Human Resources Management in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry - Case Study Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Human Resources Management in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Human Resources Management in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry Problems with HR planning at the Sutherland Hotel Group The problem with the HR planning at the Sutherland Hotel group is that the HR uses the same plan in the recruitment even though the times, requirements and needs keep on changing. Even after the increased competition that led to redundancy of some the recruited management trainees. The plan does not identify the needs of the company at a particular time within the changing times and this is likely to result into the company hiring the employees it does not need. The planning also does not recognize the company’s capacity or the employees it can sustain. Consequences of the current approach to HR planning at the Sutherland Hotel Group The Sutherland Hotel Group is likely to end up hiring do many employees who are not required and hence it will be paying a lot of employees yet these employees are not entirely carrying out the tasks they were hired to perform since they are too many. This is likely to lead the organization into losing a lot of finances while paying the employees who are at times passive or not entirely contributing sufficiently to the organization’s growth. Again, the recruitment process is usually very expensive and hence the organization is likely to lose a lot finances on hiring the management trainees and the rendering them redundant. The HR department has spent a lot of funds through the recruiting process as well as during the training session only to fire them before they have made no contribution to the productivity of the company. In this case, the company incurs a lot of loses (Dessler 2007). The current approach will also result into the company laying off a lot of employees and this needs a lot of man hours of work for the HR to reschedule work schedules and also making the new manning levels. This will result into a lot of time wastage and effort as well. Finally, the current approach is likely to edge the Group out of business since the competing organizations that are utilizing a more advanced recruitment plan will register more business productivity and thus more profits. The continual losses that are likely to result from this plan have even the probability of driving the Group into receivership since the business returns would mostly be used in paying the excess workers yet the workers’ input is less than their output. Forecasting the demand for staff within the Hotel Group The HR department should first estimate if the Hotel Group is in need of any employees before there is recruitment within the group. As a result, the group can adopt the various methods that are available in order to forecast if there is need of having employees within the Group. These analysis should be done before the group is about to go for any recruitment whatsoever. The methods will assist the Group in establishing if the organization needs the employees or not. These methods that the group can make use of before any recruitment is done include; Tendency analyzing method Since this Group is stable this method can be appropriate because it is orientational and bases the time factor and general propensity. Here, the Group can be examining the demand that was there in the previous years and also the impact of the external factors can be analyzed in order to predict regarding any demand of the employees in the future. This method will assume that the future continues from the past and this is why the past can be used to foretell if there will be any demand. For instance, after some of the management trainees were layed off, this can be used to determine the employee demand in the Group (McInnes 2000). Coefficient analyzing method: The group can use this method to foretell the demand of the employees though making use of two variables that include; business production scale which is the quantity of goods, service or turn-over and the standard productivity of an employee. The demand for employee = Production scale / average productivity. Correlation analyzing method: In this method, before doing any recruitment, the Group should forecast the demand of the employees through the identification of the relationship between the following factors: the employee demand which is the dependable factor, business production, rate of employee transferring, the modernization level of machine and equipment or productivity which are all independent factors. This method will assist the Group in setting up the economic models and joins them with the program existing on computer. With this, the group will be able to automatically estimate any need of some employees. This method is likely to offer the Group with precise results and thus the Group will recruit the precise number of the employees that the organization needs. Method using expert’s estimation If the Group makes of this method, the managers at the Hotel Group will assumed to be professionals. To confirm if the organization needs more employees, the HR manager can develop questionnaires and then give them to the professionals to research their views regarding forecasting employee demand. The questionnaires can be gathered and then new ones are progressively made and sent. The research can be repeated until the compliance of information is gotten. When finally complying information is gotten, the Hotel Group can make use of this information to recruit depending with the required number. The objective of this method is to collect diverse opinions from experts and divisional managers (McInnes 2000). Articles on Managing diversity, EEO and AA Managing diversity is mainly not only about creating equal employment opportunity (EEO), results and the legal compliance. Diversity management can be an efficient strategy in displacing the legal limitations of EEO. The diversity management technique when compared to EEO provides disparate responsibilities to an organization. Therefore, it is the duty of an organization to go further than incorporation and compliance with regulation through developing cultures that are conductive to meeting the requirements of organization members at all levels (McInnes 2000). The article suggests that managing diversity is more realistic when compared to EEO because it complements the organization’s ambitions through improving aspects like market place understanding, creativity as well as team work. These are the main features that drive productivity and hence the key objective which is the profit with the organization. Consequently, managing diversity is built as a by-product of the vital role of the manager to build a successful business. However, the articles also suggests that by perceiving the employees as individuals, which is a crucial aspect of diversity management, employee issues turns out to be personal problems that are tackled by the management but not a legislative representative body for just treatment of various groups. Such a system is eventually inefficient since the manager perpetuates a questionable condition. Diversity management applies responsibility to the managers of the organization who are supposed to yearn for a successful, productive business. Nevertheless, this system has been criticized of being founded on “voluntarism” since the main focus shifts from compliance with EEO as well as other human rights legislation to a rising recognition promoting a culture dedicated to values like diversity and empowerment is a fundamental aspect to the success of an organization. This is because it accelerates a decline in the legislative responsibilities of a firm. For instance, there have cases of some states allowing organizations to fire employees if they are gay. This offers an illustration of Seesaw Effect, where a rise in payment of managerial discretion has resulted to a decline in legislative responsibility to preserve diversity within the workforce. Workforce diversity is about policies and practices that seek to incorporate people in a workforce who are considered in a way, dissimilar from those in the established constituency. Some of factors that motivate organizations to diversify workforces include workforce diversity being a social responsibility since most of the beneficiaries of excellent diversity practices come from people who are disadvantaged. This implies that workforce diversity as a logical corporate responsibility. Workforce diversity gives people a chance to earn a living and fulfill their dreams (Stefan & Liz 2006). One article suggests that managing diversity is a natural extension of EEO, while another highlights the rift between such rifts. This article argues that EEO statistics and profiles can be used to communicate the significance of diversity. The article further suggests that people view diversity management as legislative and not a business matter. On the contrary another article argues the EEO issue has been changed to a human resource issue and that the connection between the two is not complementary but inverse and therefore the “Seesaw Effect”. There are hindrances to managing diversity that managers like working with people similar to them since there is ease in communication in addition to a sense of comfort and therefore there is subjective freedom in diversity management. Diversity management is vital for the enclosure and identification of diverse social, socio-economic and gender groups and specifically on the basis of sexual orientation. Managerial is a bimodal aspect since it integrates the power to and the power not to implement ethical management and improvement of diversity in the workplace.    Inequalities as well as discrimination are still present in today’s business world and HR has focused chiefly on compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) together with Affirmative Action (AA) legislation. Nowadays, less attention is being given to valuing, developing and utilization of diversity (Stefan & Liz 2006). In one article, there are two mechanisms that define workforce diversity whereby one adopts a narrow perception of managing diversity defining workforce diversity as just a term that is connected to Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action. The second definition suggests that workforce diversity is a wider concept that incorporates all the ways that individuals can vary. The wide definition considers all the ways that the members of work teams vary and this includes race, gender, age ethnicity as well as other demographic classifications like religion, education, sexual orientation and many others. It also includes variations in values, capacities, organizational purpose, tenure and individuality. On the other hand, the narrow definition will manage diversity only as variations based on the long-established AA or EEO classifications of race, color, religion, sex and nationality. Only the conventional matters of discrimination and omission of members of these groups within organizations would be considered (Rob 2005).  Bibliography Dessler, G., 2007, HRM: Theory, Skills, Application, 3rd edn, Pearson Education, Australia. McInnes, R., 2000, Employee’s demand, McInnes Publishers, Austria. Stefan, G., & Liz, D., 2006, Diversity management in practice, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol 11/6. Rob, M., 2005, Managing Diversity and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Changing the Way You Do Business, Vol 3/6. Read More