Strategic Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Sector

Hospitality is one of the fastest expanding industry in the world and it is expected to remain a principal contributor to the global economy by providing the desired output to the world economy and creating employment opportunities. Human resource development remains the most significant and crucial factor of success in the hospitality industry. Policies that are implemented with the intention of promotion business have to face resistance from the employees, as they prefer to work with traditional practices and values. There are a number of challenges faced by the organizations working in the hospitality industry related to the management of human resources such as recruitment as selection, retention, motivation, management of diversity and work-life balance etc. This essay defines the main issues related to all such areas which are common to most of the hospitality organizations. All the information and facts are derived from the authenticated sources like journal articles, reports published by the hotels in this regard and the articles written by economists. At the end of the report, a conclusion has been drawn to provide an overview of the report as well as to clear the main findings of the study.

Strategic human resource management plays an important role in the hospitality sector because, in the service sector, human resource is the main component in satisfying its customers. “Human resource is an important asset in any organization” can be better prove with the hospitality sector. They are the backbone of the organization as they are required to well-groomed with the organization to look upon its customer by providing premium quality services. HR department is called the employee relation department of any organization. In the previous year, there was no major consideration was given to the personnel department (Riley, 2014). After the growing importance of employees in the organization, the human resource department has emerged and given the separate name.  

Today, HR not only performs the basic functions of recruitment, selection, and training. It has move forwarded with the strategic planning. It is necessary for the organization to think strategically in order to survive in the competitive business environment and achieve success. To achieve the goals of the organization, the human resource department makes it easier in attracting and recruiting the employees. Giving the high quality and talented employees helps the manager to strategic organize the role of human resource in the organization. HRM plays most of the practices as well as recruitment. Strategic human resource management plays an essential part for the human resource in the organizations. SHRM looks after the actions of the manager that affect the behavior of their part. Based on that, SHRM helps in creating and executing the strategies that help it achieve the goals of the organization (Paauwe & Boon, 2018).  Strategy means to use various management techniques in order to attain the objectives as well mission of the organization. In the hospitality sector, it is required by the HR manager to have some consultation skills that include behavioral skills that enable the manager to consult with other managers inappropriate way and come up with strategic solutions for the problems.  

Importance of Understanding Customer Needs and Interaction in the Hospitality Sector

In the hospitality sector, the organization should have a good understanding of the needs and preferences of the customers. It is necessary to successfully implement the service quality program in the industry. Therefore, interaction with customers is essential to understand the quality of its services and make necessary changes for the deviations (Solnet, Kralj & Baum, 2015). The interaction with the customer may be wrong if employees do not have the necessary skills to deal with the customers. Empowerment of staff is the best way to improve the service quality and interaction of staff with customers.

In today’s complex business environment, the hospitality industry is too dynamic. Emerging markets and increasing competition is the result of various problems in the hospitality industry. Therefore, recruitment and selection of the right people are too essential for this sector (Chaneta, 2014). Recruitment and selection are two major parameters for any industry. Continuous turnover in the hospitality industry has led the sector to ensure the recruitment of a skilled workforce. People in the hospitality sector face a lack of awareness as well known. Due to this, hospitality industries are facing the issue of skill shortage. Nowadays, it is becoming a root cause of the problem (Bonn & Forbringer, 2016).

The recruitment and selection of right and talented workforce have now become a global issue. Previously, there were few hospitality industries so people had to take the services of it. However, in today’s fast-changing environment this sector is required to devise innovative strategies to retain its client. This issue decrees the recruiter to find the candidate and putting it in the right position. In addition to this, retainment of good employees is also one such emerging issue with the hospitality sector. Employees in this sector seem to leave early when they find any new opportunity or due to some other reasons. Therefore, selection of employee with satisfies time durable is a big question for the recruiter. In this sector, the major issue is recruiting and selecting the candidate for leadership and management role so that it can continuously lead the team members as well as operations (Chan & Kuok, 2011).

There are various methods used in the selection of the workforce in the hospitality sector. The selection process begins by inviting the candidates for the job. Hospitality sector looks for various professional techniques as well as the communication skills of the candidate. Like the employee in the hospitality sector is meant for the customer friendly person. After the selection of the person through the strong background, several steps need to be followed. A personal interview is mandatory to take because it reveals the strength of the employee in a better way. While taking the interview, various things are being checked such as its previous experience, interest for the job, keen to talk with customers as well as body language. All these things are considered while recruiting and selecting a person for the hospitality industry.

Recruitment and Selection of Skilled Workforce in the Hospitality Industry

Performance management involves those activities which ensure the goals are met in an efficient and effective manner. It focuses on the performance of a department, employee, organization, as well as the process to build service or product. Various determinants affect individual performance in an organization. Among all, motivation is the first force that drives a person to perform better. Performance of individual is also affected by the individual competence to perform a specific job. In the hospitality sector, a person’s competence plays a major role in the performance of the employee (Marshall, Mottier & Lewis, 2015).  The environment of the workplace is also an important determinant in individual performance. Therefore, the organization should be designed in such a way that enables the employees to put their skills and expertise on work. There are various purposes of performance management. As industries invest so much of their time, they require to get the positive results in return (Mone & London, 2018). Besides this, performance management is done to help the employees understand what they are doing and what they should do to improve their performance. Another reason is that performance management is a great tool to prevent the problems that are coming on the way. It allows the organization to know the progress toward the accomplishment of performance standards and desired goals (Ishizaka & Pereira, 2016).  

Validity, reliability, specificity, acceptability, and strategic congruence are the five criteria’s for performance management. Strategic congruence is the level to which performance management removes job performance that matches with the organization strategy, aim, and culture. Validity is a level to which performance management search the relevant portion of the performance. The third criteria that are reliability relate to the stability of performance measurement. Acceptability is an extent to which performance management is adequate and reasonable by those who use it. Organization’s expectation and the path to achieving it is given by specificity. Various errors occur during the performance appraisal. Halo effect is the first error that occurs when the employee performs well in some area but manager rate the person well even in that situation when the performance was mediocre.  Recency error also occurs during rating the employee. It occurs when the manager rates the employee based on past month performance. Leniency is again a very common error when manager rate employees severely. Central tendency error comes when a manager for removing the conflict rates the employee in middle (Iqbal, Akbar & Budhwar, 2015). Therefore, for effective performance appraisal, the manager should avoid these errors in order to keep a fair rating for all the employees.

Performance Management in the Hospitality Industry

Human resource development is a systematic and planned framework for helping employees to develop their professional as well as personal skills, abilities, and knowledge for present and future business requirements. HRD covers some main opportunities like career planning, training, coaching, career development, top talent identification, succession planning and organizational development (Lin & Lee, 2011). In, hospitality sector, main functions of human resource development includes:

• Training and development
• Organizational development
• Career development

In an organization, the management expects desired performance from the resources and on the similar length and line, the resources also expect their career progression from the organization. Career development is a constant process, which enables a resource to gradually grow in the company by facing the new set of challenges and tasks at each and every stage of their work (Mkono, 2010). In this process, the responsibility is equally shared by the human resource development function with the help of enablement programs and proper education. Career development consists of two main activities named as career management and career planning (Jain & Gautam, 2014).

Career Planning includes assessing the skills and capabilities of an individual to develop a realistic career plan. This requires subject matter expert or a manager or counselor to invest time with the employees and put their career plans in a shape. A very important aspect to discuss over here is that both, the career planner and the employee, should agree to the selected plan. After the successful completion of career plan, HRD goes ahead with the phase of career development (Shahjehan & Afsar, 2010).

Career plan works as an outline to the time-bound activities whereas career development is concerned with the more ratification in the enablement process. There would be up-skilling, numerous training, knowledge implementation and talent acquisition related activities which may govern the employees to develop their skills and contribute the same to the organizational growth. Career development is a joint effort between the HRP and an individual which requires clearly defined accountability matrix to find out that results and their benefits to the employees in their professional and personal life (Daoanis, 2012). It is about the fair evaluation of the abilities and skills needed versus the successful application of these skills. During career development, it is often possible that both parties may feel to change or rework on the plan in terms of time and skills. Thus, career works as a cyclic activity which is required to be tagged with every individual.

Criteria for Performance Management

In order to meet the sophisticated and increasingly varied needs to customers, organizations must provide a constant stream of services and products with higher added value by adding technological advances. This kind of innovation can be attained through different activities that may bring diverse knowledge and perspectives into the functioning of an organization. Therefore, it is required to draw to establish a workplace with a diversified workforce (Hekman & Lashley, 2017). In the hospitality sector, customers may come from any of the cultural backgrounds and most of the customers prefer to experience the different cultures during their traveling and journey. Thus it is required to hire a diversified workforce. It enables the organizations to use a number of different ideas in their day to day functioning. The influence of a variety of viewpoints and perspectives can contribute to creativity and flexibility within the organization, which can help in becoming competitive in the fastest developing business environment (Hazra, Ghosh & Sengupta, 2015).

However, it is not easy to manage a workforce, consist of different values, beliefs, and cultures. The management often has to face differences in opinion, understanding, and opposition in their decision at the while deciding something related to the employees and their work. To overcome all this, the management is required to establish an open communication system so that employees may feel free to share their views, complaints, and opinions to the management without facing any problem (Devine et al, 2007).

There should be an arrangement of child day care facilities so that female employees manage their working and personal life. It would also increase the satisfaction level of employees, which would automatically result in improving their performance.

The workforces and workplaces both are changing continuously. Lack of awareness around out organizational and personal biases can be discriminating against a number of different groups. Therefore, it is required to train the employees that how to work within the diversified environment (Singal,2014). There are some key features that can be adopted by the organizations in a work-life balance program:

• Gym Services
• Childcare Services
• Company outings
• Open communication system
• Flexible work timings
• Indoor and outdoor games
• The arrangement of rewards and recognition from time to time.

Along with this, proper leadership and motivation practices are the main reason, which can develop a positive view in minds of employees towards diversified staff. The leaders should provide equal opportunities to their team members and should not discriminate them on the basis of sex, religion, race, gender. It would help the management to gain the trust of employees, which can also be used in improving the performance of the organization and to achieve the desired goals (Kalargyrou & Costen, 2017).

Human Resource Development in the Hospitality Industry

Conclusion

On the basis of the above studies, it can be concluded that management has to face a number of challenges related to the management of human resources of an organization. First of all, the recruitment and selection process consists of too many stages and procedures specially inhospitably sectors which is totally based on the services provided by selected employees. Along with this, keep them motivated with the help of performance management, rewards and recognition practices is also a major challenge as attrition rate is comparatively high is this sector as compared to the other sectors of the economy. Further, this paper also includes the challenges faced because of the diversified workforce and the features of that can be added to the work-life balance programs by a hospitality sector organization. Thus, the report concluded that managing human resources Is not limited up to the payment of salaries on time. To improve the organization as well as the personal performance of employees, it is required to pay attention to the different parts of human resource management and manage them accordingly.

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