Keys to Successful Businesses: From Finance to Employee Management

Several factors are necessary in creating and maintaining a successful company or organization, and if all of the pieces are not in place, areas of that organization will suffer. The key components to running a successful company are good management of finances, employees, policies and procedures, and most importantly, customers. "Management is the process of working with people and resources to accomplish organization goals. Good managers do those things both effectively and efficiently." (Thomas, Snell, 2004) In this paper, the four functions of management will be defined and applied to the management of the every day functions of the housekeeping department of the Residence Inn by Marriott - Seattle South.

The first function necessary to reaching organizational success is planning. Planning is the process when a specific goal or goals is determined and steps are put in place to achieve those goals. A budget is given at the beginning of each month to maintain minutes per room (MIP). "Minutes per room" are the average amount of minutes that each housekeeper should take to clean each room. The Residence Inn has a budget of thirty minutes per room each day that has to be maintained regardless of occupancy and staffing issues. It is not acceptable to go over MIP if the occupancy is higher than budgeted, or if the hotel is short staffed. The first step in ensuring that the MIP budget is met each day is to make sure that each housekeeper is not given more than 16 rooms in a day to clean. 16 rooms multiplied by 30 minutes per room comes to 480 minutes. When 480 is divided by 60 (minutes per hour), it comes to eight, which would be the amount of hours each housekeeper should work in a day. If too many housekeepers are scheduled to work in a day, then each one will either complete the work in less than eight hours, which will ultimately cause frustration on payday. Or, extra time will be spent cleaning in order to achieve that eight hour goal. Both scenarios cause poor production, which in turn causes overtime and increased MIP. By planning ahead of time based on occupancy, arrivals, and departures for each day, proper scheduling can be done to guarantee the best possible production.

Once the schedule is made, it is time to move on to the next phase of managing the housekeeping department, which is the organization phase. To organize is to gather together all information needed to complete a task and in this case, to distribute the information to the housekeepers by no later than 8 am. The better a department is organized in the beginning of the day, the better production will be maintained throughout the day. The first step in the organization process of the housekeeping department is for the supervisor to come in early and set up the boards so that they are ready for the housekeepers when they arrive for work at 8 am. A board is a clipboard with a report on it stating what rooms each housekeeper will be cleaning that day and any special instructions that need to be followed for those rooms, such as a pet in the room to be aware of, or a person who wants housekeeping service at a specific time. Another step in organization is making sure that all of the housekeeping carts, the place that the housekeepers keep supplies to take to rooms, are set up and ready to go by 8 am.

Function three is the leadership function, which means to motivate the associates to achieve the goals for the day. At the Residence Inn, the supervisor has a meeting, or a huddle, with the staff before the rooms are to be cleaned. This meeting is to go over anything that the housekeepers might need to know for the day, anything that might have happened from the previous day, as well as to cheerlead for the team and praise good work.

The fourth, and probably the most important function of managing the housekeeping team throughout the day is controlling, or follow up. By controlling the day, the housekeeping supervisor has to make sure that the associates are doing their jobs and achieving their goals. The supervisor will walk around the property several times throughout the day to help the housekeepers, to inspect the rooms, and to make sure that if anything is missed during that inspection, that the associate goes back to the room to fix it. The supervisor also has to make sure that the housekeepers are being productive. It is not uncommon to find an associate sitting in a guest room watching television when they should be cleaning the room. It is crucial that the supervisor pay constant attention to guarantee production from the associates. Management and delegation is rarely successful without accurate and constant follow up.

Although in the text, Thomas and Snell state "As a manager, your typical day will not be neatly divided into the four functions." The housekeeping department of The Residence Inn does seem to follow a clear path to achieving ultimate goals by following the four functions of management. Without each piece of the management puzzle, it would be virtually impossible to run a successful company, and although it may not always be easy to incorporate each component, the ultimate outcome will be worth struggle.
References

Bateman, T. S., Snell, S. 2004 Management: The Competitive Landscape ch.1 p. 43 The McGraw Hill Companies, Retrieved from University of Phoenix rEesourceMay 12^th, 2005