Question

Erica, the human resource manager, was frustrated by many of her hotel staff speaking Spanish in the hallways and rooms as they were cleaning them.

The Sawmill Hotel where Erica works is situated in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s downtown. It’s target market includes sports enthusiasts attending nearby professional (Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, Wild) games but also business professionals and families. This four-star hotel features an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, message center, three stores, two restaurants, and a beauty shop. Total staff includes about 10 managers, 30 cleaning assistants to take care of rooms, 10 front desk specialists, and 25 who are involved with the stores, restaurants, and beauty shops.   Each are required to focus on customer service as their number one value.

Erica hires everyone in the hotel except for the Chief Executive Officer, Vice President of Finance, and Vice President of Marketing. For the rest of the managers, the 30 cleaning assistants, store, restaurant, and beauty shop workers, she advertises for openings with the local job service and the Minneapolis Tribune (with the associated website). A typical Tribune ad for a cleaning assistant reads as follows: Cleaning Assistants Wanted, Sawmill Hotel, $9-11 hour, prepare rooms for customers and prepare laundry. Contact: Erica Hollie, Human Resource Manager, xxx-xxx-xxxx.

As a result of the advertising, Erica has been able to obtain good help through the local target market. Twenty seven of the thirty cleaning assistants are women. Twenty of the thirty have a Hispanic background. Of the Hispanics, all can speak English at varying levels.

Rachel, the lead cleaning assistant believes that maximizing communication among employees helps the assistants become more productive and stable within the hotel system. She uses both English and Spanish to talk to assistants under her. Spanish is useful with many assistants because they know Spanish much better than English. Spanish also is the “good friends” language that allows the Spanish speakers to freely catch up on each other’s affairs that motivates them to stay working at the hotel. The use of the Spanish language among cleaning assistants had been common practice among them for two years since the hotel opened.

In the last few months, top management decided to have an even greater focus on customer service by ensuring customer comment cards are available in each room and at the front desk. Customers also can comment about their stay at the hotel online.

There have been several customer complaints that cleaning assistants have been laughing about them behind their back in Spanish. One customer, Kathy, thought that staffers negatively commented about her tight pink stretch pants covering her overweight legs. Other customers have complained they didn’t think asking staff for help was easy given the amount of Spanish spoken. In all, about 15 out of 42 complaints in a typical month were associated with the use of the Spanish language.

Though Bellhops and front desk clerks are typically the workers who handle complaints first, Erica, the human resource manager, has the main responsibility to notify workers about customer complaint patterns and to set policy in dealing with the complaints. The prevalence of complaints concerning workers speaking Spanish each month led Erica to make a significant change in policy concerning the use of Spanish. In consultation with top management, Erica instituted the following employee handbook policy effective immediately:

“English is the main language spoken at the hotel. Any communication among employees shall be in English. Use of Spanish or other languages is prohibited unless specifically requested by management or the customer.”

In an e-mail explanation for the new policy, Erica stated the number of complaints that had come from the use of Spanish and the need for customer courtesy and communication.

Rachel immediately responded to Erica’s e-mail by stating that the new policy was too harsh on the native Spanish speaking assistants at the hotel. She thought that a better policy is to allow her assistants to communicate with each other through Spanish but by quietly doing so away from customer earshot. If there is a general discussion in front of a customer, it is recommended to speak English. There should never be discussions in any language about customer appearances.

Though Rachel grumbled, the policy stuck because Erica and top management wanted to stop customer complaints. As a result of the policy, ten of the twenty Spanish speaking assistants quit within two months. These were high quality assistants who had been with the hotel since the start. Their replacements came from a job service and have not worked out as well in their performance.

Questions and Answers

1. What law(s) do you think might apply in this case?

2. Should a complete ban of Spanish be instituted among staff of the hotel unless customers use Spanish themselves or should the use of Spanish be completely allowed by staff among themselves as long as it is quiet (why or why not)?

3. What rules, if any would you put into effect in this situation, knowing about the customer complaints? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

What law(s) do you think might apply in this case?

This case can be seen as a breach of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids all forms of discrimination based on national origin and the language one uses is generally related to one's nationality. At the other hand, the Act does not explicitly preclude workers from specifying a Workplace-only English policy. More specifically, workers can use such a policy as long as they can demonstrate that this policy has a business purpose. In fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has a website devoted to immigrant's job opportunities under federal anti-discrimination legislation, and addresses regulations that speak English only. In fact, the EEOC notes that these policies are in violation of law "unless the contractor may show that they are warranted by business need."

Should a complete ban of Spanish be instituted among staff of the hotel unless customers use Spanish themselves or should the use of Spanish be completely allowed by staff among themselves as long as it is quiet (why or why not)?

A full ban on all languages other than English should not be enforced among the workers, nor should it be permitted to use other languages altogether. Asking employees to speak English only is a form of discrimination based on their national origin, hence the hotel's policy is unlawful. In addition, the lead cleaning assistant suggested that encouraging the workers to speak Spanish, and being able to speak Spanish to them, allows greater efficiency and profitability as they understand Spanish much better than English. Hence, the hotel can not ban certain languages on the basis of the efficiency statement. However, since the EEOC notes that when workers interact with customers who only speak English, an English-only rule may be justified, the idea put forward by the lead cleaning assistant is a much more legitimate and rational policy and is most likely the best. Employees should always be allowed to speak another language when they work but should use English to communicate with clients who only speak English. An employee will be able to speak to a customer a language other than English if he / she needs the employee to speak Spanish, German, Swedish, Polish etc. as the EEOC specifies that only English policies are permissible if the customer speaks English only. If the customer is bilingual and wants to speak in a language the employee speaks then this should be allowed by the organization. Employees should speak softly in their own language when working, and should never talk on customers. As many people are bilingual or multilingual, they should also refrain from addressing divisive or offensive subjects. I speak English, Polish and Ukrainian personally and I'm shocked at how much I hear people in those languages make negative things about others because they think people don't understand that. We live in a country and culture that is extremely diverse and it's best to just believe that someone will understand you. Therefore, it is a good idea for the hotel employees to assume they can be heard even if they are speaking in a quiet voice among themselves.

What rules, if any would you put into effect in this situation, knowing about the customer complaints? Explain your answer.

As a hotel manager, I would forbid using Spanish before customers, because customers can speak English fluently, however under the table the employees should speak Spanish. More importantly, I have to teach every employee to respect the customer, bring the most respective attitude to work because respecting customers is the basic attitude of working in a business, particularly for the hospitality industries. For example, the employee made the mistake correct. An employee at a hotel named a black man "monkey," which culminated in racism. I assume this is a case of prejudice because the people who were named monkey are a black guy, his skin colour made him discriminated against by the employee.