The Hotel Human Resource Department - Research Paper Example

?Running head: The Hotel Human Resource Department   The Hotel Human Resource Department Insert Insert Insert 6 March 2012 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………3 Labor Costs and Industry Productivity………………………………………...3 Human Resource Management………………………………………………...6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….12 References……………………………………………………………………..13 The Hotel Human Resource Department Introduction The human resource department is among the most important functional units of an organization and more importantly, in labor-intensive service industries such as the hotel industry. Successful hotels with good customer care services and reasonable profitability are basically dependent on how well the human resource department manages its labor force. The hotel industry, being a labor-intensive industry, incurs huge labor costs that significantly affect profitability of the organization. Labor costs therefore need to be matched with production and individual employee output by maintaining efficiency among employees and the value they add to the organizations. The department responsible for managing the human resource therefore needs to ensure that it streamlines labor costs and output. Human resources managers have the mandate of controlling service provision to customers, as well as the whole feeling of an entire hotel through its labor force. Labor Costs and Industry Productivity Labor costs in the hotel industry have been significantly high, considering the fluctuations in customer needs. The human resource functions seek to develop effective and appropriate measures to control labor costs through gathering the necessary information. Human resource decision-making therefore relies on the reporting and accumulation of relevant information about labor costs, which are necessary for productivity. However, assessment of labor costs and productivity need to include both qualitative and quantitative information. With regards to quantitative terms such as customer to labor ratios, the human resource managers may have an insight of lower payroll overheads in case the number of customers served per unit labor is increasing. Higher customer per labor ratio may be an indication that more labor is essential if service provision efficiencies are to be provided. Quantitative aspects are critical in assisting human resource managers to strike a balance and even an improvement between labor costs incurred and output. However, qualitative measures are also equally important and need to place much emphasis, since this may negate the quantitative benefits. Quantitative insights of labor costs and their output can be generally arrived at by using common sense, observing employee customer relations, and asking questions to customers. Poor quality services from the labor force are equally harmful to an organization’s profitability, where the organization loses clients to its competitors due to customers’ dissatisfaction from poor quality services. It is important to note that customer dissatisfaction may not only arise from employee job dissatisfaction and turnover, but also from more complex points of view that includes needs, fears, and feelings of employees. Hotels often place much emphasis on retention of employees to solve quantitative problems. The needs of employees need to be given much appreciation and respect, if customer satisfaction is to be achieved, rather than just retaining employees who are unable to keep up with qualitative considerations. Managerial staff should seek to establish effective and efficient communication to subordinates through the human resource department, which best understands the complexities involved between employees and their work performance. Employees should be well conversant with organization’s corporate goals, as well as what is required of them to contribute to achievement of these goals. The hotel industry should particularly enhance its internal communication to inform employees on their services and relationships to customers, as well as how this directly affects productivity (Zulhamri & Antonette 19). The human resource department is thus responsible for ensuring both qualitative and quantitative aspects are put in place with respect to the labor force and profitability of the organization. The hotel sector, being highly labour-intensive industry, has naturally become more concerned to controlling the relationship between competitiveness and profitability of organizations and the labour costs they incur. The human resource applies labor flexibility opportunities to potentially reduce labor costs with regards to output needs, and consequently, overall costs of operation. Such strategies as increasing technology use in place of labor go a long way in reducing labor costs and thus increasing profitability of an institution. Hotel industries’ overall high costs have been tied to labor costs to such areas as recreation and personal service employees. Labor costs though seem to be having the highest percentage ratio to revenue output as per customer personal service costs and room management. Labor costs incurred basically range from direct wages, penalty rates, overtime, compensation premiums, training, and service leave to employee pay-roll costs. These costs constitute a huge percentage to the overall costs, and thus significantly impact on a company’s profitability (Eslami 902-905). However, emphasizing on modification of labor cost alone as an impetus for productivity, international competitiveness, and industry growth is insufficient. Quality service enhancement comes as a highly important aspect among others to be put into consideration, particularly in four and five star segments of the hotel industry. Human Resource Management Considering that more and more institutional participants in the hotel industry are increasingly becoming less productive, particularly during low guest and tourism seasons, a more critical management overall industry costs is paramount. However, overall costs cannot be exclusively determined as the only contribution to decreased productivity and profitability. Other aspects such as the domestic economy, tourist choices, industrial relations, and generally, customer supply and demand fluctuations can be linked to productivity. This presents a wide range of complexities that necessitate improvement of management styles and manipulation of industry operations to maintain profitability. Managerial functions should be able to recognize complexities involved, and forecast on the necessary actions to be taken, particular on overall institutional costs that would translate into profitability at the end of the year. Supply of services should particularly be matched with service demand among customers to enable reasonable labor costs incurrence. Poor management of such complexities has not only been the result of high and unnecessary labor costs, but also productivity and profitability shortcomings of the overall institutional performance. The human resource management department is best placed to understand complexities such as excess labor force, customer relations quality, and tourism service demand. The human resource should be able to inform the management of needs for variations and modification of labor and intellectual capital to fit the existing and foreseen supply and demand fluctuations. More so, employee customer relations need to be focused upon for qualitative considerations impact on profitability and productivity. Management of the intellectual capital comes up as the most important resources of an organization that directly influences productivity of an organization, given the direct costs that hotel companies incur in maintaining such capital. This refers to employees’ attitudes and competence towards work, and their interactions with clients and more so, their innovativeness. Moreover, human resources are a highly valuable asset with regards to competence and effectiveness based on the needs of the organization such as positive and friendly customer relations in the hotel industry. The human resource department in this case is tasked with the functions of maximizing utilization and efficiency of the labor force in achieving the goals of an organization in general (Huang 43). The hotel industry thrives on the kind and number of customers it serves, and is thus dependent on its employees’ achievement. A positive end customer relationship not only encourages repetitive customers, but also markets the hotel as a favorable tourist destination (Basirat, Hashemkhani, Rezaeiniya, & Aghdaje 170-178). Human resource management efficiencies depend on more complex approaches rather than simplistic approaches such as massive reduction of the labor force, technology overhaul, financial management, significant conditions, and skills flexibilities. It is evident that these simplistic approaches have been put in place from time to time, though productivity efficiencies and profitability remain major challenges in the hotel industry. This is mainly because the levels of demand for hotel industry services are highly volatile, perishable, and unpredictable, and thus calls for an increasingly professional management strategy that is focused on flexible specialization labor through training and rotation. However, such strategies may be rendered inefficient by the increasing rate of employees on short-term visa, gendered, and turnover complexities. Strategy improvement and modification should basically be focused on improving levels of productivity, reducing overall costs of labor, avoidance of costly human resource turnover and wastage among other significant aspects such as development of value added skills. Moreover, the human resource department needs to realize the impact and effect that racialized and gendered stereotypes has on the company’s productivity, in consideration to customer satisfaction where employees directly interact with customers. Customer satisfaction will depend on how well the human resource seeks to match its labor force with the needs of customers with regards to emotional connection and behavioral characteristics that are favorable to customer relation (Dyer, Mcdowell, and Batnitzky 637). However, the hotel industry human resource management is perhaps the least advanced department due to much emphasis that has been placed on customer satisfaction rather than employees’ satisfaction. Employee job satisfaction has been for a longtime been overlooked in the hotel industry over the importance of customers to the institutional productivity. Although the hotel industry recognizes the existence of human resource department, it has overlooked the professional point of that is necessary for effective management of human resource complexities. Professional human resource management focuses on aspects such as career planning, training and development of skills, labor turnover, and flexible salary considerations among other necessities such as effective systems of performance management. The hotel industry is a venture constrained by market fluctuations that result in productivity and growth inefficiencies, and thus, its success heavily depends on a robust human resource managerial activity. Professional practices need to be put in place to forecast, manage, and control market fluctuations that bring about accommodation oversupply and idle labor. Research studies in the hotel industry reveals significance of labor costs to overall operational costs and the importance of reducing these costs to enable organizations improve their profitability and enforcement of better strategies of managing the human resource. Research indicates that many hotels lacking in labor costs reduction and human resource management strategies are less profitable, less productive, and are labor intensive. Technology serves as the most highly effective labor cost reduction strategies, since most functions that could be carried out by a huge number of employees could be effectively and efficiently undertaken using less costly technologies. Integrated and comprehensive human resource management strategies significantly contributes to hotel industry viability through recruitment of the right staff, training existing employees, and appropriately monitoring rewards and remuneration in consistency with requirements of the industry. The human resource should be well conversant with the constraints of hotel industry development such as casualization culture, negative industry, and hotel occupation perceptions, reluctant and unprofessional human resource practices, and gender imbalance issues. More so, the human resource department should put in place an innovative and integrated strategy that would increase labor force efficiency and reduce labor costs to improve international competitiveness and productivity of the hotel industry. Effective management of the labor force is a critical aspect in the hotel industry, given the fact that it is labor intensive and dependent on personal relationships between it employees and customers. The human resource management thus has the mandate of ensuring it continuously improves efficiency of its labor force to enable maintenance of reasonable costs of production with regards to employee turnover and productivity. More so, the human resource department should ensure proper communication and cooperation with its labor, while placing emphasis on employee satisfaction, motivation, and work enthusiasm through incorporating aspects such staff participation in decision-making, training knowledge development, and improvement of professional skills (Dragicevic & Letunic 266). Human resources management is charged with responsibility of ensuring success in a number of critical areas such as hiring new employees. This is in consideration to the fact that, newly hired employees can massively alter the quality of service rendered to customers, and even alter the entire hotel atmosphere. The hospitality industry is labor intensive and therefore dependent on human resource efficiency for the organization’s productivity and profitability as a whole. The caliber of employees that hotels have directly reflects on the kind of services that would be offered to customers and more so, success and achievement of objectives of an organization (Nankervis & Debrah 507). This implies that it is critical for the human resource department to hire dedicated upbeat workers for vacant positions. It is therefore the responsibility of the human resources department to ensure individuals fitting to the needs of the hotel industry are hired. Employee retention is also an issue of concern in the hotel industry service, since many employees do not have the hotel industry as their dream career. Research also reveals that employees leave hotel industry employment due to outdated and poor human resource managerial practices that fail to address issues of low compensation, unfavorable work conditions, repetitive and unfulfilling work among others, such as poor supervision (Hinkin & Tracey 15). The human resource should therefore seek to identify the likelihood and desire of employees moving out of employment before recruiting them. The desire for employees to move out may also be prevented by providing desirable incentives and training programs alongside clear plans of progression and higher service levels advancement. Employee promotion and progression plans come out as critical issues in management of the human resources. Organizations that provide programs and plans for employees to progress and advance in their levels of employment and even provide training to them have been able to retain valuable employees. Such programs can easily be implemented by the human resource department with negligible expense, as compared to huge costs incurred employing new employees and replacing them due to failure to retain them. However, research has it that, human resources functions are often marginalized in the hotel industry, and at times placed under the functions of managers. Personnel managers often take human resource functions as those of lower priority considering their wide scope of responsibility as organization wide functions. This calls for enhancement of the human resource department as an important unit of an organization responsible for managing all that entails the labor force (Alistair L. Goldsmith 3). Conclusion The hotel industry needs to place more emphasis on human resources functions, considering a wide range of issues such as employee retention and hiring, which are critical for productivity and successful performance in hotels. The human resources is generally a critical area for addressing issues affecting labor force in a comprehensive manner. Employees’ performance can be enhanced particularly when their personal issues are addressed by the human resource department. Human resources departments can easily implement a broad range of strategies to boost employee morale at work. Activities such as games for employees, park entertainment, trips, and even babysitting services for the kid go a long way in motivating employees. According to Sommerville (52), awarding employees unusual benefits is an effective and inexpensive way of motivating employees to work. Motivated employees would consequently have better and vibrant relation with customers, and thus translating to profitability growth and productivity of the organization. Works Cited Basirat, Baygi, Hashemkhani, Zolfani, Rezaeiniya, Nahid, & Aghdaje, Hasan. “Using Fuzzy AHP to Develop Intellectual Capital Evaluation Model in Hotel Industry.” European Journal of Scientific Research, Vol.59 No.2 (2011), pp.170-178. Dragicevic, Marija, & Letunic, Stijepo. “The influence of international standard iso 9001 implementation on the human resource management in hotels.” Annals of DAAAM & Proceedings. 2011. Dyer, Sarah, McDowell, Linda, & Batnitzky, Adina. “The Impact of Migration on the Gendering of Service Work: The Case of a west London hotel gender, work and organization the impact of migration on the gendering of service work.” Gender, Work & Organization, Vol.17 No.6, 2010. Eslami, Nooshin. “Promoting Innovation in Enterprise through Human Resource Management Practices.” Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, Vol.5 No.9 (2011), pp.902-906. Goldsmith, Alistair. Human Resource Management for Hospitality Services. Thomson Learning, 1997. Hinkin, Timothy and Tracey, Bruce. The Costs of Turnover: Putting a price on the Learning Curve. Cornell Hotel, 2000. Huang, Yen-Hsin. “Assessment of Return on Human Resource Investments: Phillips, Stone and Phillips’s ROI Process Model Perspective.” European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.20 No.3, 2011. Nankervis, Alan & Debrah, Yaw. “Human Resource Management in Hotels.” Tourism Management, Vol. 16, No.7. Elsevier Science Ltd, 1995. Sommerville, Kerry. Hospitality Employee Management and Supervision: Concepts and Practical Applications. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Zulhamri, Abdullh & Antonette, Antony. “Perception of Employees on Internal Communication of a Leading Five Star Hotel in Malaysia.” Asian Social Science, Vol.8 No.2, 2012. Read More