the UK, mostly in the large urban centres of London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol and Liverpool. It currently has slightly ovee 1000 employees. The group are considered somewhat budget accommodation. They are functional, clean and reasonable priced. The rooms are generally of a reasonable size, with the uaual basic facilities one would expect in a modern hotel. The company has recently acquired a small hotel chain headquartered in France called Hôtel d’amour. Yooway’s CEO decided that half of the new hotel in France would be retained and rebranded as part of Yooway Hotel group and the other half will be sold. 

Hôtel d’amour currently have 40 hotels and employs around 1500 people. The headquartered in Rheims, in the Champagne region, to the east of Paris. 50％staff left

The challenge:

You are to act as a HR consultant which will write advice to YOOWAY , making appropriate suggestions and recommendations to the YOOWAY board of directors.

Specifics of the position of the company

YOOWAY wants to rebrand and reopen the French hotels that they will keep within 6 weeks.

Many YOOWAYs hotel managers say that they would like to work abroad.

None of the existing managers speak French fluently.

Over 50% of the staff have left the French hotel, so YOOWAY will also need a recruitment strategy. 

3 Questions to consider:

1. What should their long-term strategic approach be for resourcing their management team within the French subsidiary company? (1500 words) 

2.What differences in HR policy and practice should the board consider when expanding their business to France (and potentially elsewhere in continental Europe)?

3.What are the wider socio-political and cultural circumstances which the board should consider?

The report: some ideas to consider

What should their long-term strategic approach be for resourcing their management team within the French subsidiary company?

What differences in HR policy and practice should the board consider when expanding their business to France (and potentially elsewhere in continental Europe)?

What are the wider socio-political and cultural circumstances which the board should consider?

 

This assessment has 3 parts:

Part 1: International staffing

What should their long-term strategic approach be for resourcing their management team within the French subsidiary company? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?

• Paragraph 1: Outline your recommendation for YOOWAY. 

i. Resourcing: Should it take a ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric, regiocentric approach or combination of 2 or more? Hotel style to use? 

ii. No. of management suggested? Estimated cost? 

iii. Time Frame – immediate (6weeks), short trrm and long term

All above should have source and evidence to support

• Paragraph 2: Give reasons (realistic company and evidence) for your recommendation.

• Paragraph 3: What are the disadvantages of this approach (support with evidence from literature).

Implications of the choice:

• Paragraph 4: The challenges that YOOWAY will have to address by using expatriates (including culture shock, individual factors, nonwork factors, language factors, etc).

• Paragraph 5: Types of actions that YOOWAY should take to minimise challenges & risks for the expatriate & the organisation (selection processes, training programmes, etc). Use evidence.

Strategic planning – What are the alternatives?

-Let’s argue that we don’t want local managers / professionals (HCNs)… what else can we do?

-Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) – (Howe-Walsh & Schyns, 2010)

-Short-term assignments (Tahvanainen, Welch and Worm, 2005) (1-12 months)

4. ESG

All above with source and evidence to support