Specific Concerns of the Hospitality Industry in Australia - Assignment Example

Running Head: Human Resource Management Name: Institution: Course Code: Date of Submission: Executive summary The Human Resources Department in every industry or sector is responsible for investigating and finding solutions to issues and problems reside underneath organization’s Human Resource functions. Human Resources perform functions such as employee selection and recruitment, ensuring organizational ethics, and successful strategies for human resource development. According to this report, human resource is also responsible for activities such as organizational management, personnel administration, training and events management, compensation management, industrial relations, and employee motivation among other duties. This report will analyse three issues in relation to the case study and they include developing human resource, recruitment and selection in hospitality industry, and ethics in human resources. The Human Resource Management plays an important role in ensuring that the organization complies with labor laws and other regulations that take care of employee remuneration and compensation and health and safety in workplace among other legislations. However, there are cases of Human resource malpractices in the hotel and hospitality industry that see most employers oppress their employees with intend of making exorbitant profits through payments of a far less amount of money. This maybe for the simple reason that the industry is quite diverse and the business owners finding out that they offer a range of products to many people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Developing Human Resources 5 Recruitment and Selection in Hospitality Industry 7 Specific Concerns of the Hospitality Industry in Australia 8 Ethics in Human Resources 9 Legal Considerations 9 Company Reputation 10 Employee Loyalty 10 Conclusion/Recommendations 11 Reference List 13 Introduction Despite the fact that personnel development, level of ethics in human resource, and employee recruitment and selection being a very serious concern for business owners in the hospitality industry, it is unfortunate that in other parts of the world, such practices are never adhered to. The need for proper human resource development, recruitment and selection, and good ethics in human resource for the hospitality industry roots in the problem of finding competent staff with the ability to deliver international standards (Siddique, 2009). With this in mind, some players in the industry continue to treat their employees as though they were less important than the organization’s resource or financial gain. The hospitality industry also has the tendency of employing underclass and less qualified employees to enable them pay minimum amounts of wages. In this case study, employees in the hospitality industry are less paid and even fired when they offer complaints. In some other worst cases, an employee who suffers severe injuries at workplace fails to secure compensation because the industry does not value employee insurance cover (Frank & Mary, 2005). Since the success or failure of the hospitality industry depends greatly on its employees, it is the role of the manager, and especially the Human resource department, to encourage its employees to be more productive by engaging in proper selection and recruitment, developing good employee development strategies, and ensuring to improve its ethics in the Human Resource Department (Frank & Mary, 2005). The organizational structure of hotels and restaurants across Manly, Neutral Bay, Sydney, and the northern beaches as formed very often chaotically with management blaming the system for doing business as argued by John Hart, an officer with the Restaurant and Catering Australia Association. The culture is therefore depicted as one without special planning by utilizing staff more efficiently. Hospitality education and especially in Human Resource in these regions must be reorganized so that future employees in their hospitality industry would be properly rewarded in compliance with the laws of the land. Developing Human Resources Human Resources Development is one of the key disciplines within human resource management. Human resource development refers to a discipline that focuses on the people who work for an organization. In essence, the discipline encompasses a set of systematic and planned activities adopted by a human resource department in organizations to provide its members with the necessary skills to meet current and emerging demands in the job market (Noe and Wenkler, 2009). With evolutions and transformations in the job market, employee needs skills that go beyond the training in the classroom in order to be competent. Human resource development includes coaching, group work, and problem solving. It also requires basic employee development that is effective and efficient. There are three basic areas of human resource development. These fundamental areas include individual development (personal), career development (professional), and organizational development (CIPD, 2002). The importance and effectiveness of each component vary from one organization to another depending on the nature of their operations, the criticality of human resources to organizational efficiency, and the organization's commitment and focus to improve its human resources (Noe and Wenkler, 2009). However, all the three components have one focus that is, individual performance improvement. For individual performance, improvement is the focus of human resource development program, it is important to incorporate all the three components for effective human resource development program. In the case of the hospitality industry that entails hotels, bars, and restaurants, human resource development are quite important in ensuring high productivity and improvement of skills and competence. This is also paramount in the industry with the fact that needs and preferences of customers and clients keep on changing and varying from time to time depending on the seasons and time of the year. The hospitality industry serves several needs of customers throughout the year (CIPD, 2002). It is therefore not surprising that customer needs and preferences change as the seasons do, and therefore, people from diverse cultural backgrounds will most definitely have different needs that need competent and more qualified staff. It is for this reason that the hospitality industry is one that highly needs proper human resource development strategies for effective productivity. However, human resource development does not just mean equipping the human resource of an organization with the knowledge and skills that specifically improve their productivity. Human resource development also implies that employees need to understand their organization expects of them and what their rights as employees are. As with the aforementioned case, human resource development in the specific hospitality industry failed in its role of human resource development selecting underclass employees and those who do not have adequate knowledge of the of their payment or wage system. It is evident that employees in Sydney Hospitality, Hihou Bar, and Izakaya Den did not have a clear understanding of the wage system and most of them did not realize their exploitation by the employers until their dismissal as found out by Jacqui Swinbourne of Pedfern Legal Centre. This clearly portrays the hospitality industry employee as being unaware of their predicaments. Therefore, the hospitality industry within the said areas of Manly, Neutral Bay, Sydney, and the northern beaches and their human resource departments failed to equip their employees with the necessary knowledge of their wage systems but rather decided to engage in unjust ways of exploiting the employees for their own benefits. Recruitment and Selection in Hospitality Industry Human resource departments, recruitment and selection remain one of the most crucial activities that determine the future of an organization concerning having effective staff on board. It is therefore equally important to recognize and appreciate that recruitment and selection should be part of the hospitality industry human resource activity. As such, hospitality industry, just like any other industry depends on the people working within it to determine its success or failure. The main reason behind every human resource department is that human resource is among the scarcest resources among all other resources behind the success of any organization and therefore needs effective management. The overall aim of recruitment and selection process as a function of the human resource in the hospitality industry is to that an organization within the industry obtains enough quantity of employees with the required qualities that will enable them to achieve the objectives of the organization with a lot of effectiveness and efficiency. The process of selection and recruitment in any industry is however rooted down to three main stages (John & Jack, 2005): 1. The first stage involves defining qualifications, providing job specifications, and setting employee requirements. 2. The second stage is that of attracting the potential employees and designing methods of reaching potential applicants for the vacant positions. 3. The third and final stage will be the selection of the appropriate people to fill the appropriate positions and selecting the right positions for the appropriate people. Recruitment is part of the process concerned with finding applicants: it is a positive action of management, going into the labor market, communicating opportunities and information, generating interest.Recruitment and selection is part of the employee resourcing process that is very critical in choosing between job applicants (Canny, 2002). Specific Concerns of the Hospitality Industry in Australia In contemporary hospitality businesses typical of Australia, employees are highly barred from participating in the managerial process, and their role in defining their fate is quite limited. In certain hotels, bars, and restaurants for instance, wages per hour vary from one company to another with other companies paying higher than others though in the real sense all companies pay almost half less than the amount required by the regulations of the land. In Sushi Bar Taka for instance, an employee earns $15.96 per hour while at Northern Beach Restaurant, an employee earns as low as $12 per hour. In such conditions, it is more likely that employees would feel intimidated and thus the need to trade unions and other regulatory agencies that govern labor issues within Sydney and the mentioned areas, especially in the hospitality industry, where they exist at all, are the result of poor human resource activities and lack of benefits for employees. As the growth of tourism in general and most specifically the growth of the hospitality industry, gains priority for business owners in developing plans of Manly, Neutral Bay, Sydney, and the northern beaches, it is essential for management in human resource departments to devise methods of making the industry more competitive. The most important methods of making the industry more competitive is to ensure that the human resource in the industry recruits and employs employees with the right qualifications and competence to ensure success of the industry and thus ensuring more productivity in the industry (Canny, 2002). The idea of employee non-qualified employees in the industry is uncalled for and has some various consequences in improving the competitiveness of the industry. Ethics in Human Resources Human resource that pays attention to business ethics plays an important role in improving the reputation of an industry and organization. There are several ethical challenges that the human resources department has to battle with in ensuring that business ethics are upheld; this is a crucial role of the human resource development since it is judged with the role of dealing with employees that determine the direction of the public reputation of any given organization (John & Jack, 2005). Human resource includes numerous ethical pitfalls that are crucial in defining company's reputation and financial sustainability as well. If these ethical challenges are well handled, it can greatly damage the industry’s reputation. It is therefore crucial for the hospitality industry to understand the crucial importance of ethics in human resource. In this specific case, the hospitality industry of Manly, Neutral Bay, Sydney, and the northern beaches are evident that it lags behind in in upholding ethics in its human resource. Legal Considerations Breaches of ethics in human resources and poor business ethics can lead organizations and industries into a situation of legal troubles both in civil and industrial arenas. Breaches of ethics in the human resource departments are evident in this case where employees are underpaid and risk losing their employment by complaining to legal authorities that include investigations led by Jacqui Swinbourne of Pedfern Legal Center. Such issues as organization’s failure to compensate for an employee who suffers injuries while at the workplace is a failure of human resource to uphold good ethics (Siddique, 2004).This is evident in the case with a Sydney Hospitality employee sustaining scar that resulted from burns by boiling oil. The company failed to compensate the employee on grounds of lack of insurance cover. Company Reputation Organization’s misdeeds are highly recognized as damaging the reputation of the organization since news outlets are fast in uncovering such deeds and therefore affecting the reputation. Discrimination issues, poor selection criteria, and unfair remunerations are among the key issues that are likely to affect the reputation of an organization as perceived by consumers, shareholders, and potential future employees (John & Jack, 2005). A high reputation gained by an organization helps the organization attract more customers and increase its potential to attract highly talented employees that can enhance growth and profitability. When potential employees perceive an organization as unethical and non-compliance with various laws governing employees and labor in general, the most talented, experienced, and highly skilled potential employees will most certainly opt to seek employments in other organizations. Finally, the unethical human resource department in an organization is unlikely to maintain its employees and even develop them (David, 2008). Employee Loyalty The hospitality industry is quite crucial in serving the tourism industry. It is therefore common knowledge that employee trust and loyalty in the industry is very crucial.Employee loyalty is important in developing experience and allows employees to master the production process (David, 2008). Loyal and experienced employees are more likely to improve their effectiveness, productivity, thus keeping recruitment, and training costs under control. Furthermore, sellers of consumer goods such as the hospitality industry are likely to gain market advantage of loyal employees. Loyal employees are vital in enabling the consumers to understand more about the organization’s products by spreading word-of-mouth. This is important for a crucial industry like the hospitality industry (David, 2008). Conclusion/Recommendations The human resource department is quite important in defining the direction of organizational reputation, dining strategies for employee development, and ensuring that human resource ethics are upheld and that employee rights to compensation, health and safety, and selection are in accordance with law. It is therefore important for human resource departments to ensure compliance with laws to avoid the organization from entering into some legal problems that will in turn increase the total cost of production in an organization. Defining clear measures for recruitment and selection is the important role of the human resource department in ensuring that the organization attains employees with competent and the right skills to facilitate the success of an organization (David, 2008). It is therefore recommended that human resource departments should not recruit people who lack competence in their organizations. In the case, human resource departments in the hospitality industry resorted to recruiting staff that is poorly equipped. This would result in poor development and productivity in the industry. Human resource development is another very crucial factor widely observed in the case study. It would be better if the human resource departments offered room for training, internships, and any other strategy aimed at improving employee development. However, many other human resource malpractices jeopardize employee development. In our specific case, employees did not get a room that would allow them to develop their skills. Issues such as underpayment, poor relationship between the management and the employees are among the key issues that deter effective employee development. Reference List Canny, A. (2002). ‘Flexible labor? The growth of student employment in the UK’, Journal of Education and Work, 15(3), 277–301. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2002). Training and Development 2002: Survey Report. London: CIPD (also available to download from CIPD website www.cipd.co.uk. (15/04/2013). David, K. (2008). Human Resources Management in the Hospitality Industry. New Jersey: John Willey. Frank, M. & Mary, L. (2005). Tom Baum. Human Resource Management in HospitalityIndustry. New Jersey: John Willey. John, R. & Jack, E. (2009). Supervision in the Hospitality Industry: Leading Human Resources. New Jersey: John Willey. Noe, R. & Winkler, C. (2009). Employee training and development: For Australia & New Zealand. North Ryde, N.S.W.: McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd. Siddique, C. (2004). Job analysis: a strategic human resource management practice. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 15(1), 219-244. Read More