Human Resources Management for Hospitality - Essay Example

Labour Market Issues in the Hospitality Industry Name: Student Number: Course Code: Word Count: Date of Submission: Introduction The industry of policy is necessarily the most important and viable industry given that it provides a greater scope of careers to trained and qualified personnel. Its continuous fast-pace growth can, then, be attributed to this factor. There a number of sectors recognizable in this industry and these include tourism, travel, hotel, catering and aviation. Deductively, the sectors hotel management and tourism have been chosen to for combined discussion in this paper, due to the fact that these sectors experience the most significant cultural and social interactions. Nevertheless, these sectors have a shortage of skilled labour and most of those in it are not really well trained. This essay therefore, explains the nature of labour market issues in the industry of hospitality. The paper discusses the current labour market trends in this industry with proper definition of labour and the factors that affect its quality supply to the sectors. In countries like the United States of America, labour shortages in the hospitality industry for these sectors have evident effects. Proof to this is seen in the search for personnel, by recruiters and employers (Tanke 2001). In any respect, the relationship between an employer and their employees become important to give a perspective on the major labour market issues (Lucas 2004). Based on recruitment, induction, disciplining or rewarding, working relationships go beyond that between managers and employees to between the employees themselves and with the society as well. The relationship can, therefore, be either personal or collective. Most industrial relationships, which are actually categorized in the collective relationship group, are mostly concerned with economic issues. Boella (2000) writes that this is resultant of the changing nature of trade union roles and powers. In this subject industry of hospitality, the degree of organization of employees in their respective unions varies. As unions and organizations only exhibit employment relationships, variance in the labour market is influenced by a number of factors such as cultural diversification in the global workplace. Cultural Diversification in the Industrial Hospitality Global Workplace Various researches, inclusive of that by Gong (2008), indicate that inclusive of other countries, Cultural diversity has become a major issue that influences the nature of labour market in the hospitality industry of the United States. By discussing the opportunities, benefits and challenges of cultural diversity, Gong (2008) comes up with a possible training module for human resource managers. This is because in America, the entry of many in to the industry is more challenging for the mangers than any other personnel or administrators. The hotel and tourism sectors of the hospitality industry are subjects of global attention since the business involved are international in nature. Now, diversity in culture being a subject of global concern also, only grows concern to its part of labour migration. To understand the extent to which culture influences labour market in the hospitality industry, it is vital to establish the meanings of cultural diversification itself. The understanding of culture is relative to an individual’s origin, point of view and is mostly biased to one’s particular cultural background. This makes it almost impossible to have a universally accepted definition of culture. Notwithstanding this, all perspectives agree that in the global sense, it is all about attributing an appreciable value to the differences between cultures of people and the ways in which these differences influence, affect or contribute to a more creative and more productive working environment, this is common to all industries. Race, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability and religions are the identifiable parts of culture but race remains the most dominant. All in all, appreciation and management with cultural diversity begins by accepting the existence of the different cultures. Even with the many policies and guidelines of management that are designed to make the managerial task easier, it is not really that easy when with employees from different cultural backgrounds. Different organizations have adopted various innovative ways to manage diversity and communication stands out as a more effective tool for this. This is attributed to the results of creating awareness among associates about diverse values cultivating and facilitating the recognition, support and encouragement of success of any employee and linking this diversity to every business process strategy or plan (Humphrey, Costigan, Pickering, Stratford & Barnes 2003). This strategies and plans must recognize that proper management of a culturally diverse workforce has the potential of being beneficial to the hospitality industry, in the hotel and tourism sectors more importantly. Consequently, this discussion takes a suggestive orientation that it is necessary to realize the power of cultural diversity. It must be considered as a tool for betterment of organizational progress rather than a management problem. If effectively managed, it can be a key to gain competitive advantage and success as well as attract more personnel to this industry for investment and employment. Culture is an issue of the labour market, especially internationally, and therefore, the nature of work in the hotel and tourism sectors of the hospitality industry requires planning for diversity with an analysis criteria focused on creating diversity awareness (Humphrey, Costigan, Pickering, Stratford & Barnes 2003). To this respect, many organizations in this industry are taking note of and appreciating the dynamics of diversity change. The main impediment to this worth noting is the problem of acquiring information on the cultural diversity and change, with which decision making process are enhanced and facilitated. Taking this into consideration, one realizes that identification of the full scope and range of the diversity of challenges facing those operating in the sector is critical. This industry offers services to customers internationally; it is therefore necessary that they recognize and respect the different cultural composition of the different areas that their services reach. Additionally, such industries employ a personnel composed of professionals from international cultural backgrounds, as a strategy to enrich their database with the cultural information. It also makes it easier to avail their services to areas whose culture is understood by, at least, some of their employers. Labour Costs and Capital Issues Apart from labour shortages and multicultural complications and diversification is the cost of labour as far as the industry of hospitality is concerned. As Suddaby (2006) writes, the cost of labour in any business is an unavoidable encounter and shareholders of the industry of hospitality, sector of hotels experience it as actually the biggest expense in all categories of hotels. Most of the operations that are, therefore, undertaken by industry developer are geared towards avoiding unnecessary costs. While managing labour expenses is important, hospitality managers are also appreciate that human labour forms an integral part of the experience. Subsequently, the inevitable interaction between hospitality guests and employees has a dramatic impact on the customer experience and the success of the business operation. A fine balance must be drawn between cost controls and guest satisfaction. Because of this dilemma, most American managers are increasingly getting continuous challenges when trying to find ways of reducing costs. This cost reduction is to be achieved without compromising the quality standards necessary to ensure consistent satisfaction of guest expectations. This is all about cost containment which is the basic guiding principle in that is in tandem with the desire to spend less in providing services as well as make more returns. This brings to mind the availability of capital, in the United States of America, as a subset factor that influences employment or labour market for the hospitality industry. In the initial stages, availability of capital directly determines the number of manpower that an organization is capable of employing at the same time. Capital enables the development of new hotels and an increasing institutional investment into the hotel sector triggers expectations of revenue and profitability growth are which comes around to stimulate capital availability for other new developments (Suddaby 2006). The American case is characterised by many people from various cultural backgrounds but some of whom lack the qualification. The advantage they have is that most of them can speak English commonly. Social and Ethnic Issues Tourism stands the probability of being the most important or active sector of the hospitality industry due to its size and labour-intensive nature. The social environment and social factors affecting the labour market in the hospitality industry of America is shaped by the cultures that companies create and the way that these companies interact with the surrounding community. Good and bad or positive and negative social factors have intensive effects the ability of a company to recruit, employ and retain quality employees or associates (Nord 2007). Identifying these social factors is important to enhance acquisition, learning and implementation of the good and positive factors. Since the companies in hotel and tourism sectors of the hospitality industry are in direct contact with the societies in which they serve, it is important that the cultures within the companies in play to be conducive for employee retention to prevent large turnover numbers. Any analyses performed commonly find that social and economic issues will always form part of the factors that greatly affect the tourism industry. As a way of making social aspects outweigh ethnic discriminations, the company managers need to be accountable for the retention of good employees and for the development of employees who are having production issues. Accountability creates an atmosphere of cooperation within the global workplace (Nord 2007). In most cases, control of the social factors is out of reach for the company managers and so this reminds the discussion of strategies and planning which the organisation can employ to turn potential social, or in extension ethnic, threats into opportunity. Social issues are always compounded with, the previously mentioned, cultural issues to come up with socio-cultural aspects. Some of the socio-cultural aspects include; growth rate of customer population, age distribution of the employee population, languages, religious backgrounds, education level and values alongside behaviours. In the United States, there different language speakers only articulate the English language differently. Economic Influences Every single industry is affected the effects that economic issues have on the availability and supply of labour. The United States of America is considered to be having the strongest economy in the world, though other competitive economies like china and some European countries do not agree with it. The economic growth of America and a stronger economy is extremely beneficial for tourism and consequently, for the hospitality industry. On the other hand, a slow or negative economic growth will obviously have a very negative impact on the industry. Tourism in not only important to the country of production, but forms an integral part of the global economy. Therefore, a negative economic activity implies instability, not only for the American people but also had global consequences. In America, workers or employees are easily laid off when the economy is negating. This defies job security and when the economy picks up, the companies prepare to recruit employees again, most people shall have gotten other alternatives and prefer not to go back (Veleva & Ellenbecker 2000). Conclusion The hospitality industry is an industry of global interest because of nature of the business activities involved in it. The tourism sector is subject to most discussions due to its large size and a sector and the labour-intensive activities involved. They are subject to discussion because they are probably the most employing sector yet experiencing a shortage of labour, not only in America but all over. A more important reason is that the industry has direct contact with the human life and this is the reason that the discussion chose to detail it from employment relationship, cultural, social, economic, capital and labour cost perspectives. In consideration of the analyses in the referenced materials, this paper finds that capital, cost of labour and employment relationships form the technical logistics. However, cultural diversification, social issues and economic aspect are integral factors of the labour market in the hospitality industry, with culture being the most conspicuous. Proper management guidelines and strategies are required to maximize on potential economic benefits of tourism. The factors affecting the labour market for this industry should be introduce in colleges for students specializing in this sector to provide room for development of innovative ways of dealing with the possible menace. References Boella, M. J. 2000. Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry. 7th ed. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes. Gong, Y. 2008. Managing Cultural Diversity in Hospitality Industry. Las Vegas: University of Nevada. Humphrey, A. Costigan, P. Pickering, K. Stratford, N. & Barnes, M. 2003. Factors Affecting the Labour Market Participation of Older Workers. Huddersfield: Department for Work and Pensions. Lucas, R. 2004. Employment Relations in the Hospitality and Tourism Industries: Routledge Studies in Employment Relations Series. London: Taylor & Francis. Nord, T. 2006. Corporate Social Responsibility in the Hotel Industry. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Suddaby, C. 2006. The Top Ten Issues for 2007, Fort Quarter. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 24 February 2013]. Tanke, M. L. 2001. Human Resources Management for Hospitality. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Veleva, V. & Ellenbecker, M. 2000. A Proposal for Measuring Business Sustainability. Greener Management International 31. Read More