Discuss about the Cultural Diversity amongst the Employees in the Hospitality Industry.
Diversity is the variety of factors that differentiate one individual from another. It can be on the basis of age, gender, culture, religion, sexual orientation, social status and personality. Many global companies credit their diverse employees for their success. The businesses which run successfully across various latitudes and longitudes have culturally diverse employees. Culture diversity is the diversity of human on the basis of different cultures and societies. These cultures and societies help build his value system. Cultural diversity also takes into account the religion, language, race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The companies started to accept this diversity in early 2000s due to changes in demography and workforce (Canas and Sondak, 2014).
This essay focuses on the cultural diversity amongst the employees in the hospitality industry. Managing people across varied cultures has become very important aspect of this industry. People from various cultures come together in hospitality to work together and this provides newness to the company’s environment and helps in handling diverse customers as well. However, this also poses certain challenges for the management to coordinate the diverse staff and maintain harmony amongst them. These diverse employees have varied history, traits, language and come from different location. Thus, they have varied needs that shall be coordinated with that of the company to motivate them to excel in their respective jobs. Depending upon the culture, they may have different areas of expertise as well. Cashing on those can prove to be fruitful for the organization. For example, French are believed to have food knowledge of healthy food and wine, while an American can have hardcore management acumen that can help manage the organization more professionally (Abramson, Moran and Harris, 2014).
Collision of different cultures in the workplace may have great impact on the whole organization. Thus, cultural diversity and its awareness can be very useful and profitable for any company in tourism and hospitality industry. Employee’s cultural background also effects how they act on a given situation, how they communicate with each other, whether they are team player or individual worker, and what is their approach towards task completion. For example, for Germans truth is of utmost importance, while for English they prefer things not being poked unnecessarily. Japanese bow while greeting each other and not prefer to shake hands while in western countries it is a common practice. Thus, different cultures affect the overall working of the organization by bringing in their individual value system in it (Singal, 2014).
Cultural diversity in tourism and hospitality industry facilitates cultural exchange on global level. Hospitality industry gives a great opportunity to the employees and tourists to learn about various places and cultures. Every employee thus needs to be trained to respect and appreciate various cultures. This would help them attend to various guests with equality and do justice to their jobs. Working in diverse environment enables one to understand other cultures, religion and language easily and appreciate it. This knowledge cannot be left upon the hand of personnel who might not completely appreciate the knowledge and diversity of guests coming from around the world, despite having the best intentions. Employees with diverse background can help design and implement the corporate vision and mission that would help company grow globally. The well comprehended vision would facilitate understanding and appreciating different cultures and also ensure satisfactory delivery of the services through effective communication and service standards (Aitchison, MacLeod and Shaw, 2014).
Higher level of management is most visible face of the company in the competitive environment. Cultural diversity at this level would enable the business to portray and develop a positive image of the company. The image would portray that the company is inclusive in this nature and provides equal employment opportunity to all the cultures and sections of the society regardless of their religion, race, nationality, gender etc. Further, cultural diversity is crucial for hospitality and tourism industry at all the levels. To acquire talented pool of employees, the recruiter needs to be open to diversity. The culturally diverse top management would promote the recruitment of culturally diverse employees at all the levels. Also the new talent would be keener to apply and work in such diverse company where he can learn about various other cultures as well. Organizations that discriminate are not promoted and appreciated by youth of this century (Reynolds, Rahman and Bradetich, 2014).
Diverse workforce creates a competitive advantage for the organization by improving staff’s morale which in turn increases the employee retention of the organization. The customers in hospitality and tourism industry come from various locations on the globe. Culturally diverse workforce brings stronger cultural approach and understanding of the varied clients that they are serving. With the increased growth of social media, it takes no time for companies to grow or fall. Hotel and tourism industry is most vulnerable of all. Having diverse workforce and servicing clients by understanding them can prove to be a great deal for the organization to promote itself in the market (Hult News, 2017).
The tourism and hospitality industry needs to account upon the cultural diversity in the organization. If a business fails to do so, it may set itself as a bad example in the industry and tends to lose the number of clients who may come from various cultures. The big chains of businesses are usually present in a number of cities. For example, Four Point by Sheraton is available in a variety of countries and cities. Thus it shall have a pool of faithful customers who would like to book it at all the possible locations. However, if the hotel does not have diverse staff in all its location to take care of variety of clients, its customers would feel new uniqueness in the hotel in that particular location. This may lead to boredom and clients may want to shift to other hotel which has local culture to offer along with their standards of service. This way, the hotel would lose its customer to another chain which is more adaptive in its nature (Suedekum, Wolf and Blien, 2012). This example is more appropriate for the diverse locations which have unique style and culture. The hotels in such locations are booked only on the basis of unique experiences they offer to their customers. The businesses shall thus focus on exploring the cultural diversity of their local talent along with their standard employees in order to serve better experience in terms of food, culture, language and experience. The businesses can also explore the type of tourists visiting the particular area based on cultural diversity and provide services which amalgamates there style with the local style. This way they would not lose on the customer for not being adaptive and competitive enough (Kalargyrou and Costen, 2017).
As found in one of the Glassdoor surveys, majority of the job seekers prefer diversity while evaluating the company. If the company isn’t culturally diverse enough, it portrays being closed minded and not adaptive enough to promote multicultural environment. This would reduce the talent pool of the employer and only a few bunches of people who might be merely motivated by the money would be interested in applying in such company. Thus the company might have to compromise on the quality of staff it recruits. Also when an employee may not feel appreciated on the grounds of his culture and society, he might be less loyal towards that company and shift at the first opportunity available to him ( Hult News, 2017.
In order, to improve their position as a culturally diverse company, the management needs to understand how it can manage its diverse workforce. Managers shall different cultures share different experiences. They need to sync these experiences and values to strengthen the core of the company. The managers shall create programs that help employees share each other’s culture and increase awareness about various cultures. This shall improve the employee’s attitude towards various cultures and appreciate the shared point of views. Further, it shall help employees become flexible to communicate with one another and help solve confusions faced in relation to alien culture which they may have to deal with while serving the clients (Gong, 2012). The companies shall also conduct training and education sessions for their employees to understand and be sensitive towards differences. This training would help them become competitive and successful in conducting their jobs better. Cross – cultural training at higher levels would help managers to gain knowledge different cultures and develop managerial skills to tackle diversities in foreign markets and have a competitive edge over managers of other companies. Another important practice shall be to provide equal opportunities to all. Negative stereotype should be avoided. Everyone shall be given equal chance of proving his/her capabilities. Pre-employment screening shall also be fair. The interview shall be similarly structured for all the applicants and cultural sensitive test should be conducted. HR department shall be regular with their measures of practicing fairness with the employees from different cultural backgrounds. Such company would have an upper hand over its competitors with satisfied employees and diverse cultural setup (Boella and Goss-Turner, 2013).
References
Abramson, N., Moran, R. and Harris, P. (2014). Managing cultural differences. 9th ed. London: Routledge.
Aitchison, C., MacLeod, N. and Shaw, S. (2014). Leisure and tourism landscapes. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis.
Boella, M. and Goss-Turner, S. (2013). Human resource management in the hospitality industry. 9th ed. London: Routledge.
Can?as, K. and Sondak, H. (2014). Opportunities and challenges of workplace diversity. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson.
Gong, Y. (2012). Managing cultural diversity in hospitality industry. Las Vegas: University of Nevada, pp.20-27.
Hult News (2017). How cultural differences impact international business in 2017 – Hult News. [online] Hult News. Available at: https://www.hult.edu/news/cultural-differences-impact-international-business/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
Hult News (2017). 13 benefits and challenges of cultural diversity in the workplace in 2017 – Hult News. [online] Hult News. Available at: https://www.hult.edu/news/benefits-challenges-cultural-diversity-workplace/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
Kalargyrou, V. and Costen, W. (2017). Diversity management research in hospitality and tourism: past, present and future. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(1), pp.68-114.
Reynolds, D., Rahman, I. and Bradetich, S. (2014). Hotel managers’ perceptions of the value of diversity training: an empirical investigation. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(3), pp.426-446.
Singal, M. (2014). The business case for diversity management in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 40(2), pp.10-19.
Suedekum, J., Wolf, K. and Blien, U. (2012). Cultural Diversity and Local Labour Markets. Regional Studies, 48(1), pp.173-191.
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