Importance of Professionalising HRM in Hotel Industry - Essay Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Reason and Benefit of Professionalising HRM in Happy Hotels Group 2 Scenario which Can Occur if Individual Managers Remain Solely Responsible For HRM 5 References 6 Hotel is a place where a customer pays money for entertainment, housing, food and other facilities alike a temporary residence. It is a place where tourists from different countries stay and in due course of time, become loyal customers if they are satisfied with the services. The customers of hotel include students, officials, political legislative body, business representatives, and travellers. There are different departments in hotel such as cooking department, ‘front office department’, cleaning department, marketing department, maintenance department, finance and bookkeeping department, safety and security department and administration department. Each department requires personnel to operate and mange the different types of customers. Thus, there is a need for HRM in a hotel because every aspect in a hotel is concerned with handling people. A HRM professional can understand the needs and preferences of employees and can handle the employee related problems quite efficiently than others (Scribd, 2011). From the provided case, it can be observed that it is a challenge for Happy Hotels to recruit, develop and maintain workforce which is significant for the hotel because a good motivated workforce is the key for providing high quality services to the sensitive customers. The approaches undertaken by Happy Hotels are quite different than the other high cost hotel services. It provides customers with excellent services, comfortable rooms, and good meals with minimal budget than other high cost hotel such as Premium Inn or Holiday Inn. Thus, the job description in Happy Hotels needs range of skills and qualities. The employees must have knowledge to interact with various customers who can impact the HRM strategies such as recruitment and training of employees (Elsevier, 2006). HRM can broadly manage the employees in Happy Hotels and can aid the hotels to pursue their path towards achieving success. There are many reasons for professionalising HRM in the expansion of hotel group. Reason and Benefit of Professionalising HRM in Happy Hotels Group Every hotel seeks to develop their services which can differentiate them from other competitors. Thus, a hotel will always endeavour to focus on providing customers any product or service which is new and innovative. The employees of the hotels will play one of the major roles in fulfilling this endeavour of the hotels. Thus, the employees need to learn behaviour such as readiness to tolerate uncertainty and changeability. They need to take risks. A highly skilled HR individual can help to achieve high level of autonomy in a hotel. HRM can implement quality improvement strategy for employees. Through this HR strategy any hotel can improve the teamwork, decision making capability, and responsibility and feedback system. It can be seen that in Happy Hotels there is a trend of ‘call in sick’ between employees. The HR strategy can help to motivate employees to improve their job performance and can help to decrease the tendency of call in sick (Elsevier, 2006). A major competitive advantage of Happy Hotels is the cost advantage for customers. The hotel tries to achieve competitive advantage by providing low cost service. To achieve this cost advantage strategy, Happy Hotels have tight control over costs by minimising the overhead cost and focusing on the ‘economies of scale’. Thus, to make the strategy successful, Happy Hotels Group needs high number of part time employees, and also requires to simplify and to evaluate their jobs which can encourage specialisation and competence of employees and short term performance appraisal system. This calls for the implementation and professionalization of HRM in Happy Hotels to balance the profitability as well as the performance of employees (Elsevier, 2006). The employee turnover rate has been quite high in Happy Hotels and there is a tendency of employees leaving the organisation after short period of time. The highly experienced staffs also had the tendency to leave the job of Happy Hotels and the existing manager was unable to resolve the issue of employee turnover. Job dissatisfaction is a vital reason for high employee turnover. It can occur mainly because of relationship with manager, quality of working environment, excessive workload, insufficient acknowledgment for work and poor leadership skills. A HR professional can help to resolve the issue of turnover. While recruiting an employee, HR can efficiently select the appropriate people for any particular job in Happy Hotels. A proper supervision is necessary in the organisation. HR professional can supervise the employees for high level of performance and higher productivity. Another important function of HRM to reduce the turnover is to provide training. It can facilitate in providing necessary knowledge and skill about the job and develop behaviour of employees. The training of employees is important because employee turnover is generally higher in the times of financial insecurity. Providing training can enhance the possibility of an employee to stay in the organisation and can increase the motivation of staff and their obligation toward organisation. On–the–job training can lead to job satisfaction and thus it can influence an employee to stay for long time in the organisation (Mudor & Tooksoon, 2011). It has been seen that the number of employees is limited who can work on short notice. Thus, when the Happy Hotels Group will expand the number of hotels there is need for experienced and trustworthy staff. HR professional can recruit and select employees with appropriate skills and behavioural characteristics. A HR professional can use variety of measurement techniques while selecting the employees. For example, personal interviews, testing the capability of the employees, personality testing and various simulation exercises. Through these techniques HR professional can evaluate the traits, interpersonal ability and problem solving skills of employees which are useful in service industry. The assessment of employees can help to validate the skills and knowledge of employees and it can ensure balance between organisation and employee. Good selection of employee results in high employee retention rate. Trustworthy and experienced employees help to meet the organisation’s goals and objectives (Scribd, 2011). In recruiting new employees for various posts in the new hotels there is a need of reward system for showing good performance. HRM professional can estimate the performance of employees by customer assessment, peer examination, team performance and review of the performance of various managers by their subordinates. This appraisal system can help to accomplish the objectives of new hotels of Happy Hotels Group as well as maintain good relationship between managers and employees (Scribd, 2011). Scenario which Can Occur if Individual Managers Remain Solely Responsible For HRM If individual managers continue to manage HRM activities in Happy Hotels, the problems related to employees will not resolve completely. Certain managers in the Happy Hotels can have lack of knowledge in interpersonal skill and they will find it difficult to manage the problems regarding retention of employees, motivating them and reducing the attrition of employees. To facilitate development there is a need to turn plan into fruitful results and establish a value for the organisation. Without professional HR manager in place, it will not be easy for individual hotel managers alone to observe the activities and performances of the employees and to control them. To compete in today’s competitive environment there is a need to change from traditional management system to HRM system. References Elsevier, 2006. Human Resource Management and The Tourism and Hospitality Industry: An Introduction. Samples. [Online] Available at: http://v5.books.elsevier.com/bookscat/samples/9780750665728/9780750665728.PDF [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Mudor, H. & Tooksoon, P., 2011. Conceptual Framework on The Relationship Between Human Resource Management Practices, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover. Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.41-49. [Online] Available at: http://www.ifrnd.org/JEBS/2%20(2)%20Feb%202011/Conceptual%20framework_on%20the%20relationship.pdf [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Scribd, 2011. The Concept and Functions of Human Resource Management. Doc. [Online] Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12686796/HRM-Function [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Scribd, 2011. Introduction to Hotel Industry. Human Resource Practices in Hotel Industry. [Online] Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22945926/HR-Practices-in-Hotel-Industry [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Read More