Staffing, recruitment, retention, skills, professionalism, experience. All are words that come up most frequently when conducting our research with hotel general managers on their key issues – not just for themselves but for the industry in general. These significant areas of HR concern have been widely reported in both the professional as well as mainstream media.
The research highlights the difficulty that general managers are experiencing in recruiting staff at any level. New applicants are increasingly hard to come by and GMs express concern that current education and training systems are not adequately preparing students for the world of work. This is not just an issue of numbers, but also attitude.
A number of academic studies have looked at the generational issues in relation to working within the hotel and hospitality industry, with a consensus that current generations of school leavers are looking for a different profile of work from what the industry offers. There is also a widely held view that the industry does not do enough to promote itself as an industry of choice, aspiration and opportunity.
The industry faces something of a dichotomy in that the very people it employs do not hold the industry in high enough esteem to recommend it as a professional career to their family, friends or acquaintances. The public, as customers, value and praise its products and services enough to make recommendations and criticisms through social media platforms, but it does not view the industry as a professional and satisfying career.
While that generates a public awareness and marketing challenge, there are also more fundamental cultural and operational issues that need to be addressed. General managers are looking to try to recruit and retain high-quality staff and to pay them as well as they can for the work that they do and the experience and skills they bring to the business. They also say they are committed to providing high-quality professional training, and that they actively seek staff progression opportunities and look to reward their staff for both their contribution and their loyalty. This is entirely expected of good employers in any industry, but does not seem to be a characteristic of the hotel industry that is promoted to the public.
Alongside staffing problems, there is a growing awareness that automation, in the form of robotics and the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), will have a significant impact on staffing in the future. The way that many occupations are developing and the level to which current occupations will be replaced or displaced by technology will both create new occupations and see the demise of some of the current ones. The hotel and hospitality industry is already seeing some of the impacts of technological development, through check-in kiosks replacing front desks, increasing use of sophisticated AI algorithms in booking engines, and indeed, some experimentation with robotics, including in food service.
As technology continues to develop, it will begin to displace a number of current occupational functions. This in part may reduce overall staffing requirements; however, the demand for service skills and the increasing personalisation of service is set to increase, not least through the huge demographic shift into an ageing population. Overall staffing requirements may not change, but clearly, the skill sets required to service increasing customer sophistication and demands will need to. Where automation reduces tasks in one direction, customers are demanding more personal service in the other.
Technology could well provide the industry with a higher public profile as well as creating different career paths and opportunities. There is a wider argument that suggests technology and automation may be in part responsible for people looking to change careers, especially where there is a reduction in job satisfaction and motivation. For potential “career changers”, moving to a people-centric industry where working as a member of a team delivering high-quality service is the key to success could be an attractive option. If the industry highlights and promotes the high levels of job satisfaction and motivation by working with people for people, this may become a significant alternative avenue for recruitment.
There needs to be a cultural shift in the industry to be able to recognise the different experiences and skills such career changers would bring and consideration of their individual professional training and development needs. The remuneration and reward structures need to be flexible enough to accommodate career changers and their training and development needs to be targeted, focused and flexible. Changes in operational leadership styles also need to reflect and utilise this new workforce’s differing skills and experiences.
For general managers to be able to sleep more soundly, spending time considering how to best recruit potential career changers and how to invest in their professional development needs would be time well spent.
About the author
Professor Peter Jones is the Dean of the eHotelier Academy. With a distinguished career in hospitality, education and training, Peter has been involved with national and international projects with clients involved in hospitality education. Peter is a Director of the Edge Hotel School and of Hotel Future, a new education and training initiative in Greater Manchester and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Derby. He was also awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the hospitality industry.
