The Role Of Human Resource In Corporate Strategy: A Case Study Of The Hospitality Industry

Functions of Human Resource and Corporate Strategy

Question:

Describe about the  Key Elements of HR Strategy?

In early 20^th century, the concept of human resource came along with Frederick Taylor. It was Taylor who explored the scientific definition of management (Klikauer, n.d.). In order to improve the economic stability in jobs related to manufacturing industry, Taylor highlighted labor as one of the principle input in manufacturing process. Then the research on Human Resource grew from Elton Mayo to Abraham Maslow, Max Webber, Kurt Lewin David Mc-Clelland and Frederick Herzberg(McGuire, Garavan and Dooley, 2012).

Today Human Resource is known as the set of individuals who jointly makes the Organizations workforce of an economy or business sector. Today human resource is considered as Human Capital (Mayo, 2012). Personnel management has been replaced by the term Human Resource Management. Human Resource Management is a coherent and strategic concept introduced to and Organization’s management. Today the Human resource management is considered as the most valued asset of an organization.

1. The HR is considered to be the intrinsic part of an organization: In the process of management, human resource management comes along. All the managers of an organization perform this function rather than just the personnel managers only (Stead, 2014). The basic responsibility is undertaken by a manager in order to get the best out of the people of the organization.

2. The omnipresent tasks of an HR: Human resource management is considering performing one of the omnipresent functions in a management. These kinds of responsibilities are given to a manager not to hand over to any other person. The hr is responsible for help in managing people, securing advice, managing experts of special competence in industrial relations and personnel management (Bach and Edwards, 2013).

3. Human resource is considered as a basis of a foundation: the human resource infuse all the core areas of a management, such as financial management, marketing management, logistic management and production operation management (Bohlander and Snell, 2004). This means that personnel functions are performed in every department.

4. The Human Resource is all about people-centric tasks: the human resource management is relevant in all types of organization being people-centric approach (Notter and Grant, 2011). The industrial enterprise are divided into various levels, they are:

a) Blue collar: blue collar is merely an occupational classification. They are distinguished workers who do work manually. Similarly the other types are known as white collars, whose job is more professional. Blue collar people have to do jobs with the help of their physical capabilities. Certain blue collar people have to skilled for a particular job (Lavelle, 2012). Many blue collar people perform tasks which are easy to do and require less skill. For example blue collars on Hotel industry are plumbers, mechanics, structural workers and electricians majorly.

b) Managerial and Supervisory personnel: the managerial or the professional task is performed by the white collars whose works are done generally in an office cubicle. There is also another set of employees who are termed as “Pink Collar” who performs the job of interacting with the customer (Definitions.uslegal.com, 2015) For example in a Hotel Industry the managerial or the professional workers are the general manager, the sales and executive manager of a hotel, the HR manager etc.

c) Non-professional personnel: Workers with low skill and little or no experience are known as non professional workers. The clerical workers that require low skill in a hotel can be one of the examples for non professional workers.

The Hospitality Industry

The functions of human resource are not a one-shot process. It requires continuous efforts and accomplishment to smoothly achieve the goals of an organization.

The basic objective of this study is to establish that any organization should include its corporate strategy in terms of its human resource landscape. It focuses on what an HR should ensure as the key elements for HR strategy implementation. But more than finding out about what is the key strategy; let’s have a glance at the functions of an HR:

• Recruitment: the recruiters or specialists on employments (consultants) success lie in the time and the number of positions being filled. The recruiters are credited for creating a healthy workforce in an organization.
• Training and development: the employers or the recruiters must provide the tools for success. They are orientation training, an introduction to the job profile, and to see whether the new employees are getting acquainted with the organizational culture.
• Safety: it is highly recommended for HR managers to ensure security and safety of an employee in the organization. In that context, one of the vital functions of an HR is to mandate logs for fatality reporting and workplace injuries.
• Compensation and benefits: the HR manager has to maintain a database popularly known as HRIS (human resource Information System) in order to keep a record of the employees. This helps in having a record of the employees, their performance and their compensation. Whether they received their pay in a month, or incentive they’ve earned. Whether any employee had a salary increment or not.
• Employee relations: generally most organization faces a unionized work environment, the labor and employee relations work function in handled by the HR manager. Employee relations are the HR restraint which is concerned with intensification of the employer-employee relationship through evaluating job satisfaction, employee resolving workplace conflict and engagement.
• Compliance: the HR personnel have to keep abreast of all the legal rights of the employees, so that future conflicts never pave a way. Non compliance may result in unfair employment practices, general dissatisfaction with work environment and unsafe conditions of working which will ultimately lead to low productivity and profitability.

These are the vital functions that a HR manager has to perform. In respect to corporate strategy HR managers have their key role to play. The following discussion proceeds in respect to a Hotel Industry where hospitality sector is wider in concept.

The service of providing accommodation is known as Hospitality, and the sphere where these kinds of activities are done is known as Hospitality industry.  The revolution of hospitality started with

• Skill Shortages: there are certain general characteristics that are required for employees under Hospitality management but then specific skills are also required in hospitality management (Baum, 2012). Ex: in order to be a chef like Pete Evans, one requires certain skills like they must have interest for foods and good taste buds. Leadership and communication is also another type of qualification which is also required in managerial level in almost every industry.  Ex: the lack of leadership quality is another reason of the downfall of Lehman Brothers.
• Deprived productivity performance: productivity matters, if the house keeping services witnesses a severe low productivity, like low punctuality, lack of interest in work etc may result in complaints from customer (Boella and Goss-Turner, 2013). Similarly if the workers of an automobile industry make low productivity then the output gets affected. Ex low productivity of aircraft engineers might lead to aircraft technical fault.
• Change in norms of the Organization. Apart from basic Ethics of the company, certain Organization might change its routine or norms; in that case the HR has to alter its policies accordingly.
• Changing role of Government: Government has been a major factor for hotel industry. Hotel industry is a vital part of tourism; therefore if the government changes the tourism norms then it is likely for a hotel to abide by it (Workpermit.com, 2015). Hence the HR department has to keep pace with change role of Government. This also affects hugely in import and export industry also.

The strategic hospitality human resource management is a new context that explores human resource in the unique environment of Hospitality and hotel management (Ccsenet.org, 2015). To implement an effective human resource tool, skilled hospitality managers and managers with high qualification and solid grounding are brought under one roof (Hayes & Niemeyer, 2009). As the global economy is facing instability worldwide, the decision making task has become as fast as possible process.

Proper planning: industries which require a huge amount of interaction with its customers throughout 24 hours and for 365 days has very few chances for further success. For years it has been termed as people staffing, personnel and workforce development and recently human resources. The responsibility remains similar to every staff size. Today the HR management team requires being good communicators to successfully convey their message. They also must possess the quality to work under immense pressure because crisis prevails in every situation. This crisis can be categorized like technical problems, staffing shortage etc.

1. Aligning the organizational and Human Resource requirements: the business strategic imperatives remains at the core of HR policy and in order to merge the organizational and needs of Human resource a question arises, does the internal capabilities of the organization achieves its business goal?

The HR personnel are often criticized of not comprehending the business goals and its requirements. In hotel industry it is a very important task of HR personnel. The HR has to make sure the overall manpower productivity is a major factor of profitability for the company. The same thing happens in other industries also.

2. Developing effective HR Strategy: In hotel industry, the HR manager plays the role of a consultant and in most situations they had to take part in board meetings. An effective HR strategy helps to monitor progress and team work helps to make the organization abide the law and ultimately results in flawless operation (Tesone, 2010). In manufacturing Industries like NAT STEEL Singapore the HR strategy helps in the productivity level and the continuity of good service.

3. Evaluation of Organizational performance: the HR manager has to keep a record of the progress of the staffs in a Hotel. Like for the cleaning department, each staff has their reporting time, their attendance, working time and number of tasks done. Similarly in a BPO call centers the same thing counts only in case of tasks the number of call attended is evaluated.

Tools of HR Strategy Implementation

4. Effective organizational structure and design: one of the key tools of HR strategy is designing the organization and structuring effectively that helps in keeping a systematic format for the organization. In hotel industry a proper structure sets the climate and so does in other industry. Moreover it makes the employees and staffs more acquainted to the organization.

5. Strategic way of resourcing: the strategic resourcing is about identifying the critical components of an organization. It refers to the function of selecting the right people, attracting them and assessing them. Like a 5 star hotel needs to recruit a qualified receptionist who will be excellent in customer service. In banking sector also this kind of qualities are required from customer service officer. Thus the strategy to be applied here is recruiting the right candidate.

6. Developmental strategy: It works in three level team, group and individual. Developing individuals by training. Ex: training for the store service staff for better service. In insurance company like wall mart they require to train their sales people for effective selling.

7. Reward strategy: also known as compensation and benefit, where the compensation, increment and incentives are decided by the HR manager. In hotel industry extra pay for extra work at night shifts are rewarded.

8. To set the Organization’s culture: the HR department sets the organizational culture that makes goodwill for the organizations atmosphere and sets the climate right. In banking sector good work environment, supportive colleagues and good management leads a good work culture (Smith, Stewart and Haimes, 2012). Thus one of the key tool is Organizational culture.

Conclusion:

Service sector covers a mass of services by humans. This requires specific skill to make the service effective. Services are intangible which cannot be corrected once it goes wrong. The Hospitality management is typically dependent to the marketing and service of the organizations.  Good service brings loyal customers. Hence it is very much necessary that key tools for strategic management is required in Hospitality management.

References

Bach, S. and Edwards, M. (2013). Managing human resources. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Baum, T. (2012). Human resource management in tourism: a small island perspective. Int J Culture Tourism Hosp Res, 6(2), pp.124-132.

Boella, M. and Goss-Turner, S. (2013). Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Bohlander, G. and Snell, S. (2004). Managing human resources. Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western.

Ccsenet.org, (2015). [online] Available at: https://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijbm/article/viewFile/8336/8818 [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].

Definitions.uslegal.com, (2015). Pink-Collar Worker Law & Legal Definition. [online] Available at: https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/pink-collar-worker/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].

Klikauer, T. (n.d.). Seven moralities of human resource management.

Lavelle, J. (2012). Blue collar, theoretically. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Mayo, A. (2012). Human resources or human capital?. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

McGuire, D., Garavan, T. and Dooley, L. (2012). Fundamentals of human resource development. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Notter, J. and Grant, M. (2011). Humanize. Indianapolis, Ind.: Que.

Smith, A., Stewart, B. and Haimes, G. (2012). Organizational culture and identity. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers.

Stead, W. (2014). Sustainable Strategic Management. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Tesone, D. (2010). Principles of management for the hospitality industry. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann.

Workpermit.com, (2015). Australia experiencing shortage of hospitality and tourism workers – Apply now!. [online] Available at: https://www.workpermit.com/news/2012-02-07/australia/australia-experiencing-shortage-of-hospitality-and-tourism-workers-apply-now.htm [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].