Employee Assistance Programs - Research Paper Example

 Employee Assistance Programs Table of Contents Abstract…...……………………………………………………………………………….. 03 Introduction……….……………………………………………………………………….. 04 Discussion..………………………………………………………………………………… 05 1. EAP at Worksite…………………………………………………………….06 2. Labor Shortages and Responsibility of HR Directors……………………....06 3. Flexible Workforce – Good or Bad………………………………………....07 4. Poor Training – Another Cause of Labor Shortage………………………....08 5. Trade Off Between Kinds of Compensation & Kinds of Employees……….08 6. Generation X & Generation Y………………………………………………09 7. Scope of Tourism and HRM………………………………………………...09 8. Labor Skills in Hospitality Management……………………………………10 9. Perception of Hotels and HRM Practices…………………………………...11 10. Dimensions of High Performance Management Systems………………..…11 11. Balanced Scorecard and Hospitality Industry……………………………....12 12. Generational Differences & Hospitality Management……………………...13 13. Causes of Job Stress………………………………………………………...13 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………. 14 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….. 15 Abstract This study aims to highlight Employee Assistance Programs as the core Human Resource Function in the context of Hospitality Management. In the review of preceding literature, very few researches on Employee Assistance Program have emerged in hospitality management in recent years. However, indirect and implied implications of varied Human Resource Functions that ultimately give rise to the causes and reasons for employers to develop Employee Assistance Programs for the well being of their employees are studied in this research analysis. The analysis encompass the difference perspectives of HR function in relation to Hospitality Management so that employers can achieve significantly higher level of performance from their employees and the employees, themselves, can exhibit improved performances in the job context and shape a positive behavior and stable psychological attitude at workplace. Introduction Human Resource Management and Hospitality Management are two areas of studies which are very much interlinked and connected with respect to many aspects. Yet, these two areas have significant differences in their implications. Human resource practices have in-depth implications in hospitality and tourism industry. As those practices are somehow different from conventional Human Resource practices which are employed in other industries. Due to having distinct practices of Human resource management in Hospitality industry, it has been observed that the behaviors, attitudes and mental states of employees working in hospitality industry have shown relatively substantial deviations from their counterparts in other industries and sectors. Increased rate of addictions to drugs, alcohol and other similar intoxications have increasingly shaped and reinforced in employees’ behavior. Employers have contributed various different courses of actions in order for their employees to get rid of these negative behaviors. These remedial actions have both soft and hard approaches in order to achieve the desired positive behaviors. Hard approaches consist of disciplinary actions like expulsions, rustications, dismissals, temporary layoffs, demotions, suspensions; deductions in benefits and incentive plans, fines, penalties and other punitive actions etc. Soft approaches include warnings, counseling, mentoring; providing opportunities for holidays, vacations, sports and recreation, reduced workload, job transfer etc. One of the key tools which have recently come into lime light among many employers is Employee Assistance Programs (EAP). This technique is becoming more renowned with the passage of time as it is providing some serious and very much needed advantages and benefits to both employees and employers. Employers develop and make certain arrangements in which the affected employees are counseled and mentored by highly qualified doctors, psychiatrists, behavioral psychologists and other similar professionals. These professionals conduct various counseling sessions with their patients (employees) in which they investigate the problems, gather relevant facts, process, analyze and summarize those fact and reach at a particular conclusion to diagnose the root cause of the problem. They formulate such strategies which, if followed by the employees, can help them in unlearning the previous negative behaviors and learns new norms and ways of behaving which have positive outcomes. The most promising instinct of this psychological practice is that the treatment is made with absolute confidentiality and privacy; even the employers remain unaware of the whole situation or trauma faced by the employees. Because of this treatment, employers are satisfied that their employees are back to their old positive behaviors and on the other hand, employees feel delighted as the elements of privacy and confidentiality have prevented them from getting humiliated and insulted in front of their colleagues, peers, subordinates, seniors and other job related people. Discussion This study outlines the various aspects of Hospitality Management with Human Resource Management in general and with Employee Assistance Program in particular. The review of previous literature on this area has many direct relations with respect to advancement in both Human resource Management and Hospitality Management. Since the concept of Employee Assistance Program is overall in its growth stage, therefore, its implications in Hospitality Management are found to be very narrow according to recent researches. However, it has been ensured that impact of Employee Assistance Program in various aspects of Hospitality Management is dealt with, in conjunction with various elements of Human Resource Management. Although discrepancies may arise due to lack of previous studies specifically on Employees Assistance Program, still efforts are deployed to relate the direct or indirect influence of Employee Assistance Program with different angles of Hospitality Management. 1. EAP at Worksite The study of McCann, Azzone, Merrick, Hiatt, Hodgkin & Horgan (2010) emphasizes on Employee Assistance Program as one of the better behavioral treatment for the employees among different types of treatments present in current healthcare environment. Their study reveals some of the factors which cause the selection of Employee Assistance program as a core behavioral treatment for mentally disturbed employees. These factors include industry, sector, nature of the organization, type of the business, workplace regulations in relation to substance abuse, and constitution of benefits as a result of healthcare insurance. One special healthcare managed entity designed a survey from 103 big United States companies to examine the impact of those variables related to the features of EAP which the employers consider for their employees and their relatives. As per the results of the survey, some universal factors are highlighted namely mode of delivery, preferences for the type of the EAP counseling services. On the contrary, varying factors that arise are number of sessions conducted for counseling, options for EAP-provided worksite which are truly representative of distinct properties, workplace norms and cultures, and the missions of the organizations. 2. Labor Shortages and Responsibility of HR Directors Taylor and Finley (2008) focus their attention on a very emerging issue which revolves around the labor shortages in the hospitality industry, particularly to luxury hotels and resorts. Efforts are placed by resort mangers to resolve this issue by adopting such strategies which are formulated by Human Resource directors. Five luxury hotels of North Carolina present the outcomes generated by the HR directors. Those factors which contributed to labor shortages in luxury hotels are choice of strategy, structure of the resort, results presented in the performance of resorts, and forces leading to change the dynamics of environment. However, for planning basis, very little clue of co-alignment being used was found. The study of Davidson and Wang (2011) takes into account Australian four and five-star hotels to examine the human resource practices especially ones related to recruitment and factors causing the shortages of skills and labor turnover by a questionnaire using an online web-based survey. The findings of their research is consistent with the fact that labor shortages indeed have turned out to be a promising area of concern for the hospitality industry. The results also validate the factors like personal presentation, customer, relationship and interpersonal skills at the time of selection. The major result of the survey categorize the hospitality industry as the one which has no human resource planning horizon for sustainable practices for labor, and the casual approach of retaining the employees as the promising strategy to confront with the change in the labor demand. Evidence supported cost reduction as the factor which deters the employers in applying adequate human resource management policies in the hospitality industry. 3. Flexible Workforce – Good or Bad Soltani and Wilkinson (2010) have analyzed the hospitality industry with a different perspective in respect of employment of a flexible workforce and its impact on performance of hotel industry. The authors investigate the worth of flexible labor as firm’s cost or a resource in relation to their economic contribution to firm. The findings of the study of Soltani and Wilkinson (2010) express the notion of flexible workforce as the variable cost for the hotel industry. The results show that flexible workforce is deprived to of those advantages which are always available to core employees in terms of career growth and advancement, training and development, high compensation and benefits packages etc. 4. Poor Training – Another Cause of Labor Shortage In the study of Poulston (2008), employee turnover and labor shortage are caused by poor training in the hospitality and tourism industry. The author concludes the findings of his research, based on self-completed questionnaires from people related to hospitality industry, by making poor training responsible in creating the problems at the workplace environment. The author suggests that high investment in training and development can reduce the likelihood of these problems which include under-staffing and the areas related to theft. In this study, Poulston (2008) identifies a limitation of examining the relationship of hospitality industry workplace problems, not the examination of problems in isolation. 5. Trade Off Between Kinds of Compensation & Kinds of Employees Namasivayam, Miao and Zhao (2007) investigate the impact of direct and non-direct types of compensation in the hospitality and tourism industry on performances of the hotels. Researchers have made the analysis in such a manner that direct compensation completely arbitrated the linkage between the performance of the hotel and the indirect compensation, in case of management employees. On the hand, partial mediation is found in case of non-management employees in the relationship between direct compensations and the performance of hotels. Authors suggest that when offering compensations and benefits to non-management employees, special care should be taken by HR personnel in designing their compensation and benefits packages. Whereas, in order to ensure the top level of organizational performance in hospitality industry, the level of direct compensation to the management employees signifies its own importance. 6. Generation X & GenerationY Solnet, D., & Hood, A. (2008) in their article determined the impact of young age groups of employees that are entering into the hospitality industry and the changes in the paradigms of management that will be needed to successfully recruit, choose, instruct and motivate them in order to achieve organizational goals. The article also analyzes the way of thinking of Gen Y’s values, behaviors and attitude related to work. They have provided discussion on how these values and behavioral attitudes can interact with the paradigms of hospitality management. They provided 6 propositions regarding work related values and behaviors of Gen Y. A significant challenge in hospitality industry refers to an active participation of employees for the duties related to hospitality management i.e. serving guests, greeting guests. For this purpose, the inner satisfaction and peace of employees count a lot. If they wouldn’t be able to cope up with their own issues, there is a chance that they might leave any loophole in their jobs creating new difficulties for the company. 7. Scope of Tourism and HRM Davidson, McPhail and Barry (2010) has discussed that the scope of tourism, leisure industry and hospitality has become very vast. The hospitality industry has become world’s largest employer and it has been predicted that in the financial crisis the turn down in international tourism arrivals have bottomed out. It takes in almost everything. Every culture and country has its foundations in tourism and hospitality management. The paper will use the terms hospitality, tourism, hotel industry, lodging which will be considered to involve the leisure industry interchangeably. This study addresses the HRM in the area of hospitality by analyzing and examining the trends over past several years. Literature review covers the soft and hard approaches of HRM in hospitality industry. The findings of this paper reveals that issues in skills development and training of service quality have also been the most important concern in hospitality industry. Technological advancements have also changed the way HRM used to be practiced in past. Generation X and Y have also given new approaches to the field of HRM in the industry of hospitality. The future outlook, revealed by Davidson, McPhail and Barry (2010) suggested that outsourcing and casualization will become more dominant modes of employment. They also state that strategic human resource management has a tendency to be flexible enough to embed new ways and methods of adding value to the future prospects of hospitality area. In my mind, one of the areas can be the implications of Employee Assistance Program in order to cope with the issues related to Generation X and Y. New generations seem to stuck more in several issues that badly hamper the way they study, work and perform. For that reason, it must be a mandatory obligation for them to get guidance and assistance through EAPs. 8. Labor Skills in Hospitality Management Singh, Hu and Roehl (2007) states that the challenge to nurture and find employees in a contracting labor market. They further state they even in this era of technological revolution, it is impossible to serve customers high quality services without well-trained and skilled employees who are aware of working in a desired manner. The authors stated that it is our responsibility to call for abilities to judger, extrapolate and predict for our future generations. The contribution of the research of Singh, Hu and Roehl (2007) analyzes the main areas that need to be pondered upon by the HRM practitioners in order to make it the environment of workplace more motivated for the workers and employees. 9. Perception of Hotels and HRM Practices Nadiri and Tanova (2010) examined the relationship perceptions of hotel employees with organizational justice. They found that distributive justice was a stronger predictor than the procedural justice. Findings revealed that employee behavior; job satisfaction and turnover intentions are a result of fairness of personal outcomes. It was also found that organizational justice is a key to have a string effect on job satisfaction and turnover. If organizations arrange programs to assist employees it would be beneficial for both employer and employee to give their full potential in order to achieve organizational objectives. 10. Dimensions of High Performance Management Systems In the research analysis of Olsen and Murphy (2009), the research is conducted to develop a conceptual framework and dimensions on the set of work practice of “High Performance Management System” in the restaurant industry of United States according to the views of restaurant industry experts, managers, scholars, academicians. The researchers employed various research methodologies containing case study technique at the initial level, followed by interviews and in the end the Delphi technique to reinforce the results. In order to consider the relevant constituents and ingredients of HPMS, industry experts from casual restaurant sector of US were chosen. Consensus among the respondents was arrived by conducting the interview followed the Delphi Technique. The results present a set of thirteen dimensions of work practice that are necessary to develop a comprehensive High Performance Management System. Those dimensions which could not gain the unanimity in the eyes of industry experts were excluded from the research model. 11. Balanced Scorecard and Hospitality Industry McPhail, Herington and Guilding (2008) in their study analyze one of the dimensions of Balanced Scorecard Model in the hotel industry. Authors’ main focus is to examine the implications of the “learning and growth” dimension of the Balanced Scorecard Framework. In this research, Human Resource Managers from fourteen hotels were interviewed to find out the implications of the dimensions of “learning and growth”. Evidences show that very little clues express the presence of varied dimensions of “learning and growth” except the employee satisfaction dimension. When further explanation of Balanced Scorecard model was provided to the respondents, all Human resource managers held the similar instance on the term “learning and growth”. These Human resource managers believe that this term is not capable of appropriately covering Human Resource measures that these managers seek to deploy. Moreover, “employee satisfaction” was being used in the hotel industry as the sole dimension to reflect the “learning and growth” leaving behind the other separate dimensions of “learning and growth” in the Balanced Scorecard Model. The research concludes significant diversions in the hotel industry between the theory of Balanced Scorecard and the Human Resource related measures and practices. 12. Generational Differences & Hospitality Management In the hospitality industry, the study of Chen and Choi (2008) acts as the milestone as the researchers put more light on the generational differences in relation to work values. The research of Chen and Choi (2008) encompasses structure of work values in the hospitality management context along with the three perceived generational differences of managers and other supervisors. The authors conducted a survey of 398 respondents including both managers and supervisors in the hospitality and tourism firms operating in United States. The results exhibited fifteen work values that have been recognized in a scalar order. These fifteen work values are then placed in the four dimensional structure consisting of “professional growth, comfort and security, personal growth and work environment”. 13. Causes of Job Stress The study of Chiang Birtch Kwan (2010) encompasses three interrelated dimension present at workplace consisting of job stressors, the job stress itself and coping the resources. 255 respondents from food services in the catering and hotel sectors were addressed. The evidences displayed job stress in mainly influenced by the impacts of “job demands, job controls and work-life balance dimensions” as highlighted by scalar regression analysis. The findings further emphasized that higher level of stress is a resultant of high demands of job with less control over job in line with the practices of work-life balance available to employees. Conclusion Indirectly or directly, every research congregates at a point that the behavior of employee is unpredictable and it is necessary to diagnose the negative behavior as it affects both personal and professional life of employees. It is also not considered ethical to leaving employees in a way they prefer to behave and act at workplace. Harmonious and synergized way of working enhances the performance to a great extent. Therefore, all the procedures of EAPs must be implemented by the employer to mentally and physically nurture and rejuvenate the employees as it will result in sharper and better performance of the overall organization. Bibliography Chen, Po-Ju. and Choi, Youngsoo.(2008). Generational differences in work values: a study of hospitality management. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20(6), 595-615. Chiang, Flora F.T, Birtch Thomas A. and Kwan, Ho Kwong. (2010). The moderating roles of job control and work-life balance practices on employee stress in the hotel and catering industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29 (1), 25-32. Davidson, Michael C. G. and Wang, Ying. (2011). Sustainable Labor Practices? Hotel Human Resource Managers Views on Turnover and Skill Shortages. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 10(3), 235-253. Davidson, Michael C.G., McPhail, Ruth and Barry, Shane. (2011).Hospitality HRM: past, present and the future. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 23(4), 498-516. McCann, Bernard, Azzone, Vanessa, Merrick, Elizabeth L., Hiatt, Deirdre, Hodgkin, Dominic & Horgan, Constance M. (2010). Employer Choices in Employee Assistance Program Design and Worksite Services. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 25(2), 89-106. McPhail, Ruth. Herington, Carmel and Guilding, Christopher. (2008). Human resource managers’ perceptions of the applications and merit of the balanced scorecard in hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 27(4), 623-631. Nadiri, Halil and Tanova, Cem. (2010). An investigation of the role of justice in turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior in hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(1), 33-41. Namasivayam, Karthik, Miao, Li and Zhao, Xinyuan. (2007). An investigation of the relationships between compensation practices and firm performance in the US hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26(3), 574-587. Olsen, Michael and Murphy, Kevin. (2009). Dimensions of a high performance management system: An exploratory study of the US casual restaurant segment. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 21(7), 836-853. Poulston, Jill. (2008). Hospitality workplace problems and poor training: a close relationship. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20 (4), 412-427. Top of Form Singh, Neha, Hu, Clark and Roehl, Wesley S. (2007). Text mining a decade of progress in hospitality human resource management research: Identifying emerging thematic development. Hospitality Management, 26, 131–147. Soltani, E. and Wilkinson, A. (2010). What is happening to flexible workers in the supply chain partnerships between hotel housekeeping departments and their partner employment agencies? International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(10), 108-119. Taylor, Marcia and Finley, Dori. (2009). Strategic Human Resource Management in U.S Luxury Resorts-A Case Study. Journal of Human Resource in Hospitality & Tourism, 8 (1), 82 95. The Alliance of Sector Council. (2011). 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