Challenges in Attracting and Retaining Workforce in Hospitality Sector

This essay discusses the key challenges in attracting and retaining workforce in the hospitality sector. It highlights the importance of the sector, perception of potential employees, hierarchical structure, social media, skill set, motivation, employer branding, unrealistic expectations, work environment, and employee empowerment.

Running Head: Managing Human Resources
Hospitality Sector
Managing Human Resources
Key Challenges in attracting and retaining workforce.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 1
Essay
Hospitality sector is a wide category of fields which falls under the purview of
the service industry and includes accommodation, F&B, Catering, Events & Meeting, Spa
& Wellness, Casino, Travel and tourism and many more. The primary foundation of
Hospitality industry is built upon excellent customer service. Due to high intangibility in
the service sector, customer service is one of the strongest contributing factors in the
profits and success of the hospitality sector. It is due to such high dependency and
responsibility on the employees, it becomes challenging to attract and retain the
employees in the hospitality sector. However, employees working in the hospitality
sector have the opportunity to move up the ladder in a short span of time and move
swiftly towards the management roles. Drawing on the introduction to the hospitality
sector, the primary purpose of essay here is to identify the key challenges in attracting
and retaining workforce in the hospitality sector.
This section of Essay will lay the base on the importance of the hospitality sector
for the economy, implying strong career growth opportunities in number of department
such as front desk, hotels, cabin crew, and mainstream roles such as sales, marketing
and finance. Hospitality is the fastest growing global industry which adds new job every
2.3 seconds. The industry is growing at 4.2% per year, it is much higher than the overall
growth rate of the global economy. It employees over 300 million people worldwide and
account for over 12% of the global jobs. The future of the hospitality sector is extremely
promising which reflects plethora of opportunities for the potential employees, thus
embarking the importance of the sector (Willie et. al., 2017).
Hospitality sector is under a lot of pressure when it comes to attracting,
developing and retaining the employees, the sector has seen huge turnover in the past
which significantly impacts the brand value of the company and the entire sector in
general. Employees are the heart and soul of the hospitality sector, this it becomes
extremely important to identify the challenges in attracting them and then working
towards the strategy to retain them by creating an ecosystem of win-win for both the
employee and the employer (Murray et. al., 2017).

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 2
One of the biggest challenges while attracting talent for the hospitality sector is
the perception of the potential employees and their outlook towards the industry. A
large majority of population feels, that jobs in hospitality sector are not secure and
consistently under the purview of changing economic conditions. The sector is highly
characterized as the provider of low stability jobs which refrains the employees from
joining the sector. Moreover, the sector is also characterized as the provider of lowest
wage, primarily working in the hotels and restaurant. In one of the recent studies it was
pointed that hospitality sector is the economic activity with the highest proportion of
low wage earners (Bradley et. al., 2017)
This perception of the potential employees towards the hospitality sector has to
be changed, otherwise the sector will show further turnover and in no time the demand
for the employees will reach an all-time high, which would create a bigger supply
demand mismatch. Job satisfaction and job stability has to be assured to the employees,
only then will they spread a positive word of mouth and get their peers to come and
work in the hospitality sector. Certain changes in setting up the wage policy to uplift the
job at lower level will further help in giving an impetus while attracting employees in
one of the most challenging sector (Brien, Thomas & Brown, 2017).
Another major challenge which comes in the way of recruiting and attracting
talent in the hospitality sector is the hierarchical structure of the organization.
Authoritarian style of leadership is pervasive in the hospitality sector, particularly the
Hotel and Airlines; this leaves very little room for employees to voice their opinion.
Employees do not feel empowered as they are not being engaged in decision making,
neither are they asked to give feedback on some change; this makes the industry highly
unattractive to them. In the present day business context, when the times are changing,
employees wants to feel valued working in the organization. They are looking for more
and more factors of job satisfaction, while eliminating the hygiene factors from their job.
Thus, the leadership and the perception of the management is another major challenge
at the hands of hospitality sector which restricts them in attracting and retaining top
talent in the sector (Sandy & McCartney, 2015).
Social media has spread like a wildfire in the last decade, of the 7.593 billion
populations in the world, there is a penetration of 42% in social media, which roughly

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 3
accounts to over 3.196 billion people. The statistics mentioned are amusing in the way
that hospitality sector fails to leverage the growth in social media to attract and retain
talent. Hospitality sector has been using social media to attract, engage and manage the
management level employees; they fail to understand that even the entry level
employees are present on the huge platform. Social media platform is inexpensive, easy
to use and gives lot of opportunities to engage with the potential employees. It becomes
easy to consume information on the go; moreover the usage of analytics of social
platforms gives valuable information about the potential employees. The HR team can
use the information to attract and retain the talent. However, the company fails to use it
to target the entry level jobs, which puts them on a back foot in attracting talent (Solnet,
Kralj & Baum, 2015).
It has been often spoken in the past that the employees required for the
hospitality sector; have to have high knowledge of human emotions, skills to empathize
with the customers, excellent soft skills great communication skills, enriching
interpersonal skills, well groomed and many more. It really becomes difficult to target
an employee who already has all the required skill set for the job. This is next to
impossible, because most probably, a person who has all the traits to excel in the
hospitality sector would definitely be working someplace else, and would have been
getting the required perks to stay in that particular organization. This practice of
recruitment in itself possesses a big challenge. It becomes extremely difficult to hire
such talent; also the countabilty of such talent readily available in the market is low. The
alternate strategy here should be to set basic criteria for selection for the entry and the
mid-level employees, keep a buffer or a gap for the training of the selected candidates
and turn them into polished employees. Setting up high criteria for selection of
employees at the entry and mid-level comes as a big challenge in recruitment and
selection. Thus, it becomes important for the HR managers to look for the basic qualities
required for the job in a person, and then provides them an environment of learning and
development to brush their skills and make them sector ready. This would help them in
developing deep trust towards the organization, besides spreading a positive word they
would also push their friends to be a part of the growing hospitality sector (Sun, Liu,
Law & Zhong, 2017).

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 4
Millennial (18-35 years) is the section of society which is driving the change in
the world, and most definitely are the major drivers of the industries worldwide.
Millennial not only have the required set of skills for the job, due to their education and
skills relevant to hospitality sector. The skills relevant to the hospital involve high
human interaction, understanding of human sentiments, willingness to help and travel
extra mile for the customers and excellent soft skills. These skills are easily transferable
to other sectors for high performing hospitality employees. Thus it can be said that the
desirability of the millennial to move and globalization which fosters on boundary less
careers are the major challenges in attracting and retaining the employees (Chand,
2016).
The hospitality sector in the present day situation is under a lot of stress due to
its inability in attracting and retaining the talent in the sector. One of the other
challenges identified is the wrong strategy deployed in recruiting the candidate at
organization. It is often seen that in order to fulfil the employed gap in the organization,
the recruiters are focussing on the job fit employees rather than the employee who is an
organizational fit. It is important to focus on finding the candidate who will be a fit in
the organization. The inability to match the skills of the candidates In accordance with
that of the organization results in high turnover in the hospitality sector (Grobelna &
Marciszewska, 2016).
Employees in the present day are looking for organization which can give them
work-life harmony, support and encouragement, rewards and appraisals and lastly an
environment where they can demonstrate their skills and consistently work towards
picking up new skills to move on an upward trajectory in their careers. These category
of people are not interested in knowing the plans of the organization, they are more
focussed on themselves, thus requiring a high engagement from their employers. The
hospitality sector is unable to engage them and provide them benefits better suited to
their professional capabilities, thus the employees leave the industry and switch
careers.
As mentioned in the earlier section in the essay, hospitality sector employees
people with excellent soft skills, understanding of the service ecosystem, customer
excellence and great interpersonal skills. Depending upon the industry to industry, the

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 5
skills may further differ in terms of the depth of skill. Ordinarily, there are not too many
people with the relevant skill sets, which make them difficult to be employable. Thus,
the absence of sector ready employees is one of the biggest challenges in attracting and
retaining the employees. Alternate strategy for it can be creating a pool of employees
and making them industry ready. This initial cost will help the hospitality sector in
doing away with its problem of unproductivity, when an employee leaves the job, but
would also help in creating additional workforce, ready to work in the hospitality
sector.
Once the employees are selected and recruited, the real job of the HR manager
commences. The job does not end at just the recruitment and the selection of the
employees. Organization has to ensure that they not only nurture and enhance the skill
set of the employee, they keep them motivated to push themselves to achieve the goals
of the organization, and thus motivation plays a key role here. Every person is different
from the other person; this also implies that a strategy of motivation for one does not
necessarily means the same for the other. HR in the hospitality sector has to understand
this difference and use the need of motivation for a person on an individual basis.
Maslow Need theory helps in identifying at which stage of motivation a person stands;
accordingly the organization can use the framework to motivate its employees, thus
retaining them in the sector, while keeping their productivity high.
Employer branding is a key facet to recruiting the top talent, or even an entry
level talent for instance. The brand of the employer is the first thing which comes in the
mind of potential employees, thus it becomes important for the organization to focus on
their branding to attract the talent in the organization. Employer brand in simple words
is the place of reputation for work; it translates and sends out the message which is a
reflection of the organization culture. Employer branding to the target segment not only
helps in attracting the top talent in the industry, it also boasts the motivation of the
existing employees. Hospitality industry has to ensure that it focuses on its branding
strategies to hire the talent with excellent customer skills. The branding can easily be
done through the popular channels of marketing such as Linked-In and Facebook. These
two platforms provide great opportunity for hiring key talent, as well to create groups,
community and customized pages to focus the efforts in hiring the organization-fit
candidate. The vastness of the social media platform will ensure the message is reached

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 6
to the target audience, thus helping in attracting a good herd of talent pool(Kramer,
2012)
It is not always the fault of the organization in retaining the talent, at times, the
employees set unrealistic expectation from the organization, which when unable to
meet result in huge turnover for the organization. Thus, it is the duty of the organization
to ensure they do not overpromise in recruiting a talent, and maintain high
transparency(Hopkins, 2012). Also, efforts should be made to address the expectation
of the employees in a rationale and logical way and keep the expectation in the purview
of the organization. This will help in retaining the employees who because of their
unrealistic expectation look for a job change (Gibbs, McDonald & MacKay, 2015).
Work environment is necessary when it comes to evaluating the reasons for high
turnover in the hospitality sector. AN employee does not stick with his present
organization for plethora of reasons; one of the strong reasons is the inability of the
organization to provide great environmental condition to work resulting in job
satisfaction. The employee in the present day is privy to loads of information available
on the internet, which has turned him into a well-informed employee(Kramer, 2004).
This has made him understood how various industries are doing so much for their
employees to take care of their well-being and encompassing the factors of job
satisfaction such as; Leave policies, fringe benefits, monetary benefits, team activities,
learning and development, succession planning and so on. When an employee does not
see it happening in the hospitality sector, he decides to move to a better job, thus
contributing to the turnover of the industry. Hence, it is extremely important to enrich
the job with factors of job satisfaction and reduce down the hygiene factors in the job
(Ferrary, 2015).
It is often seen that employee empowerment has created quite a stir in the
hospitality sector or in every other sector. Transformational leadership and other style
of leaderships have understood the value of the employees and have started
empowering them by using them in decision making process and giving value to their
feedback. It is important not only to bring trust with the employees, but it also makes
the employee believe and have faith in the organization. It makes the employee gain
faith towards his line managers, and this mutual trust and faith thus becomes the

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 7
foundation of his sustained association with the organization. Thus, it makes important
for HR in the hospitality sector to come up with strategies to engage with the
employees, not only through the use of social media, blogs and so on. They have to
engage them in taking important decisions related to the organization, treat them like a
think-tank for the organization, and ask for their recommendation and feedback on the
issues concerning them and the organization. This strategy has been useful in a lot of
manufacturing, tech, production industries in the past and the present now is the time
to translate the same learning in the service industry and work towards improving the
workforce turnover in the sector by retaining the employees (Baum et. al., 2016)
To bring the essay to a logical conclusion, it is of great importance to summarize
the points critical in attracting and retaining workforce in the hospitality sector. It is
seen that hospitality sector is worst hit by rising problem of employee turnover and its
failure to attract the talent in the sector. The hospitality sector is seen to be the worst
paying sector and is plagiarized by lower wages; further authoritarian style of
leadership in the sector makes it difficult for employees to be a part of this highly
challenging and fast paced career. Another major reason behind the difficult in hiring
the right talent and retaining them for the sustained growth of the organization is the
lack of resources with the right skill sets for the sector. Excellent customer service is the
foundation of hospitality sector, hence the potential employee not only has to great with
his soft skills, and he has to be a master in the art of understanding the human
emotions. This skill set is not easy to be found, thus making it difficult for the hospitality
sector in attracting the employees. Numerous significant developments have to be done
in the recruitment and the retention strategies of Hospitality sector to make it a truly
rewarding sector.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 8
References
Baum, T. (2018). Sustainable human resource management as a driver in tourism policy and
planning: a serious sin of omission?. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1-17.
Baum, T., Cheung, C., Kong, H., Kralj, A., Mooney, S., Ramachandran, S., & Siow, M. L. (2016).
Sustainability and the tourism and hospitality workforce: A thematic
analysis. Sustainability, 8(8), 809.
Baum, T., Kralj, A., Robinson, R. N., & Solnet, D. J. (2016). Tourism workforce research: A review,
taxonomy and agenda. Annals of Tourism Research, 60, 1-22.
Bradley, D. M., Elenis, T., Hoyer, G., Martin, D., & Waller, J. (2017). Human capital challenges in the
food and beverage service industry of Canada: Finding innovative solutions. Worldwide
Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 9(4), 411-423.
Brien, A., Thomas, N. J., & Brown, E. A. (2017). How hotel employee job-identity impacts the hotel
industry: The uncomfortable truth. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 31, 235-
243.
Chand, M. (2016). Building and Educating Tomorrow's Manpower for Tourism and Hospitality
Industry. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Systems, 9(1).
Ferrary, M. (2015). Investing in transferable strategic human capital through alliances in the luxury
hotel industry. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19(5), 1007-1028.
Gibbs, C., MacDonald, F., & MacKay, K. (2015). Social media usage in hotel human resources:
recruitment, hiring and communication. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management, 27(2), 170-184.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 9
Grobelna, A., & Marciszewska, B. (2016, April). Work motivation of tourism and hospitality students:
implications for human resource management. In Proceedings of the 8th European
Conference on Intellectual Capital, ECIC (pp. 95-103).
Hopkins, 2012, ‘The outside-in approach’, HumanCapital Magazine , pp. 18–21.
Murray, W. C., Elliot, S., Simmonds, K., Madeley, D., & Taller, M. (2017). Human resource challenges
in Canada’s hospitality and tourism industry: Finding innovative solutions. Worldwide
Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 9(4), 391-401.
R. Kramar, 2004, ‘Corporate social responsibility …a challenge for HR?’, HumanResources , 24 May.
R. Kramar, 2012, ‘Trends in Australian human resource management: what next?’, Asia Pacific
Journal of HumanResources , 50(2), pp. 133–50.
Sandy Sou, K. I., & McCartney, G. (2015). An assessment of the human resources challenges of
Macao's meeting, incentive, convention, and exhibition (MICE) industry. Journal of Human
Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 14(3), 244-266.
Solnet, D., Kralj, A., & Baum, T. (2015). 360 degrees of pressure: The changing role of the HR
professional in the hospitality industry. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 39(2),
271-292.
Sun, S., Liu, Z., Law, R., & Zhong, S. (2017). Exploring human resource challenges in China’s tourism
industry. Tourism recreation research, 42(1), 72-83.
Willie, P. A., Connor, D., Sole, J., Forgacs, G., Grieve, R., & Mueller, J. (2017). Human capital
challenges in the hotel industry of Canada: finding innovative solutions. Worldwide
Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 9(4), 402-410.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 10