The Contemporary Issues In Hospitality Management

Experiencing HRM issues in Hospitality:

Whatever the choice of terminology or decisions on organisation, effective HRM and the successful implementation of personnel activities are essential ingredients for improved organisational performance. The smooth-running man or woman is an essential feature of any company and for some industries people are not just important but the key factor for successful performance. HR policies and practices have an important role in hospitality to play in facilitating the effective implementation of management processes. Hospitality Companies today face five critical business challenges: globalisation; profitability through growth; technology; intellectual capital; and change, change and more change. These challenges provide HR with an opportunity to play a leadership role in the development of new capabilities to meet the challenges. The five challenges present a new mandate for hospitality human resource management in order to help deliver organisational excellence in the following four ways:-

It should become a partner with senior and line managers in strategy execution

an expert in the way work is organised and executed to ensure costs are reduced and quality maintained

a champion for employees, vigorously representing their concerns to senior management and working to increase employee contribution and commitment

an agent of continuous transformation, shaping processes and a culture to improve an organisation

2.1 Training:

One major area of the HRM function of particular relevance to the effective management and use of people is training and development. Staffs are a crucial, but expensive, resource in hospitality. In order to sustain economic and effective performance it is important to optimise the contribution of employees to the aims and goals of the organisation.

Training is necessary to ensure an adequate supply of staff who are technically and socially competent, and capable of career advancement into specialist departments or management positions. There is, therefore, a continual need for the process of staff development, and training fulfils an important part of this process. Training should be viewed, therefore, as an integral part of the hospitality process. Because specially in hospitality industry new IT based training are getting famous irrespectively in hotels, airlines. Training benefits includes:-

Improve performance which results in cost savings of HRM

Improve productivity

Improve quality of customer service

Improve self esteem of employees

Improve sense of job security

Increase comrade and sense of team work among employees

Increase higher morale among employees and

Reduce employee turnover and absenteeism

Reduce stress and tension of employees

Reduce waste

Reduce work conflict among employees

In today’s competitive business weather hospitality industry is facing new skill developing process in different way. Customers are now more concerned about quality service rather than just service. According to WTTC tourism & hospitality industry supporting more than 258 million jobs worldwide and generating some 9.1% of global GDP. In 2008 UK Government £112m fund for hospitality training reveals the importance of training. Travelodge welcome this fund from Government. Chrissie Herbert, director of HR at Travelodge, said: “As we approach the 2012 Olympics we are in a skills race to ensure we have the number of people needed to match the demand”.

2.2 Customer Care:

After training customer care is the another big issue in hospitality industry now-a-days. It is important to remember that good customer care start with good staff care. Surveys reveals that people are happiest at their work when they feel valued and important, when they are involved in the business and feel knowledgeable about what is happening.

In today’s hospitality business customer care is the main concern where all businesses should focus on because customer expectations for quality are increasing, presenting the industry with a double edge sword; at the same time qualified labour is becoming harder to find and keep and this is a great challenge for HRM in any hospitality business. That’s why HRM in hospitality trying to get more effective result by training existing employees in several field in hospitality. Customers are demanding higher levels of service excellence. Linking this issue with seasonality, a common characterise of tourism enterprise , Baum and Hagen(1999,p130)wrote, “the lack of sustained employment, which is characterise as seasonal operations, undermines the ability of operators to deliver quality, which the market place, increasingly, expects”.

Service remains key factor for hospitality but value for money is becoming increasingly important as recession looms, research has revealed in UK 2009 by Square Meal Restaurants & Bars report, which surveyed more than 9,500 diners, found service remained a major gripe (44% of all complaints containing words such as “over-priced”, “costly” and “poor value”) for customers.

2.3 Stress in Hospitality:

Work stress is now recognised as a major issue in the human resource management within the hospitality industry context. Service quality issues are beginning to assume major importance in the success of many operations. Interpersonal conflict and work stress responses associated with hospitality industry employee management conflict, together with approaches to service quality.

In European Union countries, hospitality industry has been identified as one of those most stressful sector to work, with frequent contact with inebriated clients and customers. Exposure to violence and sexual harassment is sometimes viewed as being a regular occurrence and a part of the job in the sector. Stress factors in the hospitality industry include an intensive interface with customers; increasing customer demand for highly diversified and personalized services; tight requirements on timely delivery of services, especially in kitchens and restaurants; unclear roles in a customer-dominated environment; and lack of training for supervisors. These result in low control of employees over their work. The health status of workers in the hospitality industry is worse than that of the average population, especially concerning mental health.

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In hospitality there are different reasons for stress and they are: global competition, customer expectations and demand for highly diversified and personalized services, tight requirements on timely services, especially in kitchens and restaurants, unclear roles in a customer-dominated environment, and lack of training for supervisors, reducing in staff to reduce cost, lack of control over working situations, seasonal staff turnover etc.

2.4 Empowering the employees:

Empowerment, formerly known as participative management, reduces employee turnover and increases customer satisfaction. High hospitality industry turnover is the result of poor employee selection, inadequate training and an over-abundant management staff. Empowering the staff makes them work better together as a team and leads them to provide a better quality of service. In a simple way, empowerment extend democratic approach from workforce which is very good for hospitality organisations because it’s not possible for hospitality managers to be everywhere every time, in those moment empowerment make employees more participative and delegate them towards job satisfaction.

Empowerment was known as “participative management,” but the problem had always been that implementing the concept was much more difficult than talking about it. No one knew how to overcome this problem for the usual reasons that all concepts can fail – that is, identifying the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s and how’s of implementation. The hospitality industry today requires to examine the way to manage. Hospitality industry is plagued with turnover statistics that are way out of proportion and this situation has developed because of poor hiring practices, insufficient training and overstaffing in management ranks.

Empowerment is a style, not an evolution. It is a philosophy that must originate from the top – if it doesn’t, it will fail. Empowerment flattens out the organizational chart naturally by eliminating the tiers of responsibility, replaces desire to establish accountability with results, allows hospitality industries to respond to the aspect of customers’ needs and complete satisfaction.

HRM in hospitality industry must understand the economic benefits of employee empowerment. Employee empowerment makes each individual responsible for doing the job to the best of their ability which results in greater guest satisfaction, returning guests and lower employee turnover. Hiring the best person for the job and adequately training that individual will also lead to greater employee empowerment. Empowering management personnel requires altering the job so that management receives feedback on their management style from their staff as well as their supervisors.

2.5 Management & Leadership in hospitality:

Effective leadership is the number one factor that influences success in hospitality organization. Maintaining cultural identity, employment brand and employee satisfaction requires consistent and regular communication. Leadership skills include a strong focus on relationships, emotional intelligence, a track record of results and innovation, a focus on process and outcome, and the ability to give positive and constructive feedback. Also important is the ability to teach and coach others and provide recognition both formally and informally.

Management and leadership style is a contemporary issues in today’s hospitality business. There is a sentence “Employees don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers”. The reason for that is the style adopted by today’s leaders are not always right and it’s a big issue. International Labour Organisation(ILO) said almost 600,000 employees a year leave hospitality managers in their droves, which leads hospitality industry average recruitment and initial training cost £1,500, costs around £886m as a whole. Labour turnover for the whole hospitality, leisure tourism and travel (HLTT) industry stands at 30%, although some employers within the hospitality industry alone report double or triple this figure. Yet, only 14% of employers feel their labour turnover is too high.

HRM should be part of any pilot program to help leadership understand, anticipate and mitigate management problems in hospitality. When HRM has experience in participating in a virtual team, it lends credibility for HRM to fully participate and respond to problems as they arise.

3. Conclusion:

It is known that, hospitality industry stands on employee performance. So, HRM department in hospitality now-a-days getting more and more challenge day by day because every business strategy of today’s world more focused on service which is a crucial issue in hospitality field. HRM managers should emphasis on the need for professional approach and right leadership attitude to achieve goals and keep status. HRM in hospitality industry has grown with its impact and status because of huge number of hospitality industries increased globally. Only The British hospitality industry contribute £46 billion to the UK economy and the core hospitality economy is estimated to directly contribute £34 billion in tax revenue by creating 2.44 million jobs in the hospitality sector the 5th largest industry in the UK, and a further 1.2 million jobs are indirectly generated by hospitality which is around 8% of the total UK employment. This statistics proves that, the HRM has great responsibility to play a vital role in hospitality sector by adjusting with market needs and trends.