As you have explored in this course, ongoing challenges in the global business environment are mostly attributed to unethical business practices, failure to embrace technology advancements, and stiff competition among businesses.
Imagine that you have been appointed as the Chief Compliance Officer of a Fortune 500 company (Hilton Honours) and must prepare a presentation for your suppliers regarding your Supplier Code of Conduct to deliver via email, webinar, etc.
For this assignment, you are to create a presentation using PowerPoint (or other equivalent software) and your research on the Fortune 500 company from Assignment 1. In your presentation, you are to summarise the important changes and explanations regarding the code of conduct that you would communicate via email, webinar, etc. The specific requirements are listed below.
PowerPoint
Presentation Requirements:
Create a six to eight (6-8) slide PowerPoint presentation in which you:
o Empowering Workers
o Labour and Human Rights
o Health and Safety
o The Environment
o Accountability
Your PowerPoint presentation must follow these formatting requirements:
Assignment 1: Social Performance of Organisations
Inter-dependency in businesses for growth and development has become inevitable. A company cannot thrive by relying on itself alone, but instead becomes successful when other companies and individuals come in; for instance, integrating stakeholders, employees and clients into a business, makes the transaction more successful.
Similarly, businesses and industries depend on other sectors for success. When you look at the tourism industry, it is evident that hotel industries need the transport industry for them to succeed. This is because tourists need to be transported to the hotels for accommodation.
Therefore, without transport services, the hotel industry will not succeed. In the same way, travel agents benefit from commission paid by hotels, while the hotels get more customers. In this paper, we will focus on Hilton Hotels as one of the leading multinational hotels in the world, looking at its various dynamics while operating in the hotel industry.
The Hilton Hotel is a multinational organisation that offers services to leisure and business travellers with over 500 branches in different parts of the world. The primary functions and products provided by the Hilton Hotel include accommodation and room services, foods and drinks, conference facilities, family fun packages, gym, and spa facilities.
Similarly, they offer additional products like the loyalty program packages, where they give airline points to frequent customers. This is one way that they ensure loyalty from their customers.
Also, they offer loyalty skills to their customers by providing free accommodations for those who stay long in their hotels. The services and products provided at Hilton Hotel focus on making visitors and travellers have a comfortable stay while travelling.
Any business is faced with internal and external factors that might affect its success. In our case, the Hilton Hotel may encounter various external factors like competition from other hotels. The tourism and hotel industry has been increasing, with many hotels and tourism companies coming up to cater to the needs of tourists.
Looking at the Hilton Hotel, they purely focus on accommodation and comfortable stays in the Hotel. Other Hotels offer transport services from their customers, which makes it more reliable and convenient for the customers.
Customers might be attracted to these hotels because of the extra service of transportation, which may put the Hilton Hotel at risk of losing its customers. Political instability is another factor that may affect the success of the Hilton hotel. Due to its global nature, the Hilton Hotel has a chain of hotels in different parts of the world.
Every country experience period of political waves, which significantly affects tourism. When travellers fail to visit some countries due to the political unrest, the hotel industry is greatly affected. Therefore, legislative changes and issues may affect the success of the Hilton Hotel.
Primary stakeholders in a business are those people who have a direct interest in the industry, and who will benefit when the company makes profits. In this case, some of the primary stakeholders include shareholders, employees, customers, and travel agents. These groups of people can influence the financial performance of the organisation in different ways.
First of all, without the customers, the business cannot succeed. When customers enjoy services and products, they are most likely going to consume the product in the future (Gitman et al., 2018).
Thus, customer loyalty to the organisation can improve the financial performance of the Hilton Hotel. Also, when customers refer their friends and families to the Hilton Hotel, the financial performance will improve.
Secondly, the employees can improve the financial performance of the organisation by being fully committed to their work and ensuring quality services to the customers. This gives satisfaction to the customers, who end up being loyal to the company. Treating and serving customers well may lead to improved financial performance.
On the other hand, employees can only achieve this if they receive the right working environment, which will motivate them to work better.
Thirdly, healthy business partners can contribute to profits in the organisation. In the Hilton Hotel, there are many stakeholders in supply chain management, like the suppliers. Negotiations between the suppliers and the organisation can influence the amount of money coming into the organisation and moving out. Thus, suppliers can help the business in saving on costs by providing supplies at reasonable prices.
Similarly, the travel agents, who have the marketing power, may influence people to come to the Hilton Hotel. This may be made possible through attractive offers on the rates of accommodations and the marketing strategies of the travel agents. Also, attractive commissions to the travel agents may motivate them to lure in more customers to the Hotel.
Lastly, the decisions made by the shareholders regarding the operations and running of the business may attract financial benefits into the organisation; for instance, the idea of having a loyalty program for loyal customers is a way to attract more customers into the Hotel.
Also, the use of carbon-free electricity in most of the hotels attracts more customers to the Hotel. Therefore, shareholders’ decisions significantly impact the financial performance of the Hilton Hotel.
Corporate Social Responsibility has become an essential characteristic of every business. Businesses and organisations should realise the impact they have on society and the environment, and act towards protecting the environment while at the same time benefiting the society (Tai & Chuang, 2014).
Hilton Hotel has set the pace in the Hospitality industry by ensuring service to the community while making use of natural resources. It has achieved this in various ways. In terms of the use of energy, the Hotel stakeholders have found ways to use energy-efficient lights in the rooms, while getting rid of any inefficient room appliances.
This is a very bold step because, in the hospitality industry, energy is one of the components that leads to high costs in the organisation. Therefore, looking for solutions to minimise these energy costs is a way to reduce costs. Also, the Hilton Hotel has tried to minimise wastage by engaging the customers into taking part in re-purposing and recycling soap after their stay.
This is one of their missions and goals to reduce wastage by around 20%. Thus, Hilton Hotels is aware of their environment, and they are taking steps towards protecting their environment and conserving the natural resources for the good of the whole society.
Conclusion
Every business and organisation cannot succeed independently, but instead needs other companies from different industries. Hilton Hotels, one of the leading organisations in the Hospitality industry, has shown this inter-dependency. Besides, the various stakeholders also play a vital role int h performance in the growth of a business.
Lastly, every organisation should be aware of its role in the environment and society, and should not only focus on making profits.
References
Gitman, L., McDaniel, C., Shah, A., Reece, M., Koffel, L., Talsma, B., & Hyatt, J. (2018). Introduction to business. OpenStax College, Rice University.
Hilton Sets the Bar for CSR in the Hospitality Industry – Clean the World. (2016). Retrieved February 3, 2020, from https://cleantheworld.org/blog/hilton-worldwide-sets-bar-csr-hospitality-industry/
Tai, F., & Chuang, S. (2014). Corporate Social Responsibility. I-business, 06(03), 117-130. doi: 10.4236/ib.2014.63013