Challenges in Attracting and Retaining Employees in Hospitality Management

This article discusses the challenges faced by the HR department of organisations operating in the hospitality industry regarding attracting and retaining employees. It critically reviews the selection method, areas to improve by the recruiters for using the online recruiting system. The article also highlights the importance of employee management and structure in this industry.

Running head: HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction:
The Human resource department is not only responsible for recruiting people; it is the
duty of the department to keep the employees committed towards the company and also to
ensure people are willing to work for the company. The purpose of the assignment is to
understand the key challenges that are faced by the HR department of organisations operating in
the hospitality industry regarding attracting and retaining employees. The term hospitality
management involves managing and administrating a hotel or a resort and to ensure that the hotel
is warm and pleasant to welcome the guests as give them the feeling like home. The managers
should ensure that the guests who have come to the resort in a vacation and tour are having a
warm and cosy feeling and are not disturbed by any behaviour or attitude of the hotel or people
over there. The management system also has to make sure that they are running the organization
with perfection and profitability (Ladkin & Buhalis, 2016). Attraction is the strategies that are
taken by the Human resource department in order to encourage people to apply for a job or to
work with the company. On the other hand, retention is the process by which the human resource
management of a company develops a sense of responsibility and commitment towards the
organisation (Jasper & Waldhart, 2013). The organisations that operate in the hospitality industry
are in direct contact with the customers hence the people working in the industry are trained and
skilled individuals who can deal with the client on a day to day basis. It is important to attract the
right people to work for the company as the employees are the major asset of an organisation in
the hospitality industry. Thus, the recruiter’s has to make sure that they are using proper skills
and technologies to recruit the workers for this industry. It will critically review the selection
method, areas to improve by the recruiters for using the online recruiting system. The online

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recruiting system that saves times, energy and cost for both the worker and the employer are a
new trend in the market. On the other hand, it is also important for a company to ensure that the
attrition rate is high as there are considerable resources incorporated on an employee and the
company is at a loss of talent when an employee resigns of leaves the job abruptly.
Discussion:
Challenges in attracting and retaining the workforce in hospitality industry
In Australia hospitality industry has significant revenue and it has reported an annual
turnover ranging from 32% to 300 %. However, the industry profit is highly affected by a regular
change of employees by the employers in seasonal period. This makes the other workers work
more difficult thus reducing the productivity. Attraction of the candidates to apply for a job
position is one of the major challenges that the company face. Before applying for a job the
candidates does a background check of the company, however small or big it may be. There are
two purposes of the process one is to prepare oneself for the interview and the other is to judge
the organisation and its culture. As technology is at everyone’s finger tips a quick search of the
company is mandatory (Ladkin et al., 2016). Thus, the employers and this industry must
maintain and know the importance of employee management and structure in this industry. As
the importance of the human resource is imperative in the hospitality industry attracting the right
kind of people with the right skills is essential. According to Biga et al. (2015), online
advertising is one of the most popular medium used to communicate with the prospective
applicants. The biggest challenge here is to communicate the right information and produce the
right content in order to effectively communicate with the applicants. Highlighting the most

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important information and providing the people with the information that they will be interested
in should be prioritized.
In the process of recruitment there is another major challenge that has been highlighted
by Biga et al. (2015), the authors state that there are legal barriers which restricts the company in
understanding the background of the applicant clearly. Furthermore, they indicate that the
authenticity of the experience is often ambiguous and therefore can be barriers in attracting
people (Kramar, 2014).
The tenured work force helps the industry in various sectors such as separation,
recruiting, selection and the cost of hiring. The hospitality firms that have gained success in this
industry and are still on the verge on success are maintaining a proper employee retention and
development skill. The importance of employee management plays an extremely vital role in the
entire industry thus deciding the best scope for the industry to develop and expand (Boella &
Goss-Turner, 2013). The organizations must conduct proper survey not only to figure out the
reasons that why the employees are leaving the industry but also to find out the best possible to
maintain a proper employee management system and influence them to work in this sector.
According to Biga et al. (2015), the successful and cost effective recruitment in this industry
plays a vital role. This includes the proper maintenance of the labour laws, proper behaviour of
the managerial with the employees and best selection of the workers who suits the job profile.
They can use skills that will motivate the workers and encourage them to work efficiently by
rewarding them for the best performances, appraising them, giving gifts to encourage them to
work in a better way (Kramar, 2014).
The recruitment for the staffs is generally practised by advertisement, references from the
existing workers and other sources. It is then followed by proper interview through phone call or

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face-to-face meet. The considerations for selecting the best employee depends on the following
factors such a their skills, experiences and work ethics that will determine how well their
performance will impact the organization. The questions will be very selective to understand the
quality and capability of the worker. The staffs should be selected with high customer service
skills and flexibility in the working organization as this organization requires a lot of extra work
or sudden attendance for emergency purpose (Durrani & Rajagopal, 2016). Here another major
barrier has been discussed by Gibbs et al. (2015), the lack of knowledge and understanding of the
technology and the provisions that are available in today’s world is one of the major challenges
in attraction. Social media is still considered as a tool of the future whereas social media is one
of the most effective means of reaching out to people both by the marketing department as well
as by the HR department (Kramar, 2014). While hiring a candidate to this industry a reference
check must be done to get to know about the worker’s previous experience. This will help the
organization to allot the worker to the customers as per their skills like the premium customers
will be served by the most experienced and skilled performers and the general can be received by
the moderate skilled worker or the fresher’s. Ladkin et al. (2016), highlights that there is a
challenge in short listing the candidates in case the company uses a third party website. The use
of LinkedIn has been also discussed by the authors and the low popularity of this platform is the
challenge in the situation (Ladkin et al., 2016). The authors discuss the pros but one of the
barriers in the process of using social media as a part of attraction form the employee perspective
is that it may have a negative impact on the image.
The organizations in this industry must also make sure that they are hiring the workers
will a scrutinization on various factors such as: age, caste, drug addiction, criminal history,
disability. These factors must be considered while hiring staff for the industry. However, the

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legal challenges related to the selection is that the staffs are not allowed to be questioned such
questions. The successful hiring and staff management plays a vital role in the industry. The
industry that is highly dependent on the employee’s behaviour must have a strong staff
management and recruiting power. There are issues related to this industry and they are the
seasonal issues. The hospitality industry might face a severe problem regarding the seasonal
problem, which determines that the industry will have a peak business only in few selected
months, and the rest of the time, it will not have any business.
According to Durrani et al., (2016) indicate the challenge of ethical hiring there is lack of
understanding of the concept. The usage of internet has implemented the hiring and recruitment
process in the industry. Both the employer and the employees that benefit the process of
recruitment and speeds it up use the internet. From the employers point of view the company
website is used to recruit the staff, advertise for their recruitment and support the previous
research findings. The companies generally prefer the usage of their own website instead of
using the other website (Kramar et al., 2013). They can use it for including their requirement
criteria, their exact demand and expectation from the employee, issues regarding any behavioural
pattern or background of the employee. Thus if the companies are using the internet they can
reach to a vast region for their recruitment demand in a very less span of time. This reduces the
recruitment cost and increases the scope for online employees. However, the companies should
make sure that they are using user friendly and safe websites and also attractive enough to attract
the employees (Walker & Walker, 2016). They can also take help from other established website
that are mainly interested to creative scope for online employer and employees to get connected
and get their desired requirements. The online sites are using the industries to move a very fast

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pace. The professional sites like LinkedIn help the company to get accurate and professional
information about the worker, which is important for the companies (Jasper et al., 2013).
However, there are social sites that include personal information and these must not be
trusted, as they might not have accurate information every time. Thus, the companies should
recruit from the professional sites that will help them to connect to the best candidate as per the
requirement of the industry. If the consideration comes from the employees’ point of view then it
can be said that the employees also get the information about the vacancy at various companies
and sector and they can select them as per their interest. The employees can use the social sites to
represent their professional skills however, if they are using personal sites highlight their skills
that might include information about their personal life (Kramar et al., 2013).
However, the reason behind such decision might be lack of proper knowledge and
education. Once the employers are aware of the latest technology they can use the best suited
technology to hire the best worker for their organization and make efficient use of their skills to
grow and develop the business s in a desired manner (Kramar et al., 2013). This technology or
usage of internet helps the organizations to build a better scope for future. The hospitality
management industry requires specification and creation that will help the organization to build a
better scope for them to expand and explore. In various countries across the world they are using
various techniques to advertise their job demands and recruit the employees. In this form of
recruitment form they can communicate with the candidates and discuss about their requirement
easily, instead of talking over phone or meeting that person personally (Kramar et al., 2013).
This can be time consuming and costly if the staff or the employees are asked to meet the
employers every time they need to recruit someone. On the other hand if the recruitment if done

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over the internet it will be time saving and help the organization recruit in a short span of time.
Thus this system is preferred in comparison to the general system of recruitment (Kramar, 2014).
According to Jasper et al. (2013), the organization has to make sure that the employees
are not disabled physically so that they can meet the requirement of the company efficiently. In
general, the companies fear that if the workers are unable to meet the companies’ demands. The
fear of cost, challenge depends on the size of the organization. The higher the organization the
deeper is their demand for exact requirement. The hospitality industry faces challenges regarding
recruiting the disabled and mostly the reason is lack of proper guidance. The industry can be
suggested to improve their hiring techniques that will help them to hire the disabled employees
(Gibbs, MacDonald & MacKay, 2015). The correct selection of the employees with the accurate
skill and talent is important to understand.
Retention can be a challenge in the hospitality industry based on some of the general
issues like work pressure, work culture, organisation culture, workplace issues like bullying and
low rate of job satisfaction etc (Kramar, 2014). People leave an organisation in order to reach out
to a better place, it is the duty of the Human resource department to manage the issues and
grievance of the employees. Most of the time the issues or the complaints are not considered as
important in an organisation whose employee turnover is high. In the hospitality industry there
are several challenges as the industry has to operate on a 24*7 basis. There are issues like shift
problems, grievances regarding the work culture as well as there are problems like peer pressure
and bad culture. One of the major challenges in the process of retention of the employees is that
the people who are working in a small scale organisation is always looking forwards to changes
in a large scale company where the remuneration is higher and the organsiaiton has goodwill in
the industry (Kramar et al., 2013).

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Conclusion:
Thus to conclude it can be said that the human resource management in the hospitality
management is an important part that decides the entire process for running this industry. The
workers skill and quality determines the progress report of the company. The chances for
developing new scope in this industry depend on the capability of the worker. Thus, the
recruitment for staff for this industry has to be done in specified and selective manner. The study
has also critically analysed the usage of online recruiting system, the advantages and
disadvantages related to it, the scopes for hiring the disabled in this industry. It has critically
reviewed the selection method, areas to improve by the recruiters for using the online recruiting
system. The online recruiting system that saves times, energy and cost for both the worker and
the employer are a new trend in the market. However, few industries still require gaining
knowledge about this new trend of recruitment. Even if the industry is well aware of this system,
they prefer the old system of recruiting or interviewing the employees. They are still not sure
about the new trend. The study have suggested for proper remedy for such industries and there
required steps that the industries that are using this trend might use. Thus it can be concluded that
online recruiting system is a promising trend and has a better scope in future recruitment system.

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