Far East Hospitality Holdings - Case Study Example

Tourism Report al Affiliation Tourism Introduction The hospitality industry is the fastest growing industry that is contributing nearly10%of the world’s gross domestic product. The hospitality organizations expansion to the global market has brought a challenge of managing an increasingly multicultural workforce. The elements of different cultures, hospitality and people have been explored on in this paper widely. People always talk about workforce diversification in terms of things like age gender and religion to. They, however, talk little about cultural diversity issues mostly those that come from labor migration. The fact that more minority groups are entering the hospitality industry, management of cultural diversity on the either side is becoming a challenge in this industry. The problem is mostly felt by the Human Resource managers as they are the ones who manage the workforce sector. Far East Hospitality Holdings is a member of Far East Organization that is a hospitality real estate development and management and healthcare real estate space too. This is the organization discussed in this paper in terms of its background, how it has embraced diversity and how it has enacted and implemented it.Being a large organization in Singapore, the team has faced the challenge of managing diversity in its workforce. Globalization and immigrant of labor into the workforce of hospitality has continued to increase cultural diversity. This is because these people have different cultural backgrounds, and hence they have to be efficiently managed. Background of the Organization Far East Organization Ltd is the largest private property developer I Singapore and it was established in 1960.It contributes to over 700developments in the commercial, developments and residential sectors including 1 in 6 private homes in Singapore. Far East Hospitality is a regional hospitality owner with a diverse of nine complementary brands of hotels, Apartment hotels, and well-serviced residence areas. Its Apartment hotels include; Medina serviced apartments, The Marque hotels, Oasis, Quincy and Travelodge hotels. These are just some of the few apartment hotels brands of Far East Hospitality. In Singapore, Far East Hospitality Management operates the city-states most recognized hospitality portfolio. It was established in the mid-2000s by the Far East organization that I had mentioned before set up in 1960.It comprises of 18 hotels and residences that are well serviced. It is a dedicated business division that focuses on the management and development of the organization fast expanding hospitality portfolio. Far East Hospitality Holdings has Far East Organisation backed a strong presence in Singapore.This is in terms of development and design of cutting real edge estate to the management of assets of operational assets. Far East Hospitality Management is well committed to come constantly up with different Singapore-inspired hospitality experiences. It does this through its properties in well-chosen localities. Elements of Culture and Diversity: Literature Review Culture is defined as a human activity and a significant structure design that emphasizes the value of the actions. It is not tangible, but it is visible through items such as art clothing and architecture. It is ultimately the full range of studied human behavior patterns. Its primary purpose is to explain how to live, ink talk and do things among people. Persons with diverse backgrounds work more united within the organization, and there are more amounts of new perspectives of execution of events (Diller, 2014). Different backgrounds have created many conflicts in Far East Hospitality though this is an advantage in the corporate world. One way of getting to learn more about culture involves the processes of cross-cultural elements and globalization too. Globalization increases uniformity of individual lifestyles within an organization. It comprises views that are not similar and greater opportunities for the employees and the company at large too. This hence shows that globalization of people brings them into one single society (Ng, Lyons & Schweitzer, 2012). Cultural diversity is a critical element in all organizations because unless an organization is racist or ethnic, it is bound to have people from different races and ethnic groups. The most important aspect is for the organization to ensure that it manages the diversity it has. The hospitality industry and organizations in it cannot escape diversity because it is at the core of such a business because of the nature of customers that it attracts. Failure to manage the diversity is detrimental to an organization in the hospitality sector (Saee, 2006). The advancement of technology and communication systems around the world has led to the development of hospitality in this organization. Modern tourism and hospitality is undergoing an increase in internalization and also going global. This is not different in Far East Hospitality as it is also embracing a change and acquiring a workforce of people with different backgrounds. With the diverse workforce in Far East Hospitality Holdings, cultural diversity involves the differences in gender, color and ages of employees too. A longer period of knowing an employee can lead to proper understanding of his culture. The attributes that are not easily identified include values, principles and traditions (Diller, 2014). In Far East Hospitality, this has been ensured in order to correctly understand all types of personalities of employees. Another level of diversity among people ion this organization is associated with job position, status at work or seniority of workers (Komninos, 2014). Different cultural factors at degree in this organization coexist interact well with one another and finally come up with a diverse work environment. The influence of various cultural factors at different levels, however, does not display equality and varies. Because not all cultural diversities are noticeable, people also differ in terms of hidden characteristics. For instance, their will are persons with different thoughts, educational backgrounds and social backgrounds too in this organization. Other invisible attributes among people include marital status, sexual orientation, life experiences and generation. All these differences having being experienced in Far East have been efficiently managed so as to bring a good outcome of work. These invisible attributes, however, contribute significantly to a mix of perspectives and ideas in the workplace. Cultural diversity can also be related to multiculturalism among people. This refers to multiculturalism that can be defined as communities containing many different cultures (Komninos, 2014). It involves many different cultures thus can be called cultural diversity. Cultural diversity has been crucial to this organization. It has prevented the risk of the company becoming a monoculture and seeing things from a very limited perspective. This is because it does not have laws that limit to pertain the employing women, gay men the disabled, and ethnics groups that are considered minor. In addition, it has been an organization that is not limited to honoring the differences that people have (Ng, Lyons & Schweitzer, 2012). The success of this organization has greatly been dependent on the ability to effectively manage cultural diversity among people ion its workplace. The management has ensured there is effective communication between different cultures. As a result of this effective management, this organization has been successful over the years. This organization, however, has faces challenges because of having a workforce that has different cultures as the people have a different background (Ng, Lyons & Schweitzer, 2012). The first challenge is a communication barrier. Miscommunication occurs as there are barriers to understanding each other. Other factors that bring about miscommunication include work attitudes and behaviors of people. This has always led to confusion among the employees, lack of morale in work and has discouraged teamwork too. The second challenge has been commitment. Employees always feel that they should be loyal to their cultural background rather than the organization. This is because the organization has many diverse groups. Decision-making in the organization has also been compromised by having people with different cultures. This is as a result of employees having different beliefs, rituals, and values (Komninos, 2014). Implementation of Diversity in Far East Hospitality Holdings Ltd The organization has implemented diversity as it has benefits though there are big challenges too as well. First; the organization has changed and reassessed its cultural diversity approach. It has also made an active cultural diversity management program as part of its corporate strategy. The strategy has been convenient to ensure this implementation. Cultural diversity requires management professionalism (Wood & Brotherton, 2008). Managerial practices and skills have been changed in the organization to widen management styles due to the diversity among individuals. The mixture of culturally diverse employees has been managed actively by coordinating, directing and supervising in the firm. The firms policies and values are the most demanding tasks of the cultural diversity changes. They involve the relevant policies and ethics of the whole organization. They include what image the organization wants to display and what kind of workforce it wants in the future. Having this knowledge the organization has ensured that hiring and recruitment of the workforce have been equally implemented. Corporate strategizing has helped the organization deploy and improve cultural diversity too. Changes that have taken place in the body are brought to effect by moving proactively from one stage to another (Wood & Brotherton, 2008). The management and executive teams of the organization have committed themselves fully to cultural diversity. This has been useful in implementing as they have led by example and has significantly managed diversity in the firm. An assessment of the company initially also assisted its current state back then. This helped in understanding its diversity and increased the firm’s self-awareness. The management team was able to identify the challenges and benefits of diversity. It also helped the team to educate the workforce the importance of diversity, and it also set goals and objectives regarding diversity. This hence assisted the firm substantially to implement diversity in wider ranges (Komninos, 2014). Recommendations to Implement Diversity A language bank would be a useful tool to implement in the organization. It is a program where employees avail themselves to interpret different languages for other employees to enhance the understanding of each other in the organization. This would mostly help those employees that require translators.This would facilitate communication and understanding among employees that speak different languages. Another recommendation would be the integration of people with varying departments for a collaborative project. This project would include people that do not work with each other usually. This would be a creative way of solving problems. Another tool for implementing cultural diversity would be the encouragement of diverse backgrounds during hiring. There should be no discrimination in hiring of the workforce and recruiting too. Cultural diversity training for the employees of the firm would also be crucial and would be best for the system to run. Executives of the company should substantially support cultural diversity in order to be role models for the other employees in implementing diversity. This would be an excellent tool to manage cultural diversity. By doing this, they should also do it by providing equal services to all employees. This is irrespective of background age or race. Another recommendation would be availing an intermediary where there are conflicting parties. Parties would conflict for instance when praying as they are in different religions. The intermediary would hence find a solution on how to solve the problem and censure the conflicting parties would work together in peace again. The employees would be taught about how to overcome cultural barriers. They needed to be overcome in order to reach a solution. All these recommendations would manage diversity and ensure the employees work in a conducive environment. This would in turn lead to success of the organizations operations. The challenges of cultural diversity would be met with ease. They would also be less than the benefits. The organization would thus be able to provide essential services to its customers in the long run. References Diller, J. (2014). Cultural Diversity: A Primer for the Human Services. New York: Routledge. Komninos, N. (2014). The age of intelligent cities smart environments and innovation-for-all strategies. New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Wood, R. & Brotherton, B. (2008). The SAGE handbook of hospitality management. London: SAGE Publications. Ng, E. S. W., Lyons, S. T., & Schweitzer, L. (2012). Managing the new workforce: International perspectives on the millennial generation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Saee, J. (2006). Managerial competence within the hospitality and tourism service industries: Global cultural contextual analysis. London: Routledge Read More