The benefits of cultural diversity in hospitality

The UK EU referendum debate is rapidly heating up, and at this point, it is fair to say it is entirely possible that the UK could exit the EU. If the ‘Brexit’ goes ahead, the UK hospitality industry may find it challenging to recruit staff and managers from other European countries.

Considering that the top inbound tourism markets for the UK are France (12%) and Germany (9%), followed by the USA (9%), Irish Republic (9%), and Spain (6%)¹, potential difficulties to retain or recruit European staff with language skills and cultural understanding may mean British staff and managers will have to develop good intercultural skills in order to cater to the future international tourism market.

However, statistics show that 26% of the hospitality workforce in the UK are migrant workers and 6% of the migrant population in the country enter employment within the hospitality industry². This means even if the UK does not exit the EU, managers and staff within the hospitality industry should still maintain a good understanding of cultural diversity.

Intercultural soft skills are not just about meeting the needs of international travellers; building and appropriately managing diversity in the workforce would bring a range of benefits to any workplace such as (Kandola and Fullerton, 1998):

• Employment of ‘best’ candidate: Attracting talent from the broadest range of people available will have an impact on organisations not only in terms of the quality of their workforce, but also in terms of cost effectiveness, particularly with regard to training time required.

• Positive organisational culture: When managed successfully, cultural diversity may enable employees’ full potential to be realised – in turn resulting in employees feeling valued, motivated and developed. This higher level of psychological engagement increases performance and establishes a more responsive, adaptable environment.

• Retaining talent: Organisations that manage their diversity effectively can improve their retention rates for different groups of people thanks to a positive organisational culture that makes employees reluctant to leave, thus reducing turnover and absenteeism costs. This may be particularly important in the service sector where high employee turnover is a norm.

• Flexible working arrangements: The nature of the hospitality business means flexibility is unavoidable due to long opening hours and seasonality. In addition, as the workforce becomes increasingly diverse there has been greater pressure on organisations to respond by being more flexible in all their processes, systems and procedures, and not only in their working hours.  Therefore, many service organisations inevitably acquire organisational flexibilities in terms of working arrangement, such as holiday, employee benefits, and terms and conditions of employment.

• Improved customer service: Through effectively managing diversity organisations may well improve their customer service. By developing employees abilities to communicate across cultures and understand the characteristics of a diverse customer base, organisations gain a competitive advantage over those who do not. It is claimed that having an organisation in which the workforce mirrors the marketplace is an asset in anticipating and servicing customer needs and demands.

• Improved team effectiveness: It is suggested that successful diversity management will lead to improved creativity, innovation, problem solving and decision making. Research shows that heterogeneous workgroups outperformed the homogeneous groups. However, this team effectiveness depends on various other factors such as nature of the task, ability of team members, personality of team members, or urgency of the task.

It is obvious, probably from your own experience, that cultural diversity within a workforce does not automatically generate these benefits. Managers need to ensure that they have a strategic approach to managing diversity and not all benefits can be achieved at once, i.e. some have to be achieved in order for the others to happen.

This is where a good understanding of diversity management concepts becomes useful. In my next article, I will discuss diversity management in the hospitality industry’s context a little more in detail before moving on to divulge more practical hints and tips.

Sources:

¹ https://www.visitbritain.org/2014-snapshot/

² http://www.people1st.co.uk/getattachment/Research-policy/Research-reports/Monthly-insights-reports/People_1st_Migrants_Insight_Report_Hospitality_V6.pdf.aspx

About the author

Yukari Iguchi is the Academic Lead, Hospitality and Leisure at the University of Derby Online Learning (UDOL). Yukari has worked in various sectors within the hospitality industry, including hotels, restaurants, bars and theme parks in Japan, Switzerland and the UK.

Since 2012 Yukari joined UDOL to share her knowledge of the hospitality sector with others. During her academic career Yukari also performed a range of roles including Programme Leader for undergraduate hospitality programmes, International Student Coordinator, International Collaborative Project Manager, and Online and Distance Learning Coordinator.

For more information about UDOL, go to: www.derby.ac.uk/online/home-page