News from November: Managing People!

By Marion Neveu, MBA in Hospitality Management, France, 2013-2015 2nd Year

During the first term of the second year, for students in IMHI’s two year track, the principle class is Managing People. This class is related to International Human Resources.

Previously, I have only studied Human Resources management in a French context. Now we are studying at an international level; once again, IMHI knows how to take us to the next level!

How do you recruit a person from Mexico? What does it take to get this person to work in Iran? How do you attract the right person for YOUR company and how do you retain them? These are a few of the questions we have to face in our current project: Create a Human Resources strategy for a Sofitel.

The class has been divided into groups of 7-8 students, each of which has been assigned a different country: Mexico, Peru, Iran, Kenya and Panama.

The first step of the project is to determine where the hotel should be located and to create its structure: Size? Number of employees? Facilities? All these aspects must be taken into account.

Then, each group has to develop a Human Resource strategy in accordance with Sofitel standards and the regulations of each country. This strategy must articulate all aspects of international Human Resources: recruitment, planning, career development, training, compensation, and more…

On Friday, November 14th, all the students had to suit up for their first presentation: 30 – stressful – minutes to highlight a month’s work! It was hard and a little frustrating, but that’s all part of the game!

We then had to face the comments of our professor, Stefan Gröschl, who gave us a lot of recommendations for the next presentation. We still have a lot of work to do, but I take it is a chance to improve our project and correct past mistakes. You don’t get a second chance in “real” life.

Next challenge: December 12th!