Discuss about the Locational Factors for Tourism Employment.
This report develops a change management strategy for the organization -The Last Resort located in the Tasmania. It has been identified that tourism and hospitality industry in Tasmania is crucial to future economic sustainability of the State. The sector has started experiencing an unprecedented growth and it is determined to generate visitor’s expenditure of $2.5 billion per annum by 2020 (Buultjens, Gale and White 2010). This anticipation is a significant marketing opportunity for The Last Resort in Tasmania but TLR is currently in the need of some changes to deal with the internal and external marketing barriers and opportunities. The purpose of the report is to evaluate the current challenges and opportunities and then develop a suitable change management strategy that helps TRL to meet the growing needs of the target customers and enhance the business to the next level. Change is a common thread that could run through all business irrespective of size, age and industry. The nature and the environment is changing fast; so, the organization should change quickly too. Law, Leung and Buhalis (2010) also mentioned that the organizations that handle or apply change, will certainly thrive. So, by taking this fact into account, the following section of this report tells how the change initiatives for TLR should be developed and implemented.
The current scenario of tourism and hospitality sector in Tasmania indicates labour shortage such as lack of skilled chief, tourism professional and HR, and this is perhaps affecting the quality of TLR because the percentage of return visitors are decreasing. It has been identified that TLR is facing a set of challenges which includes shortage of skilled labour, decreasing percentage of repeated customers, threats from the proposed developments, and on the other side, employees serving the high end customers are increasing their demands. Another significant issue is that the brand image of TLR is being affected because Local Councillors claims that TLR is not hiring the regional labours and not providing training to the hired regional employees. However, when it comes to business opportunity, TLR also has the opportunity for developing a service such as the honeymoon package for people belonging to North Asian and India because the percentage of the visitors from these regions are always high. The following change Management Model of Lewin describes how TLR should utilize the opportunity and make changes to the existing operation.
The organization should understand that the change is necessary because decreasing percentage of returned customers indicates a significant threat to quality of service and if any action of improving quality is not taken, the situation could deteriorate further and applying solution then may not provide any positive return (Cummings, Bridgman and Brown 2016). In addition, threat from the external environment such as complaint of local councillor regarding not employing regional employees, could affect the corporate image of TLR, which could further negatively influence the customers as well. On other side, the organization also needs to explain the fact that visitors from North Asia and India are increasing as many newly married couples find Tasmania as their best tourist spot. So, here the primary purpose is, retaining those customers by providing the service such as best honeymoon deals. Dredge et al. (2013) commented that market environment is in hostility sector is in the changing state; thereby, failure to satisfying the changing needs could affect the overall business operation.
TLR needs to explain the fact to its employees that market environment has become dynamic, so to hold the customers, those changing needs have to be fulfilled. In addition to this, Human Resource manager of TRL needs to convince its employees who are serving the high end customers that their increasing demand from TLR can only be fulfilled when the firm as a whole is able to discourage those high end customers from switching to proposed developments – new hospitality project in Tasmania.
Change: According to Worley and Mohrman (2014), this is the phase where the employees begin accepting as well as adopting change. So, to reason with the employees and apply change, the manager at TLR needs to implement few steps. For example, the organisation needs to develop suitable training and development plans containing the theme such as employee communication development, hiring skilled people from the local environment and give them specified roles, training related to human behaviour and characteristics. Hence, the training and development program will help each level of employees. For instance, the people at TLR, who serve the high end customers can learn new skills to satisfy the clients such as providing them all essential services before they ask for during their stay. This learning program also helps to increase the experience of the employees which creates the base for their future career. So, TLR can reduce the employee turnover rate if they make their employees understand that training and development helps them to provide desired output and when employees provide a desired output, employees needs can be fulfilled.
Freeze: As put forward by Cummings, Bridgman and Brown ( 2016), this stage stabilizes how the company is supposed to go forward because the employees are ready to accept the new business process. In this stage, the organization support their employees in performing their duties. For example, to support the employees in performing their duties, the Hotel Manager at TLR should supervise and take feedback from the general supervisors about how the customers are being accompanied to their rooms, whether the visitors receive their meals and other necessary items on time. This supervision and feedback collection method should be 4 to 5 times a day.
As mentioned earlier, the tourism and hospitality sector is observing unprecedented growth and aims to create the scope for more visitors. More specifically, Tasmania is attracting 1.5 million visitors in 2015-2019, which is nearly an increase of 9% (Ruhanen, Whitford and McLennan 2015). It is expected that this growth should be supported by a developed, skilled and expanded workforce, which would help to deliver a quality product. In addition to this, it is also observed that the number of visitors from Northern Asia and India, which is a significant growth opportunity for TLR. So, the organization needs to share this good news with their people
HR and quality department at TLR together should persuade the employees about the change initiatives to fulfil the growing requirements of the external environment. The department can use an open communication approach to reason with the employees.
As The Last Resort is determined to take their business to the next level, the action of dealing with the identified barriers should be applied by aligning its goals of developing the overall services and operation. For example, presently, the level of cooperation between the departments at TLR is decreasing, so to resolve this issue, Functions and event manager emphasize on “open communication” approach in the internal environment. This approach helps to identify the issues of the workplace and this should be done considering the goal of developing a strong corporate culture.
TLR needs to resolve the challenge such as poor cooperation from the employees serving the high end customers by meeting the needs of those employees such as providing them with skills development training and internal career growth opportunities.
The organization should not wait for the success that is supposed to come five years later; rather, it should celebrate the short term win such as development of honeymoon package with unique deals and offers (Pollack and Pollack 2015). Such short term win motivates the employees to do better.
The entire process of changing the operation process and applying change to respective department, should be open to all level of employees. This means to sustain the process and receive cooperation from the employees, the organization needs to align the change process with its employee strength.
Once the success is gained, TLR needs to communicate and share the changed it has achieved, for example, the changed behaviour of employees such as serving customers with high quality service brigs more thigh end customers.
The following are three change strategies that will help to address the issues and opportunities identified earlier
TLR requires an appropriate training and development program because there is a clear skills gap in the workforce which is affecting the quality of tourism and hospitality services. Alonso and Liu (2012) also mentioned that tourism sector in Tasmania is not utilizing globally recognised training to the degree which it previously did. So, the organisation needs to develop an appropriate training program for the employees which will teach the labour how they treat customers, how they communicate the workplace needs to senior management and how knowledge sharing approach among the department should be practiced. The employees should be put under a 3 months of training which revolves around the managerial skills. Melissen (2013) particularly mentioned that over 60% of Tasmania’s tourism and hospitality workforce does not hold even a post school level qualification. This scenario is also reflected on the quality of services at TLR. So, this managerial education under a long time period may fulfil the skills gap and further create a positive scenario.
The present situation at TLR indicates that there is a lack of coordination between the departments, which has probably appeared due to lack of communication. Thus, TLR needs to develop an open communication style, where each employee can directly approach their respective senior leader to share the issue they face in the workplace. This communication method could help to identify the internal workplace issue causing employee turnover. In addition, Lockwood (2015) commented that open communication enable workers to create bond with their peers and supervisors. So, this open communication could address the issue of poor coordination between the department, as when the employees can frankly interact with each other, the chances of gaps between the departments becomes less.
The major issue in Tasmania’s tourism and hospitality sector is, regional labours are not skilled enough to get a job in the sector and due to this long existing issue, organisations tend to hire from outside the region (Solnet et al. 2014). Consequently, the regional labours are lagging behind, as no applicable actions are taken by the organizations, which further creates political issue. Thus, to avoid this issue, TLR needs to recruit employee from regional areas and train those labour appropriately for a long a period and then put them in action. This may provide some major advantages to TLR; for example, the firm can hire the cheap labour which cuts the cost of long-term training period. Buckley (2012) mentioned that the cost of hiring labours from local areas is less than hiring an experienced employee from the global environment. Moreover, TLR can receive governmental support because its hiring contributes to employment development in the State. Finally, this visible governmental backup strengthens the corporate image of the brand which is now an unresolved challenge for TLR.
The possible issues and barriers that might appear during the change implementation process is, the resistance from the internal environment. The employees may not accept the change such as improving themselves in a learning program under a new leader. Particularly, the supervisors and the senior managers at TLR may not accept the open communication style because there is an old cliché that open communication approach often leads to disrespect of seniors by employees in the workplace (Scott and Davis 2015). In addition to this, existing employees who were once hired outside Tasmania, may raise the issue of not interacting with newly hired people from local areas. There could be a cultural gap between the employees if the change is applied.
According to Hon, Bloom and Crant (2014), individual sources of resistance to change usually exist in the basic human characteristics as well as influenced by the differences in perception. So, it is essential to understand those triggering issues which could refrain individuals from promoting or accepting change.
Habits: The individuals or people are usually influenced by their habits in their way of working and they accept or refuse change relying on the effect which a change might have on the existing habits of the individuals (Klonek 2014). For example, existing employees who would work under a general manger hired from Australia may not like to work under a newly hired manager. The employees might think that their duties and obligation could be stiffer when working under a new manager.
Lack of acceptability: Some individuals tend to promote change and embrace a change activity happily while few individuals tend to fear the influence of change (Burnes 2015). For example, the general level of employees at TLR, who do not have sufficient knowledge about the functional process, may fear that due to change, their job role might be affected. Consequently, they resist to change.
Lack of communication: When applying change in the organization, it is highly essential for the organizations to communicate change to each level of employees (Klonek et al. 2014). However, in most of the cases, organizations do not communicate with lower level of employees. Consequently, the organizations deal with the barriers such as the hassle with the employee union.
Resistance due to structural limitation: As put forward by Klonek, Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. and Kauffeld (2014), structural resistance remains as the characteristic feature of bureaucracies, which emphasizes on stability, control and intact routines. Thus, lack of focus on these factors or lack of attention in understanding the ground of realities could lead to resistance to change.
When applying change to existing functions of the organizations or the structure, the major mistake that organizations usually commit is, not letting their r employees take the role. This means most of the organizations do not involve their employees in decision-making process. Specially, the large organisations with different layers of management do not consider the perspective of the employees when taking or applying a major operational decisions. However, Hon, Bloom and Crant (2014) mentioned that when stakeholder interest is involved in the process, it is wiser to involve the stakeholders. Thus, when the employees observe that their opinions are not considered in the process, they feel left-out and unmotivated. They might grow a laidback attitude towards their job responsibility.
Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood (2015) mentioned that change in the internal environment may also impact the external corporate environment. Particularly, as the change initiative, if an organization minimizes the prices of the service, which is lower than the industry average price structure, the organization is answerable to the regulatory bodies in the external environment. For example, in the case of TLR, if the new change initiative makes some alteration in the pricing of its service and deals, it might have to deal with the dispute which may appear due to the presence of other players in the market and the regulatory bodies.
The vision should be simple, specific as well as realistically ambitious. A vision based on ethics and the strategy could be best tailored to how the organization does business. However, it must have to entail zero tolerance for unethical behaviour.
Clear Communication: The change agents, managers and other regulatory bodies of TLR need to communicate with the employees about how the importance of change in the organizations, how the change is considered to be applied to the organization and most importantly, in the decision making process, employee opinions must be considered and this usually create a sense that organizations value their employees.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be mentioned that change is highly required in the area of quality and employee skills development at TLR. The primary goals of the change initiatives should include the development of tourism and hospitality services, integrity between the departments at TLR. Workforce integrity helps to deliver the services that market needs. In addition to this, TLR should apply its change initiative considering the developments initiatives in transportation such as helipad construction and ferry routes. This consideration might help to understand the background of the customers. Lastly, it can be mentioned that change should be applied on the basis of current situation; this firm should react based on the state of the market.
References
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