West Indies Yacht Club Resort

I.Problem Statement:
Patrick Dowd must find a way to unify the different types of cultures at the West Indies Yacht Club Resort. Thus he can use his expertise to recommend strategies to the resort.

II.Alternatives:
a.Develop ways to recognize culture differences and work on how to coexist. b.Break into groups based on culture and have these groups form teams and work together. c.Stricter management.

III.Analysis:
a.Develop ways to recognize culture differences and work on how to coexist. According to some quotes from employees it seems as if American employees do not understand why the British Virgin Island (BVI) employees act a certain way and vise versa. The expatriates are obviously looking to maximize their pay and job status while the natives are looking to maintain relationships with the coworkers and have as little responsibilities as possible. This thinking seems to be set in stone, thus as they say, “teaching an old dog new tricks” is quite tough. Although it would be nice to have everyone drop their cultural differences and work a certain way the minute they sign a contract to work at the West Indies Yacht Club Resort, it is clearly impossible. Plus is always nice to have different cultures working together and blending, kind of like a big University i.e. Rutgers University or a big city, i.e. New York City. The idea is to learn about the others and step outside your norms in order to broaden your horizons. Knowing this, it would be nice for everyone to learn about culture and how there are specific learned norms of societies that reflect the attitudes, beliefs, values and customs of different groups.

One way for the BVI natives and the expatriates to learn about each other can be through hosting seminars and/or classes that teach about culture and working together. In the report, Dave Pickering simply cannot understand why the natives don’t bust it for the day knowing that they can make an extra $50 to $100 per day. Looking at it the other way, the BVI natives refuse to believe they can hump it like Mr. Dowd and Mr. Pickering did in order to receive the extra money. This clearly exemplifies how naive each culture is of each other. Both are set in their ways and know nothing about how the opposing culture operates. Which is why acknowledging that there is in fact cultural differences will allows the others insight to a different mindset. The resort should work to teach and present the employees with facts, theories and customs of other cultures so that they can better understand why certain employees are acting in the manner that they do. Overall, it will provide knowledge to the employees at the West Indies Yacht Club Resort.

b.Break into groups based on culture and have these groups form teams and work together. The West Indies Yacht Club Resort may want to allow people with similar cultures to work together. They can form teams based on background, personality tests and goals. Then good managers like Kristin Singiser, and people like Patrick Dowd who are familiar with both cultures can be the middleman between top management and the lower employees. This way people who want to bust it and work hard for extra pay will be around other people with the same values; hopefully this results in a team like approach where the members understand one another.

One way to do this would be to have the natives work with the water sports and have the Americans work at the front desk. This hopefully will allow the natives will be with each other during work and be in better moods. This will allow them to work harder thus they might have a better attitude towards the clients. Furthermore the Americans at the front desk would make sense because they are dealing with the guests right when they walk in; people get the first impressions from them. Americans realize that tourists are spending large amounts of money to be waited on and pampered as opposed to the BVI natives who seemingly ignored people coming in. Doing things this way would promote employee/team happiness and continuity, which ultimately leads to a better guest experience. c.Stricter management

The report cites cases where employees appreciated being told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Moreover it cites cases where employees are wondering off and ignoring requests from guests. These are examples of cases where strict management intervention is necessary; cultural differences are eliminated with proper management. The team is run how the way the manager envisions it and you can get on board or get lost as they say. The managers will work with the departments all year round and get a true feel for everyone. Employees will react to this proper guidance as long as the manager is fair yet authoritative.

IV.Recommendation
As a consultant of this firm, my recommendation is for the West Indies Yacht Club Resort to develop ways to recognize culture differences and work on how to coexist.

V.Plan of Action:
The West Indies Yacht Club Resort can set up monthly hourly seminars starting the first of every month for a year where they bring in a professor to teach employees about culture. In these seminars they will teach the basics of culture such as the definition, the different types (low context, high context), and they dynamics. One way of doing this would be through PowerPoint slides. On top of that they will do interactive team building exercises so the employees understand what is expected of themselves and of each other. This can be related to oral exercises that are done in younger foreign language classes. They will be placed in a role and will have to talk and act it out like they would in real time. The project can be run similar to a college course where employees are lectured, assigned homework in some form and “tested” or “tried” at the end. Each employee would need to get over a 70 in order to be allowed to work; otherwise they will have to take the examination again. This will help everyone working currently catch up so that everybody is on the same page.

Every time a new employee signs on with the resort, they will be presented with handouts, videos of lectures and will be required to know all the information presented. Cultural information will be included with all the other paperwork that a new employee receives.

Contingency Plans:
It would be ideal to stick with the “seminar approach.” However if it isn’t possible to have a seminar for all employees, they may be able to watch an online lecture and take an online quiz so that the employees who missed the lecture will be able to watch it online at their pace.