HR in the Hospitality Industry

 An Introduction to HRM: Human Resource Management

What is an HR department?

In simple terms, the HR (Human Resources) department is a group who is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (i.e., recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees) and administering employee benefits.

HR needs to understand the organization’s needs and make sure those needs are met when recruiting for new positions. It’s not as simple as just throwing an ad up on Indeed: you’ll need to analyze the market, consult stakeholders, and manage budgets. Then, once the role is advertised, more research needs to be done to make sure that the right candidates are being attracted and presented. Recruiting is a massive—and costly—undertaking; the right candidate can revitalize an entire organization, but the wrong candidate can upend operations. Human resources are in charge of arranging interviews, coordinating hiring efforts, and onboarding new employees. They’re also in charge of making sure all paperwork involved with hiring someone is filled out and making sure that everything from the first day to each subsequent day is navigated successfully.

 

Here are some of the tasks your HR department is busy completing every day:

1. Recruit candidates

2. Hire the right employees

3. Process payroll

4. Conduct disciplinary actions

5. Update policies

6. Maintain employee records

7. Conduct benefit analysis

How does HR support employees?

Besides the seven examples above, which are mostly operational responsibilities, HR provides less quantitative functions: It exists to help employees thrive.

After all, employees are the single biggest asset to any organization. It follows, then, that protecting their well-being is of utmost importance.

HR helps support the emotional and career needs of employees by,

Providing Career Growth

Stagnation is bad for business, and it’s smart to keep your best employees with the company. HR can provide career paths to help guide each employee to a long future within the company. HR can then check in periodically to further guide employees on their career paths.

 

Training and Supporting Managers

Managers aren’t born. They’re created. HR can help provide management guidance to managers, making sure that department and teams are as healthy and functional as possible. This may include periodically sending managers to formal trainings and retreats.

 

Supporting Health and Wellness

It’s important to remember that employees are people. They’ll need help weathering mental illness, health issues, debt, pregnancies, adoption, and myriad other life occurrences. HR can help support employees through any of these and other circumstances.

What is HR in the Hospitality Industry?

The hospitality industry which consists of hotels, restaurants and bars, event planning, theme parks, tourism, and travel) has a reputation for high turnover. This is the result of several factors, but being an industry that is 100% customer-focused can be stressful for front-line employees. HR is able to support employee satisfaction and retention to reduce turnover and contribute to the industry goal of providing excellent service.

There is a lot of competition in the hospitality industry, and the human resources department oversees recruiting and onboarding efforts. This gives us the opportunity to build a talent pool of individuals for the company. We can help shape recruiting strategies, provide market insight, and maintain a network of potential candidates.

HR is involved in onboarding, employee development, communication between management and front-line staff, job development, and more. We are a key influencer to company culture and can drive employee retention strategies across a company. Utilizing HR to drive employee satisfaction can set your business apart from competitors in the industry.

Because of the turnover, it’s important to have a clear recruiting and onboarding process. This process should set the tone for your incoming employees and candidates. HR should constantly build a talent pool to pull from when openings become available. HR needs to write clear and detailed job descriptions and be clear about the necessary qualifications. Specific duties could include:

• Helping determine the company’s hiring needs

• Developing a hiring process

• Writing and posting job descriptions

• Communicating with candidates

• Overseeing the interview process

• Sending out offer and rejection letters

• Conducting pre-employment screening

• Sending out new hire paperwork and collecting signed documents

• Measuring turnover and retention rates

Whether it be training, promoting, demoting, or coaching, HR is instrumental. Strive for clear, well-communicated policies and processes relating to employee learning and development. This allows employees the opportunity to plan for their personal growth within the company. Specific duties could include:

• Determining the company’s training needs

• Training new employees on their roles and responsibilities

• Conducting 30, 60, and 90 day reviews to give a refresher on new hire training

• Helping company leaders (and other employees) improve their leadership skills

• Helping employees create an individual development plan

 

Employee Satisfaction

From competitive pay and rewards—including benefits and employee incentives—to employee recognition and development, HR is the driving force behind employee satisfaction and retention. You should consider your unique employee base and choose options based on their interests and motivators. You can also choose to model common competitor practices. For example, it’s common for hospitality businesses to offer employees discounts on their services. You may survey your employees and learn that while they are interested in this, they'd prefer more team-building activities and options for healthcare. HR should take this feedback and create practices that bolster the employee experience.

 

• Working with company leadership to determine a competitive compensation strategy

• Planning and conducting team building activities

• Establishing an employee recognition program

• Holding workplace celebrations on holidays or other special occasions

• Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion

• Emphasizing employee physical, mental, social, and emotional wellbeing

• Providing tools to help people manage work-related stress

An HR department that never interacts with employees isn’t doing its job. While you’re developing an onboarding procedure, educate new employees on when to reach out to HR and what resources HR has to offer. The HR department should regularly schedule one-on-one interviews with employees to check in on their career progression, comfort in their roles, and any other issues the employee may be having.

 

Considering these responsibilities, employees should feel comfortable reaching out to their HR departments in these, and similar, situations:

 

• When you (or a co-worker) experience harassment or discrimination from your colleagues, including your manager

• When you have questions about benefits, including company-provided health insurance or rights guaranteed by law

• When your personal circumstances change (e.g. having a child, needing to reduce your hours, needing accommodation for a disability)

• When you have questions about advancing at the company, including opportunities to shadow other employees or participate in additional training

• When you need an objective third-party to work through a work-related issue

 

The human resources department heavily contributes to a company’s culture. If HR genuinely cares about the well-being of employees, the culture will be one of openness and growth.

 

Your genuine feedback, healthy criticism, interesting ideas for brainstorming and valuable insights are always welcome for overall improvement regarding such advanced topics and elevating discussions!

 

 

 REFERENCES

[1] Robinson, I. (2006). Human resource management in organizations. London: CIPD.

[2] Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of

Management Journal 33 (4) 700-701.

[3] Saks, A.M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7),

 [4] Shetty, K. K. (2010). Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Hotel Industry and Impact of Innovations on Occupancy rate – A Managerial Perspective.