Human Resource Challenges in Hospitality

This assignment delves into the critical human resource (HR) issues plaguing the hospitality industry. It highlights the difficulties in attracting and retaining skilled labor, the impact of high employee turnover, and the need for effective HR strategies. The analysis emphasizes the importance of showcasing career benefits within the industry, implementing incentive and protection plans to attract talent, and fostering specialized training programs to promote growth.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Executive Summary
The present report focuses on the various activities of Human resource Management in an organisation.
The report has surfaced that the Hr department of an organisation is largely responsible for successful
completion of duties like recruitment, selection and training of the employees. In this regard, the findings
of the report state that there are various issues and challenges related to several core activities of HRM of
an organisation. Issues related to labour market and resource planning has been surfaced in this report. On
the other hand, challenges associated to selection, recruitment and management of diversity have been
successfully delineated in this report. On the other hand, the job description, person specification and
appraisal methods of the post of Assistant manager of an organisation have been presented critically with
proper justification. In this respect, Easy Hotel has been considered as a case study in this study.

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task A..............................................................................................................................................3
Labor market and resourcing:..........................................................................................................3
Recruitment and selection process:.................................................................................................5
Equal opportunity and maintaining the diversity:...........................................................................6
Training and development:..............................................................................................................8
Organizational culture:....................................................................................................................9
Task b.............................................................................................................................................10
Job Description:.............................................................................................................................10
Person Specification:.....................................................................................................................10
Performance Appraisal Methods:..................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14

Introduction
Hospitality is an industry where major issues are employee related. Lack of labour shortages and
employee retention are the major problems that the hospitality industry faces these days.
Insufficient wages, lack of skills and long working hours are the major causes why most people
do not find the industry lucrative. Skilled human resource recruiters are required in this industry
for resolving these issues who can help in choosing the quality of the workers employed in the
hospitality industry and also propose methods for employee retention.
Easy Hotels group is an internationally operating hotel chain of the UK which falls under the
super-budget hotels segment. It has been providing customers affordable and comfort luxury
since 2004. Currently Easy Hotels owns five corporate and 20 franchised hotels. The franchised
hotels are situated at primary travel hubs. The Hotel Assistant Manager plays a major role in
employee management in Easy Hotels. He has to perform several activities which are significant
in the recruitment and management process..
Task A
Labor market and resourcing:
The Human resource management of an organization suffers the greatest challenge while
engaging labor and accumulating resources for the organization. The productivity of the
organization depends upon the efficiency of the labor. An organization's productivity decreases
because of absence of skilled labor. On the other hand resources of a company also play a crucial
role in enhancing its productivity in the market. For instance: If a company has less capital to
invest in the business then the overall productivity of that particular company will also decrease
(Boella et al. 2013, p. 20).
Hospitality industry of UK has low productivity because the economic system of UK lacks in
resources and skilled labors. The rate of unemployment is high in UK which results in poor labor
market. The organization of UK does not follow the wage policies as a result the labors are not
paid according to their work. Thus, there efficiency decreases which, affects the overall
productivity of the organization.

The Human resource management of an organization should check that the laborers are paid
according to their workload to increase their efficiency along with the overall productivity of the
organization(Riley 2014, p.36).
According to Bratton(2012,p.60). The organizations of UK invests insufficient resources in their
business because they lack in capital as a result the overall productivity of the organization
decreases. The challenges faced by the Human resource management regarding labor market and
resourcing are as follows:
Low Work compensation: The HR department faces labor crisis because the labors think that
they are not paid according to the work done by them. They always feel the work pressure in the
organization.
It becomes very difficult for the HR to keep the employees satisfied within the limited resources
of the organization. The decision regarding the employee's retention also depends upon the
Human resource management of the organization.
Rate of unemployment: Rate of unemployment also creates labor crisis in an organization.
During 90’s the companies of UK suffered from labor crisis because the rate of unemployment
was more that 5 percent. Presently the unemployment rate has decreased to 2 percent as a result
the company must invest huge rate of capital to choose the best talent for the company
(Brotherton 2012, p. 90).
Working culture: Creating proper work culture for the employees is the greatest challenge for
the HR department of an organization. Proper working culture of an organization motivates an
employee to work in an organization. Thus , enhancing their capability to increase the overall
output of an organization.
Working environment: The HR department of the organization is responsible for developing
suitable working environment in an organization. The workers must be satisfied with the
working environment of the organization. The working time must be suitable for the workers.
Labor crisis takes place if the laborers are not satisfied with the working environment of the
organization(Nieves et al. 2015, p. 200).
Working Policies: Workforce crisis occurs because of improper working policies. The working
policies should be revised regularly by the human resources management of an organization to
encourage and motivate employees of the organization.

Salary should be paid at proper time, incentives should be paid if extra work is done and working
hour should be suitable to the workers so, that they don't feel pressurized.
Working turnover ratio: To decrease labour crisis in an organization the Human resource
management should revise the working policies of the organization in order to increase the
working turnover ratio of the organization.
Recruitment and selection process:
The main function of the Human resource management of an organization is to recruit skilled
labours for the organization to increase the overall output and productivity of the organization.
The human resource management should evolve the recruiting policies of the organization at
regular interval to attract the employees of the organization.
The HR faces the greatest challenge while recruiting the employees for an organization. The
challenges that are faced by the Human Resource Management of the organization are as
follows:
Innovative tools of recruitment: The Human resource management always try to use
innovative tools for the recruitment process of an organization so, that they don't overlook the
efficient candidate. The HR finds it very difficult to create a balance between the company’s
capital and HR expenses associated to the recruitment process (Bharwan et al. 2013 p. 234).
Consistency: The HR faces problem in retaining the employees in the company for a longer
period of timer. To retain the employees in the organization the Human resource management
should revise their recruitment policies at regular interval. There should be a regular salary hike
in the organization to retain the employees, proper salary should be paid to the employees,
incentives should be paid to the employees and the working time should be flexible to retain the
employees in the company.
Maintaining transparency: Presently transparency is the topic of concern for the Human
Resource Management of the company. Human resource management should see that the
company should be very transparent regarding its policies to the employees. Often it has been
seen that the employees misuse the information that are given to them by the company.

The HR should take steps to check the spread of information. There should be a proper balance
maintained between the information given and spread.
Maintenance of cordial relation: The HR team should maintain a cordial relation with the other
employees of the organization because huge number of employee can be recruited through
referral process. Presently, due to the advent of technology employees can be recruited by
posting advertisement on social media but sometimes this spread false messages regarding the
recruitment process. Thus, the company must be very clear regarding its recruitment process.
Working diversity: The HR should maintain diversity while recruiting new employees.
While recruiting the company often sets some standardization to maintain the standard of the
company. This process of standardization often lacks diversification.
Organizational chart: Every organization has a organizational chart for the recruitment process.
The HR of the organization faces the challenge when they fail to follow the organizational chart.
There are organizations which does not recruit same people in the same post.
Job Description: the HR of the organization faces the challenge when they fail to give a proper
job description the newly recruited employees of the company. Employees often leave the job if
they are not satisfied with the job description or if the job is not up to their profile.
Models of recruitment are as follows: Company’s often follows models of recruitment while
recruiting new employees in the company. Some models of recruitment are explained below;
Contingency Hiring; this model of recruitment says often companies give the recruitment
charges to the consultancy services. In this case the consultancy charges some amount of money
from the company and recruits the potential candidate to the particular organization. The risk
factor in this type of recruitment is very high. Here companies deduct certain amount from the
CTC of the candidate for paying the consultancy (Suh et al. 2012, p. 300).
Retained search; This model of recruitment states that the consultancy works for a particular
company and charges certain amount of money from the company. This is known as search
charge. The consultants can charge more money for recruiting executives.
Equal opportunity and maintaining the diversity:
Maintaining proper diversity in the workplace is the biggest challenge for the Human resource
department of an organization. Proper diversity in the workplace helps to enhance the
productivity of an organization. Diversity in an organization includes communication process in
an organization, proper interaction among the workers, proper relation between the workers and

the management and the working environment. Human Resource management plays a crucial
role in an organization. All the activities related to employment training, salary, and performance
appraisal, legal issues are looked by the Human resource management of an organization.
Human Resource management of an organization is responsible to create a suitable environment
for the employees of an organization to increase the overall productivity of the organization.
Human Resource department of hospitality industry suffers challenges which hamper the
efficiency of the department. The challenges of the HR department are explained in the
following task.
Diversity in the workplace increases the adaptability of the employees. If the employees of an
organisation come from various region, culture and religion then the organization gets an global
approach. If an organization has a diversified working environment then working strategies can
be applied more efficiently.
On the other hand an organization faces several challenges because of diverse work culture. The
challenges of diverse work culture are explained below:
In effective communication: communication barriers must be overcome to make an
organization a diverse workplace. Ineffective communication process hampers the overall
growth of an organization as it creates confusion among the workers reducing their productivity.
Cooperating with the changes: The rules and regulation of the company keeps on changing to
meet the market demand. Some employees fail to cop up with the changes and some refuses to
adapt the changes as a result the productivity of the company decreases. The HRM of the
industry often face this issue because of the market diversity
Workplace policies: the work policies of an organization should be diverse: All the employees
of the organization must follow the provisions given in the work policy hand book of the
company in order to create a sound working environment. The HR department of the
organization should see that the rules and policies are properly followed by the employees to turn
a workplace into a diverse environment.
Working plans: The plans and policies of the organization must be revised at regular interval to
make it a diverse workplace.
Diversity in the workplace can be improved in the following ways:
Evaluation of the changes: To enhance the diversity in the workplace the changes must be
regularly intervened by the Human Resource Management of the organization.

Workplace plans: To increase the diversity of the workplace the rules and regulations of the
workplace must be revised at regular interval by the HR team
Developing Leadership qualities: The Human resource department of an organization is
responsible for providing training to the employees so, that they can work efficiently and
enhance the productivity of the organization. To invest on the employees having lower
capabilities is the biggest challenge for the Human Resource Management of an organization
Training of the employees: The human resource management should provide proper training to
the employees of an organization. So that they can increase their efficiency at their concerned
work. In order to increase the diversity of the work place. Providing training to the low level
employees at a particular time frame is the biggest challenge for the Human resource
management of an organization.
Training and development:
The main job a HR is to provide training to the employees of an organization so, that they can
increase their efficiency. Efficient employees of an organization help to increase the overall
productivity of an organization. An organization provides training to the employees to determine
the efficiency of the employees.
The HR of an organization promises the workers a better work environment.
.While providing training to the employees of an organization the HR faces some challenge:-.
Lack of Infrastructure: Often organizations lack in training equipments due to less capital
invested. The HR department of the organization faces the challenge due to the lack of training
equipments.
HR Cost: According to Kong et al. (2012, P.100). The HR of the organization faces the
challenge when the HR cost exceeds the estimated budget.
Efficiency: Providing training to the low level employees is the greatest challenge for a HR
manager of an organization.
Communication; Ineffective communication process between the trainer and the trainee becomes
the greatest challenge for the HR department.

Work culture; Proper work culture is very essential for providing efficient training to the
employees.
Appraisal: Improper appraisal process in an organization is another challenge for the HR of the
company. The biggest challenge of the HR department of a small scale organization is to
accommodate the employees within the given resource.
Organizational culture:
Organizational culture plays crucial role in enhancing the overall productivity of the
organization. Organizational culture includes the communication process in a an organization,
employees’ attitude, working environment and relation between the employees and employer. To
maintain the organizational culture the HR department of an organization faces some challenges.
The challenges are explained below:
Communication: Effective communication process is very important for the productivity of the
organization. Communication gap between the employees and the employer is the major
challenge faced by the HR department of an organization. Ineffective communication process
hampers the overall growth of an organization.
Relationship: Non cordial relationship between the employees and the employer is considered
as the greatest cultural challenge in an organization.
Working environment: Unhealthy working environment in an organization is the biggest
challenge of an organisation as it reduces the overall productivity of the organization.
Diversity In a organization employees come from various culture as a result they face difficulty
in communicating with the other employees as a result in effective communication takes place
which, is considered as the greatest challenge of an organization.

Task b
Job Description:
The Hotel assistant manager of Easy Hotels performs both recruitment and managerial activities:
Proposing Incentive policies: Assistant manager assists the manager regarding incentive
policies that might help in employee retention from time to time. As per Baum (2012, p45), this
is the major issue that is being faced by the industry. Employees are not willing to work in the
hospitality industry because they do not see any kind of growth in their career. Therefore an
assistant manager needs to suggest lucrative policies from time to time that would help in
employee retention.
Handling employee issues: He also looks after issues related to wages, working hours and and
other employee complaints and concerns. The HR team at Easy Hotels promotes a healthy
working environment for employees and the Assistant manager plays an important role in
decision making.
Coordination and training of employees: It is the duty of Assistant managers to coordinate
employees of different departments in a hotel and our team always ensures that the process is
fuss free by providing adequate training to new employees. According to Bharwani and Jauhari
(2013, p 823), as there is lack of skilled labour in the hospitality industry we feel that a
preliminary training must be provided to each new employee who join Easy Hotels. An assistant
manager at the Easy Hotels assigns tasks to employees and coordinates activities of the different
departments.
Students having academic and professional experience in this domain are preferred since they
would be able to propose new ideas and incentive policies for employee retention. Also they
would be able to train new employees and monitor staff. They are also required to handle
employee complaints and thus ensure a healthy and fuss free work environment.
Person Specification:
Good communication and interpersonal skills: A candidate with good communication and
interpersonal skills is suitable for the position of Assistant Manager so that the manager can
assign tasks and monitor the staff without any difficulty. Good communication and

demonstrating skills are ideal for this position because the assistant manager has to train new
employees and also look after the business meetings.
Academic and Professional experience: Also the candidates who have academic and
professional experience in the domain are preferred as such candidates are expected to have
knowledge about the industry and can propose measures to the company’s advantage from time
to time.
Problem handling and coordination skills: Good problem handling and coordinating skills are
required for resolving issues and assisting in the recruitment process. The assistant manager is
responsible for looking after employee requirements and complaints and also assisting the HR
manager of the company hence an ideal Assistant manager should posses all of these qualities.
Leadership qualities: An ideal assistant manager should have leadership qualities in order to
motivate employees. Since the manager is responsible for coordinating different departments
therefore the person should be able to make them aware of the existing work culture in our
organisation and promote teamwork in them.
Performance Appraisal Methods:
Performance Appraisal is essential in the development of an organisation since it makes
employees aware of their areas of improvement. As stated by Bratton and Gold (2012),
evaluating the performance of employees working in a hospitality industry is especially
important since it helps us work on customer satisfaction standards in an efficient manner and
also speeds up the expansion process. Some of the methods we use for evaluating the
performance of the assistant manager in our organisation are:
Employee Ratings: Performance Appraisal in our organisation is widely based on employee
ratings and this is also a method followed in most organisations. According to Brotherton (2012,
p.58), this method is most useful in case of higher level employees such as managers and team
leaders as there is no scope for influenced decision making. Also the assistant manager in our
organisation is mostly responsible for managing and coordinating the employees of different
departments therefore this method is significant in this regard. Following the employee ratings
method brings out different opinions of the employees and gives scope of self evaluation and
improvement to the manager. A confidential method in this regard so that it does not lead to any
influenced decisions in the future. Also this method is helpful in resolving employee issues.

Customer Ratings: Since customer satisfaction is our goal therefore customer ratings are also
taken into consideration. Sometimes we get useful feedback from some of our corporate clients
where the manager is often required to take care of the corporate events. Nieves, J. and Segarra-
Ciprés (2015, p51), the feedback received by various departments are compared in order to
analyse the scope of improvements for the manger.
Business Meets: A direct discussion on the performance of manager would definitely be more
helpful than ratings. As per AlBattat and Som (2013, p.62), in this case a suggestive approach is
taken which means these meets are held directly between employees and the assistant manager
where the coordinators of the different departments suggest measures regarding the improvement
of the department in context of customer service improvement. These measures are based on
feedback from customers. The Assistant manager is required to take action on the same so that
the development can be observed within a stipulated period of time.
Employee Turnover: Riley, M (2014, states it is also essential for the HR team to find out the
productivity that has been obtained after the recruitment of an assistant manager in context of the
job role and the area of working that has been attributed to the manager. A good assistant
manager is expected to show more productivity within a short span of time.
Research: This method is useful in evaluating performance of existing managers. An overall
research is conducted by comparing previous performance appraisals with current ones in order
to find out the increase or decrease in turnover. If there is a decrease in turnover further
researches are conducted to find out the cause for the decline. The other factors are taken into
consideration while doing this research and likewise improvements are suggested.
Innovation: This is basically the assessment of the academic and interpersonal skills of the
manager. A manager who can quickly come up with new ideas on speeding up the growth
process, improving customer service standards and employee retention is considered to be more
innovative and lucrative for the organisation. Also the assistant manager is expected to be more
dynamic in his approach so that his ideas are considered more attractive once they come into
action.
Reward and Growth plans: There is a reward and growth plan not only for employees in the
various departments but also the managers. As per Suh et.al. (2012, p101), these plans are much
useful in motivating employees to perform better. If a manager can increase the overall employee

turnover then they are rewarded by the team. The team makes sure that the process of employee
growth is such that it is instrumental in overall expansion and development of the organisation.
After assessment of all these factors the performance graph of the assistant manager can be
obtained. A good manager generally obtains a score of 7 or more when assessed on minimum of
five factors.
Some of the utilities of a performance appraisal method are:
1. It helps in assessing and evaluating performance
2. It increases profitability
3. It brings out the areas of improvement and growth
4. It increases motivation and promotes teamwork
5. It ensures job satisfaction
6. It creates a healthy work environment
7. It increases overall output and productivity
8. It ensures improvement of customer service standards
Conclusion
The Hospitality industry has a huge scope of expansion and development. It is one of the largest
industries in terms of usage rate. However people do not find it lucrative as compared to other
industries due to insufficient wages, lack of skill and long working hours. This industry has the
potential to increase its turnover by multiple figures. People should be made aware of this
industry’s scope of growth and the benefits of choosing a career in this industry. For this reason
more efficient Human Resource Managers are required in this industry who are capable of
recruiting quality staff and proposing measures for development. They should be able to show
people the perks and benefits of choosing a career in the hospitality industry. Employee turnover
can be increased only if employees find this a lucrative profession for themselves. Incentive and
Protection plans for employees should be changed from time to time in order to attract skilled
labour. Also a specialised study in this domain can help people realise its potential for expansion.

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