Appreciative Inquiry: Boomtown Casino and Hotel
Boomtown Casino faces numerous problems in the HRM department characterized by low levels of retention, high turnover figures, dropping revenue as well as low employee engagement. To implement the changes in the organization and thus develop its overall performance the Appreciative Inquiry Model was chosen. In particular, the company’s change agents will use the 4-D model to pursue sufficient motivation of the highly appreciated employees to contribute to the success of the company through the increased retention, decreased turnover, and vivid engagement.
Challenges
The most problematic areas of the Casino’s performance lie in the way staff is managed and prepared to the organizational changes. Due to the extremely high competition in the field and high market saturation, Boomtown Casino constantly tries to implement various minor and major changes to the way company functions. This change-oriented approach, though, takes place in the unprepared environment thus making it a crucial issue for both workers as well as company’s success. As a result, the HR department itself finds it difficult to keep up with the constant updates and thus is not able to appropriately train and motivate staff. That is how the more and more employees resign in the search of the better working environments, consistent managing practices, and generally more efficient companies in the sphere.
Among the internal forces causing resistance to change is the resistance to get out of the “comfort zone” exercised at both personal as well as organizational levels, fear of unknown, and improper communication of the need for these changes. According to Brown (2011), for each person “change represents the alteration of set patterns of behavior, defined relationships with others, work procedures, and job skills” (p.144). As regards the organizational level, any change action implies that almost all the policies, procedures, organization structures, manufacturing processes, and workflows will no longer maintain the same. The fear of unknown in the combination of the poor internal communications lead to a vacuum of misunderstanding that is filled by rumor, speculation, and insecurity. In 2015 all these internal factors brought the company to the 45-day average tenure for an employee, 10% revenue decrease, and 52% year-to-date employee turnover.
What prevents the proper change management in the Boomtown Casino from the outside the company is the presence of the competitors capable of tempting the qualified employees away. There are 7 casinos competing at the same market as Boomtown and all of them are interested in the highly qualified and experienced workforce. That is how, workers facing the rather unfavorable change environment in Boomtown Casino are eager to switch the working place to one of the competing casinos. As the result of both internal and external change resistant factors, company continues to be inefficient in its change implementing efforts and loses revenues.
Appreciative Inquiry Model
To overcome the mentioned above internal and external challenges the 4-D Model is to be employed. During the appreciative inquiry conducted in the company the following affirmative topic was …
