Discussion
Discuss about the Hospitality Management for Legal and Business Perspectives.
The Human resource department is not only responsible for recruiting people; it is the duty of the department to keep the employees committed towards the company and also to ensure people are willing to work for the company. The purpose of the assignment is to understand the key challenges that are faced by the HR department of organisations operating in the hospitality industry regarding attracting and retaining employees. The term hospitality management involves managing and administrating a hotel or a resort and to ensure that the hotel is warm and pleasant to welcome the guests as give them the feeling like home. The managers should ensure that the guests who have come to the resort in a vacation and tour are having a warm and cosy feeling and are not disturbed by any behaviour or attitude of the hotel or people over there. The management system also has to make sure that they are running the organization with perfection and profitability (Ladkin & Buhalis, 2016). Attraction is the strategies that are taken by the Human resource department in order to encourage people to apply for a job or to work with the company. On the other hand, retention is the process by which the human resource management of a company develops a sense of responsibility and commitment towards the organisation (Jasper & Waldhart, 2013). The organisations that operate in the hospitality industry are in direct contact with the customers hence the people working in the industry are trained and skilled individuals who can deal with the client on a day to day basis. It is important to attract the right people to work for the company as the employees are the major asset of an organisation in the hospitality industry. Thus, the recruiter’s has to make sure that they are using proper skills and technologies to recruit the workers for this industry. It will critically review the selection method, areas to improve by the recruiters for using the online recruiting system. The online recruiting system that saves times, energy and cost for both the worker and the employer are a new trend in the market. On the other hand, it is also important for a company to ensure that the attrition rate is high as there are considerable resources incorporated on an employee and the company is at a loss of talent when an employee resigns of leaves the job abruptly.
Challenges in attracting and retaining the workforce in hospitality industry
Challenges in attracting and retaining the workforce in hospitality industry
In Australia hospitality industry has significant revenue and it has reported an annual turnover ranging from 32% to 300 %. However, the industry profit is highly affected by a regular change of employees by the employers in seasonal period. This makes the other workers work more difficult thus reducing the productivity. Attraction of the candidates to apply for a job position is one of the major challenges that the company face. Before applying for a job the candidates does a background check of the company, however small or big it may be. There are two purposes of the process one is to prepare oneself for the interview and the other is to judge the organisation and its culture. As technology is at everyone’s finger tips a quick search of the company is mandatory (Ladkin et al., 2016). Thus, the employers and this industry must maintain and know the importance of employee management and structure in this industry. As the importance of the human resource is imperative in the hospitality industry attracting the right kind of people with the right skills is essential. According to Biga et al. (2015), online advertising is one of the most popular medium used to communicate with the prospective applicants. The biggest challenge here is to communicate the right information and produce the right content in order to effectively communicate with the applicants. Highlighting the most important information and providing the people with the information that they will be interested in should be prioritized.
In the process of recruitment there is another major challenge that has been highlighted by Biga et al. (2015), the authors state that there are legal barriers which restricts the company in understanding the background of the applicant clearly. Furthermore, they indicate that the authenticity of the experience is often ambiguous and therefore can be barriers in attracting people (Kramar, 2014).
The tenured work force helps the industry in various sectors such as separation, recruiting, selection and the cost of hiring. The hospitality firms that have gained success in this industry and are still on the verge on success are maintaining a proper employee retention and development skill. The importance of employee management plays an extremely vital role in the entire industry thus deciding the best scope for the industry to develop and expand (Boella & Goss-Turner, 2013). The organizations must conduct proper survey not only to figure out the reasons that why the employees are leaving the industry but also to find out the best possible to maintain a proper employee management system and influence them to work in this sector. According to Biga et al. (2015), the successful and cost effective recruitment in this industry plays a vital role. This includes the proper maintenance of the labour laws, proper behaviour of the managerial with the employees and best selection of the workers who suits the job profile. They can use skills that will motivate the workers and encourage them to work efficiently by rewarding them for the best performances, appraising them, giving gifts to encourage them to work in a better way (Kramar, 2014).
The recruitment for the staffs is generally practised by advertisement, references from the existing workers and other sources. It is then followed by proper interview through phone call or face-to-face meet. The considerations for selecting the best employee depends on the following factors such a their skills, experiences and work ethics that will determine how well their performance will impact the organization. The questions will be very selective to understand the quality and capability of the worker. The staffs should be selected with high customer service skills and flexibility in the working organization as this organization requires a lot of extra work or sudden attendance for emergency purpose (Durrani & Rajagopal, 2016). Here another major barrier has been discussed by Gibbs et al. (2015), the lack of knowledge and understanding of the technology and the provisions that are available in today’s world is one of the major challenges in attraction. Social media is still considered as a tool of the future whereas social media is one of the most effective means of reaching out to people both by the marketing department as well as by the HR department (Kramar, 2014). While hiring a candidate to this industry a reference check must be done to get to know about the worker’s previous experience. This will help the organization to allot the worker to the customers as per their skills like the premium customers will be served by the most experienced and skilled performers and the general can be received by the moderate skilled worker or the fresher’s. Ladkin et al. (2016), highlights that there is a challenge in short listing the candidates in case the company uses a third party website. The use of LinkedIn has been also discussed by the authors and the low popularity of this platform is the challenge in the situation (Ladkin et al., 2016). The authors discuss the pros but one of the barriers in the process of using social media as a part of attraction form the employee perspective is that it may have a negative impact on the image.
The organizations in this industry must also make sure that they are hiring the workers will a scrutinization on various factors such as: age, caste, drug addiction, criminal history, disability. These factors must be considered while hiring staff for the industry. However, the legal challenges related to the selection is that the staffs are not allowed to be questioned such questions. The successful hiring and staff management plays a vital role in the industry. The industry that is highly dependent on the employee’s behaviour must have a strong staff management and recruiting power. There are issues related to this industry and they are the seasonal issues. The hospitality industry might face a severe problem regarding the seasonal problem, which determines that the industry will have a peak business only in few selected months, and the rest of the time, it will not have any business.
According to Durrani et al., (2016) indicate the challenge of ethical hiring there is lack of understanding of the concept. The usage of internet has implemented the hiring and recruitment process in the industry. Both the employer and the employees that benefit the process of recruitment and speeds it up use the internet. From the employers point of view the company website is used to recruit the staff, advertise for their recruitment and support the previous research findings. The companies generally prefer the usage of their own website instead of using the other website (Kramar et al., 2013). They can use it for including their requirement criteria, their exact demand and expectation from the employee, issues regarding any behavioural pattern or background of the employee. Thus if the companies are using the internet they can reach to a vast region for their recruitment demand in a very less span of time. This reduces the recruitment cost and increases the scope for online employees. However, the companies should make sure that they are using user friendly and safe websites and also attractive enough to attract the employees (Walker & Walker, 2016). They can also take help from other established website that are mainly interested to creative scope for online employer and employees to get connected and get their desired requirements. The online sites are using the industries to move a very fast pace. The professional sites like LinkedIn help the company to get accurate and professional information about the worker, which is important for the companies (Jasper et al., 2013).
However, there are social sites that include personal information and these must not be trusted, as they might not have accurate information every time. Thus, the companies should recruit from the professional sites that will help them to connect to the best candidate as per the requirement of the industry. If the consideration comes from the employees’ point of view then it can be said that the employees also get the information about the vacancy at various companies and sector and they can select them as per their interest. The employees can use the social sites to represent their professional skills however, if they are using personal sites highlight their skills that might include information about their personal life (Kramar et al., 2013).
However, the reason behind such decision might be lack of proper knowledge and education. Once the employers are aware of the latest technology they can use the best suited technology to hire the best worker for their organization and make efficient use of their skills to grow and develop the business s in a desired manner (Kramar et al., 2013). This technology or usage of internet helps the organizations to build a better scope for future. The hospitality management industry requires specification and creation that will help the organization to build a better scope for them to expand and explore. In various countries across the world they are using various techniques to advertise their job demands and recruit the employees. In this form of recruitment form they can communicate with the candidates and discuss about their requirement easily, instead of talking over phone or meeting that person personally (Kramar et al., 2013). This can be time consuming and costly if the staff or the employees are asked to meet the employers every time they need to recruit someone. On the other hand if the recruitment if done over the internet it will be time saving and help the organization recruit in a short span of time. Thus this system is preferred in comparison to the general system of recruitment (Kramar, 2014).
According to Jasper et al. (2013), the organization has to make sure that the employees are not disabled physically so that they can meet the requirement of the company efficiently. In general, the companies fear that if the workers are unable to meet the companies’ demands. The fear of cost, challenge depends on the size of the organization. The higher the organization the deeper is their demand for exact requirement. The hospitality industry faces challenges regarding recruiting the disabled and mostly the reason is lack of proper guidance. The industry can be suggested to improve their hiring techniques that will help them to hire the disabled employees (Gibbs, MacDonald & MacKay, 2015). The correct selection of the employees with the accurate skill and talent is important to understand.
Retention can be a challenge in the hospitality industry based on some of the general issues like work pressure, work culture, organisation culture, workplace issues like bullying and low rate of job satisfaction etc (Kramar, 2014). People leave an organisation in order to reach out to a better place, it is the duty of the Human resource department to manage the issues and grievance of the employees. Most of the time the issues or the complaints are not considered as important in an organisation whose employee turnover is high. In the hospitality industry there are several challenges as the industry has to operate on a 24*7 basis. There are issues like shift problems, grievances regarding the work culture as well as there are problems like peer pressure and bad culture. One of the major challenges in the process of retention of the employees is that the people who are working in a small scale organisation is always looking forwards to changes in a large scale company where the remuneration is higher and the organsiaiton has goodwill in the industry (Kramar et al., 2013).
Conclusion:
Thus to conclude it can be said that the human resource management in the hospitality management is an important part that decides the entire process for running this industry. The workers skill and quality determines the progress report of the company. The chances for developing new scope in this industry depend on the capability of the worker. Thus, the recruitment for staff for this industry has to be done in specified and selective manner. The study has also critically analysed the usage of online recruiting system, the advantages and disadvantages related to it, the scopes for hiring the disabled in this industry. It has critically reviewed the selection method, areas to improve by the recruiters for using the online recruiting system. The online recruiting system that saves times, energy and cost for both the worker and the employer are a new trend in the market. However, few industries still require gaining knowledge about this new trend of recruitment. Even if the industry is well aware of this system, they prefer the old system of recruiting or interviewing the employees. They are still not sure about the new trend. The study have suggested for proper remedy for such industries and there required steps that the industries that are using this trend might use. Thus it can be concluded that online recruiting system is a promising trend and has a better scope in future recruitment system.
References:
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