Four Seasons 4h6a2b

Evolution of the organizational structure in relation to the evolution of the strategies and the environment Several of the strategies put in place by the company had an impact on the organizational structure. Big changes took place at the beginning of 2012 when Jim FitzGibbon, president Worldwide Hotel Operations, announced its retirement. He continued to be involved with the company until the end of 2012 though, serving in an advisory role when Four Season was going through a transition to a new organizational structure. Not only the company was giving the decisional power to a new generation of leadership, but also transitioning to a new and elevated hotel operational structure. Four Seasons is now adding two regional Presidents of Hotel Operations. The first one is responsible for providing a strategic leadership for hotel operations throughout the Asia Pacific region, which is the fastest growing part of the company; the regional manager for Americas instead assumes responsibility for hotel operations in Canada, the United States and South America. These appointments are consistent with Four Seasons long term focus on promotion from within and strengthen the company’s ability to deliver best in class results and sustainable growth in the years ahead (Jim FitzGibbon to retire from Four Seasons, 2011). In addition to these important appointments, Four Seasons is also creating a new executive position to oversee global product and innovation: The Executive Vice President for Product and Innovation. This newly created role, entails the responsibility for overseeing the company's product evolution and innovation efforts (Jim FitzGibbon to retire from Four Seasons, 2011). The role implies that the Vice President for Food & Beverage as well as the Vice President Rooms, Americas, will report directly to him, and he will report directly to the CEO.

The second important strategy implementation is the Blue Water program. Four Seasons has always wanted to find innovative ways to satisfy customers and by developing Blue Water, it was able to test new ideas and to share newly discovered best practices across locations. The innovation consist in introducing into the organizational structure a designated cross-functional Blue Water team for each property, which meets regularly to dream up ideas for improving customer experience. BLUEWATER sources and pilots ideas through

general managers, when

also soliciting fresh solutions from elsewhere within the company (Overpaid CEOs out, motivated employees in, 2013). All Four Season tested innovations and surveyed their consumers about their experiences to report . The program has been effectively incorporated into all general meetings and staff training as they found out that Involving employees in service innovation and design

increases the likelihood of

new service success. Employees are indeed able to

identify the

organizational issues that need to be addressed to the delivery of the service to customers. And when employees feel that management is interested in their opinions, they’ll be more likely take a personal stake in the business. Furthermore, Four Seasons has followed a targeted course of expansion, opening new hotels and residences in major city centres and desirable resort destinations around the world. The company has widened its organizational structure, now it has 90 properties in 37 countries, and more than 50 projects under development. Macro structure The “macro-structure” captures the stable pattern of interactions between the individuals who compose an organization at high levels of aggregationas

in

an

organization

chart.

(Note

on

analyzing

organizational

macrostructures, 2009) The organization chart shows that the company is structured on two main layers, a top management one and the one made of several departments that respond directly to the CEO. The organizational structure is composed of major departments that are located at a corporate level and other departments that belong to single

regions to which individual hotel locations refer. There are eleven corporate departments in charge of establishing and implementing guidelines for the whole chain as well as carrying out istrative operations for the Four Seasons’ brand. Human Resources, Corporate Marketing, , Development, Finance, Operations, Product and Operations, Public Relations and operations are all centralized at the headquarter level. Centralization allows the company to be flexible and adaptable to changing contingencies stemming from several different environments in which it operates. The operation department is charge of controlling the regional units which are further divided into three main functions which are sales and marketing, engineering, istration and general. Each regional unit is in turn responsible of handling single hotel locations. The organizational chart thus displays that the coordination criterion according to which departments are organized is function, activities are in fact grouped into subunits according to a similarity principle. A functional organizational criterion in a very complex structure, such as the one of Four Seasons, allows each area to focus on specific tasks, in turn, allowing employees to increase productivity. The goal of functional structure is to put all the human and informational resources necessary for a single activity in one place. By doing this, it maximizes performance by facilitating

“sharing

of

valuable

subordinates”, efforts within one

expertise

by

superiors

with

their

specialized area is much easier than

coordinating the efforts across the organization when the hotel chain operates in many different countries with different lines of business. Communication flows in a vertical manner, from general managers of the individual properties to regional vice president, to the president of the hotel operations of the corresponding geographic area, up to the CEO. Information is sometimes rigid because of the standardized ways of operation and the high degree of formalization. This can make the decision-making process slow and a little inflexible. Micro structure

The micro structure refers to the interactions between employees within departments and subunits, describing allocation of tasks among workers and internal organization of single operating units. On top of the hierarchy we find the chief executive officer which is responsible for developing and implementing high-level strategies, making major corporate decisions, managing the overall operations and resources of a company, and acting as the main point of communication between the board of directors and the corporate operations. Differently from cases in which the figure of the CEO coincides with the one of the chairman, here the the two roles are separated in order to allow for a more objective evaluation of performance and decisions. The Four Seasons chairman is the one who founded the basis of the hotel chain culture and oversees the board of directors, owing a 5% of the stake. Corporate departments are organized to monitor the different subunits at lower level. The financial department handles the planning and reviewing of short- and long-term financial strategies

to ensure the financial stability of the

company. As well, regular financial maintenance and in-depth reporting and analysis are carried out to project future trends. The Finance group oversees Corporate Finance and Treasury, ing, Operations Finance and Tax Planning. Capital Planning and Procurement is instead specialized in providing procurement services to Four Seasons hotels and resorts. They provide operational supplies to existing properties and the hotel opening and renovation process. This department is in direct with hotel owners, interior design firms and global suppliers and works with

hotel

operating teams to protects brand standards while managing an efficient supply chain. The corporate marketing team is responsible for promoting the brand as the premier luxury hotel and resort provider through marketing communications, branding, public relations, web marketing, sales, direct marketing and market research. The department collaborates with local hotel and resort marketing teams to promote advertising, promotions and public relations activities aimed at enhancing the hotel's positioning.

The marketing unit is further divided into two subunits: the worldwide Sales Offices and the Worldwide reservation office. The former is in charge of selling the complete portfolio of hotels and resorts to new and existing customers and to and sustain onproperty sale efforts while the latter provides round-the-clock reservations services to business and leisure travelers around the world. It also manages the global distribution systems for all hotels and resorts, provides direction on pricing, merchandising and revenue management, and processes reservations through toll-free voice services, e-mail, global electronic systems including fourseasons.com and the airline systems. The group also s the worldwide Four Seasons gift card program, and leads management for Four Seasons residences and guest recognition efforts of our hotels and resorts. The team of Worldwide reservations office design and construction is the brainchild behind the design and construction of all new hotels, resorts and Residence Clubs, as well as major renovations for existing properties. They work with hotel owners to ensure compliance with defined Four Seasons standards and review acquisition opportunities and engineering standards for all properties. The Development department works with potential and existing hotel owners to create a pipeline of properties for portfolio growth. They focus on projects at various stages of development, ensuring that Four Seasons enters

into

profitable

long-term

management

agreements.

The HR team provide a wide range of for employees worldwide in the following areas: compensation and benefits, learning and career development, recruitment through college recruitment and succession planning and HR programming for Corporate employees worldwide. The information information

system and technology

technology

needs

for

our

department hotels,

manages the

Corporate

Office,

remote/satellite offices, and Residence Clubs worldwide. They also oversee the IT strategy for the organization, manage the operational side of information

technology

and

create

new

applications.

The team of professional lawyers and advisors that belong to the legal unit

negotiates and prepares the necessary documentation for all major property acquisitions, divestitures and restructuring initiatives. They also assist with purchase and sale financing transactions relating to our existing hotel agreements. The Operations team instead establishes, implements and monitors operating policies, procedures, systems and standards for all hotels and resorts worldwide in the areas of guest experience, food and beverage and rooms. They continually assess trends and competitive industry practices and ensure effective communication with owner representatives. Finally,The Residence Clubs team is the one that focuses on the feasibility, execution, branding and selling of Four Seasons Residence Clubs and Private Residences portfolio. With regards to regional units, directors responsible for these sub-divisions supervise overall operations for an assigned group of hotels. They are indeed responsible for directing all employee functions of these hotel properties in accordance with the policies and practices of the company. Their responsibilities also include the development and implementation of regional strategies for meeting goals in the areas of revenue generation, market share performance, Guest satisfaction scores, associate opinion scores, and net operating income. Four Seasons’ management believed that the firm’s regional management structure was a key component of its ability to deliver and maintain the highest and most consistent service standards at each property in a cost-effective manner. General managers report directly to one of the 13 regional vice presidents or directly to one of the senior vice presidents for operations. A regional marketing director, an area of director of finance, and a regional human resources director completed each team. Organizational culture, morale and communication are three major factors on the micro business perspective. Leader's core role in the micro environment of subunits is developing a strong, high-performing workplace. This includes creating a positive atmosphere where employees understand their roles, managers communicate effectively with workers on goals and task and work teams collaborate effectively in alignment with the strategic vision of the business. Although a very high degree of specialization characterizes the allocation of tasks, workers are trained to conceive the firm as an integrated set of

activities and operations. Employees do not limit their work to the specific tasks they are assigned, acting in the company’s culture name, they are always willing to go that extra mile to ensure customers’ satisfaction. Performance indicators related to the structure When approaching the analysis of performance of a company one should not only consider financial data but also a whole set of indicators that are able to reflect the organizational structure and design of the company analyzed. KPI are the most suitable indicators in this sense as they represent a set of measures focusing on those aspects of organizational performance that are most critical for current and future success of the organization (Business benefits of KPI, 2012). The most relevant categories of indicators relative to the specific organizational structure of the company are: Organizational profile: Since organizational arrangements differ from one hotel to another, organizational profile is an important indicator for the company as it allows to understand whether task allocation is effective, if the company can quickly adapt to fulfill changing customers’ needs. Being the fundamentals of Four Seasons’ culture based on customers’ satisfaction, this indicator would allow the company to determine whether it is achieving a top performance in of organizational effectiveness or if responsibilities and roles must be redistributed. Innovation ability: This indicator allows the company to whether it’s innovations on customers’ service are creating value for the company or not. If this value is lower than standards, Four Seasons should reconsider the innovations introduced in order to both retain the customers’ loyalty and to ensure the profitability of its business. Investment in competence development: Four Seasons is one of the leaders in the luxury hospitality industry so in order to maintain its position it should always focus on renewing those

skills that are critical for its competitiveness. This

implies reflecting on

whether investments on competence development are in line with the organizational goals as well as understanding if they represent a source of competitive advantage. Number of employees per manager: Four Season should estimate the number of employees working in its chain to evaluate the dimension of the workforce engaged in its organizational structure as well as the number of employees per manager to understand if supervision mechanisms are adequate. References:

- HUCAMA,Organizational key performance indicators -a management tool with bottom line effects, 2011

- www.fourseasons/corporatebios