HUMAN RESOURCE PLANS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

Human Resource Plans and Organizational Context

Human Resource Plans and Organizational Context

Introduction

The accomplishment of all these tasks requires high professional business competence. Moreover, the two last-named points require over-professional qualifications and qualities that are at least capable of development within entrepreneurial education and further education. They rank among the entrepreneurial key qualifications dealt with further down. Managers of big businesses have basically the same tasks but delegate the single tasks to the corresponding company units. (Thompson 2008 12)

One major task of leaders in the tourism enterprise is the development of human resources that in the hotel industry are core input resources in order to gain a competitive advantage. The relevance of employees in the service delivery process, his/her influence on the service quality perception and the increasing role of human resource management and employee satisfaction in service and tourism as a competitive advantage has been heavily discussed in the service management literature. Human resource management includes several areas of leadership and management activities, such as recruitment, development and motivation of employees, which will briefly be discussed below:

Recruitment and development of employees. The observation and interpretation of labour market changes as well as the positioning of the enterprise as a player in the labour market are two major interrelated problems for smaller enterprises in the hotel industry. Entrepreneurs have to assess qualification needs and set clear standards of qualification to maintain and develop a unique market positioning. Before employees are hired, job design and discretionary space of decision-making in the company should be determined. (Pettigrew 2000 58)

Communication, motivation and control of human resources. Information and communication strategies within the company strongly determine service quality and the organisational (service) culture. Entrepreneurial leaders have to carefully conceptualise and implement channels and instruments of communication. But in tourism (family) SMEs, leaders often have to face problems of nepotism and information/communication asymmetries.

Development and empowerment of employees. Research has shown that in the long run satisfied employees in service enterprises will increase customer satisfaction.

Hence, leadership tasks include workplace design and the implementation of a reward and incentive system geared to the companies' various service encounters. The entrepreneurial leaders have the choice to either design the service delivery process according to the customer and/or employees' needs between high and low complexity or between high and low employee discretion.

Employees in the hotel and catering industry have often left the sector for reasons of missing human resource management. Mainly bad manners in the company, not much praise, non-compliance with agreements, harassment by superiors or generally bad working atmosphere are important grounds for giving notice or leaving the sector. Based on empirical data, the following chapter shows how young apprentices in the hotel and catering industry assess the quality of business management or human resource management. (Lewis 2007 )

Technical training

One of UK primary attractions for foreign hotel chains has been its large, relatively well-educated human capital (the literacy rate is approximately 95 per cent and university enrolment is very ...