Discuss about the Human Resource Management for Hospitality and Tourism.
The report is a personal reflection of industrial training as a Manager at The Naked Duck Café, Mascot known to be one of the finest bistros in Sydney, Australia.
Description, background and current activities of the organisation
The Naked Duck is one of the outstanding café bistros functional since 2013 provides quality foodstuff that is an exceptional combination of French, American, Asian and Australian cuisine. The café functions to serve regular onsite customers providing a feeling of ‘second home’, as well as Naked Duck, also provides catering services for corporate gatherings, meetings and functions. The signature Naked Blend roasted by Toby’s Estate coffee is considered to be the best serving of restaurant that attains a regular liking by customers (The Naked Duck – Sydney, 2016).
(Source: The Naked Duck Mascot, Mascot Restaurants & Dining NSW Australia, 2016)
Being a contemporary form of cafe barista, the Naked Duck serve different categories of food that involves Naked Duck Breakfast, Naked Duck sandwich, Hot food, Salads and coffees as the major attraction. Along with fine dining, the breakfast, beverages and outdoor seating facilities are major attractions of this organisation, which comforts customer in all possible manners. With the tagline of “Welcome & Bon appetite” the restaurant serve and caters with a mission to deliver quality cuisine in their functional zone.
The Naked Café is located at one of the prime location in Sydney that is 247, Coward Street, Mascot, NSW, 2020 operational from morning 6 to evening 4 on weekdays. The target market of this organization is the local public and corporate sector of Sydney where AIPA and Oneworld Alliance are regular customers of this organization (The Naked Duck Mascot, 2016).
The basic structure of Naked Duck café organization is provided in form of chart below:
(Refer appendix)
As a Manager at The Naked Duck café, the two areas that required particular focus were Human Resource Management and marketing requiring critical attention as per professional. In this particular organisation the HR team works in a collaborative manner to deliver service outcomes. As hospitality industry is mainly service-based business, therefore, a strategic human resource management (SHRM) perspective is required to frame the overall HR structure of organisation. Chuang & Liao (2010) indicated that SHRM contains six discussion zones that involve cost theory, cybernetic models, behavioural practices; resource based firm establishment and power dependency for understanding the strategic HR practice. This strategic HR management approach was observed to be present in the human resource management functionality of Naked Duck café where workers and managers were having complete fundamental skills of marketing, planning, financial management and HRM. However, there was a lack of personal management, an impersonal approach of work, lack of professional skills and motivation in workers of the organization (Alvesson & Willmott, 2012).
Management Issues
As per the HR theory of performance, the workers should always be motivated and nourished to gather commitment. As per this theory, the planned, organised, leading and controlling management can only provide effective workers (Harzing & Pinnington, 2010). However, in the particular organization there was a lack of performance observed where the staff was unaware of the job description, overtime without incentives, and lacking employee motivation was identified in HR management process. This indicates that practices of HR performance are not followed in the organization that harnesses the performance level.
Further, it is been studied in basics of HR that for providing employee motivation, the management needs to follow Maslow’s Hierarchy of Motivation pyramid. The Maslow’s hierarchy determines the human needs at per pyramid level where the basic needs are very first level of the pyramid. The performance is achieved when management reaches the top level of the pyramid in employee motivation and satisfaction (Riley, 2014). In Naked Duke café there was a lack of employee motivation and fulfilment of basic needs. This indicates that no motivations practice is followed in the organization for effective HR management.
However, the area of marketing is more focussed and determined in this organization when compared with HR management. The external and internal factors affecting the organisation marketing strategy are perfectly managed by applying 7P’s marketing mix where Product ‘food’ is maintained of high standards, Place ‘location is prime and attractive, Price ‘cost’ of products is reasonable, Promotion strategies are workable, People ‘employees’ are skills and professional, Processes ‘service methods’ are satisfactory and Physical evidence ‘ambience’ is very attractive as per customer requirements. Further, the management theories in hospitality focus on delivering consumer satisfaction as a primary need of marketing process. As per the hospitality marketing aspects, the management needs to gather consumer needs, likings, taste, and interest to develop marketing promotions. This concept is lacking in the marketing practice. The management of this organization has not focussed on consumer needs and interest while performing marketing promotions (Volgger & Pechlaner, 2014).
The Naked Duck café follow the ‘Unique Selling Elements” approach of hospitality marketing where the organization should detect the three unique elements that make them stand out of the crowd and special in their industry (Testa & Sipe, 2012). The three unique selling elements of Naked Duck café are its food (French, American, the Asian and Australian cuisine at one place), the attractive ambience and outside seating’s, and lastly, the exceptional services provided by employees in this café.
People-Management
Self-Management
For the implementation of effective self-management, the self-management protocol provided in the study of Nesbit (2012) was followed which contributes to employee growth and satisfaction.
This model of self-management facets is described below: –
Figure 1: The Model of Self-management
(Source: Nesbit, 2012)
By following this framework self-management was performed in the organization. The quality and responsiveness towards work were not always effective because as a fresher trainee there were issues that require experience for resolution. Therefore, the work responsiveness and quality were not always satisfactory.
At some places, there were issues like lack of knowledge, support and skills, which was overruled by enhancing skills and knowledge with studies. Further, workplace stress was another issue at times of business season that occurred due to over-time and high work pressure. This workplace stress was also observed in employees and workers at due to high work pressure at The Naked Duck café. To overcome this stress a “Risk management framework” give by Wang & Tsai (2014) was followed for self-stress management as well as management of employee stress. This framework involved strategies like Counselling, relaxations training, resilience training, therapy, providing support and effectual working culture. In this manner, the workplace stress issue was managed in an effective manner.
The things that went well in the self-management process were commitment towards work, honest approaches, effective employee management, providing satisfactory work and managing organisation culture effectively as a functional manager. However, things that went wrong were a lack of confidence over knowledge and lack of experience.
People or Human resources are considered as assets of any business and the management of people is considered as most complicated part of Manager’s work (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). Similarly, in present training, while working as a manager, the most difficult task was to manage people without any initial experience. In the organization The Naked duke café, while working as a manager it is noticed that people management strategies were fine enough to get performance but the major issues were the lack of motivation and employee engagement in the decision-making process of organization. Further, the workplace stress due to work pressure was another issue that let to employee turnover. The management was not able to unlock the potential of its employee because the talent of employees was not channelled correctly.
While responding to the supervisor as a manager the honest and non-diplomatic approach was adopted to let the management understand the issue in working process. As a manager, it was erudite that for performing people management a complete collaboration of skills, knowledge, patience, sympathy, hard work and attentiveness is essential (Riley, 2014). There was a lack of patience and attentiveness being a manager in the personal analysis that created anger in attitude; even the employees were threatened of the angry attitude. However, it was realised that for being a good manager there is need to get a control over personal anger and lack of attentiveness in attitude. Further, a good manager is the combination of good knowledge and good experience that comes with time and practice (Cantallops & Salvi, 2014).
The leadership is the strategy or action or skill of leading people in the organization. At Naked Duke Café, there was a clear leadership vision to guide and build morale in employees. The employees were managers were always instructed to guide employees in every minor and major aspects of business. The employees were pulled all together to work in a collaborative manner for achieving goals and maintaining the vision of the organization. However, only missing aspects were employee motivation that harnesses the leadership in organization.
As a manager, the good characteristics of a manager that makes him/her complete managers are focus, confidence, integrity, inspiration, cooperation, transparency, patients and intelligence. A good leader should adopt both formal and informal leadership. In formal leadership, the role as a leader in the organization is performed for the purpose of making business, whereas informal leadership skill helps to build a relationship with employees at the personal level to understand the employees perspective. A good leader needs to perform health communication and innovation in their leadership (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012).
The management processes, procedures and policies related to marketing, promotional activities, service delivery and product formation was remarkable. The quality of food at The Naked Duke café offering an exceptional combination of Asian, French, American and Australian food was unique for this location. People were found highly excited to enjoy the quality and variety of meals. Further, the overall performance management was also up to the mark, except the excess level of work pressure in seasons caused employee turnover. The employee motivation was very low to overcome this work pressure stress. Therefore, to improve the functionality of business it is critically essential to implement effective employee motivation strategies along with processes to provide relaxation in high work pressure, for example- An extended lunch break or higher incentives in the season, appreciation for work etc. (Karatepe & Demir, 2014).
Conclusion
As a Manager at The Naked Duke Café the experience of handling hospitality management was obtained where human resource management and marketing were key areas of focus. As a manager, I was able to handle employee services, performance and their issues. It was learned how to deal with the complexity of practical management. The human resource and marketing management at this organization is remarkable in its performance and service deliver. But, it was analyzed that employee motivation and engagement was lacking in organisation leadership strategies. There was a miss managed workplace stress at times of overload that leads to huge employee turnover.
As a trainee the personal self-management skills were also analyzed in this training program where the lack of patience and attentiveness was identified in attitude. As a manager, there was a lack of capability to handle workplace stress and overload. The leadership skills of management were effective enough to generate workable performance from the employee. Further, product quality, variety and quickness were the major feature of The Naked Duke Café that attracted a huge crowd of Australian people.
Industrial training as a manager at The Naked Duke Café was the opportunity to gain practical experience and skills for performing management, which is not possible through theoretical knowledge and studies. There is a huge different in theoretical management studies and practical management performance. The industrial training helped to gain practical management experience, implementation of theoretical knowledge, perform self-analysis, determine personals strengths and weaknesses that helped to improve overall skills and knowledge about management.
Give a summary of suggestions that could be implemented in either your workplace or to the Industry Training program.
As per the workplace analysis and experience, the effective suggestions would be to implement effective employee motivation and retention strategies like incentives, increments, and effective communication, sharing information and engaging in the decision-making process. It is required for management to act fairly, respectfully and creatively towards the concerns of its employees. Further, it is required to adopt a better strategy to manage workplace stress by providing engagement, entertainment and relaxation to the worker for getting better performance.
References
Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2012). Making sense of management: A critical introduction. Sage.
Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Harzing, A. W., & Pinnington, A. (Eds.). (2010). International human resource management. Sage.
Riley, M. (2014). Human resource management in the hospitality and tourism industry. Routledge.
Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012). Critical leadership studies: The case for critical performativity. Human relations, 65(3), 367-390.
Cantallops, A. S., & Salvi, F. (2014). New consumer behavior: A review of research on eWOM and hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, 41-51.
Chuang, C. H., & Liao, H. U. I. (2010). Strategic human resource management in service context: Taking care of business by taking care of employees and customers. Personnel Psychology, 63(1), 153-196.
Karatepe, O., & Demir, E. (2014). Linking core self-evaluations and work engagement to work-family facilitation: a study in the hotel industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(2), 307-323.
Nesbit, P. L. (2012). The role of self-reflection, emotional management of feedback, and self-regulation processes in self-directed leadership development. Human resource development review, 1534484312439196.
Testa, M. R., & Sipe, L. (2012). Service-leadership competencies for hospitality and tourism management. International journal of hospitality management, 31(3), 648-658.
Volgger, M., & Pechlaner, H. (2014). Requirements for destination management organizations in destination governance: Understanding DMO success. Tourism Management, 41, 64-75.
Wang, Y. F., & Tsai, C. T. (2014). Employability of hospitality graduates: Student and industry perspectives. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 26(3), 125-135.
The Naked Duck – Sydney. (2016). Zomato. Retrieved 23 August 2016, from https://www.zomato.com/sydney/the-naked-duck-mascot
The Naked Duck Mascot, Mascot Restaurants & Dining NSW Australia. (2016). AGFG. Retrieved 23 August 2016, from https://www.agfg.com.au/guide/40083/nsw/sydney/sydney-eastern-suburbs/mascot/restaurants-dining/the-naked-duck-mascot
The Naked Duck Mascot. (2016). The Naked Duck Mascot. Retrieved 23 August 2016, from https://www.nakedduckmascot.com.
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