HR Recruitment and Retention: Lodging Academies of Learning
By Robert O'Halloran
Moving forward, to ensure optimal staffing, lodging decision-makers need to plan and assess costs, environment, morale, and the effectiveness of selection and recruitment alternatives.
The concept of attracting the next generation of employees is especially important for the sustainability and prosperity of the lodging industry.
Human resource departments in hotels must reach out to all the departments in a hotel and their recruitment and their selection and retention efforts to influence hotel profitability, guest service, marketing and operations. However, can hotels hire the needed staff to provide the needed service levels and quality of service? It is noted that hotels, casinos and dine-in restaurants are only now starting to come back to life. The industries that were hurt hardest and longest are now faced with reconstituting a workforce after other employers have already had their picks.
With so many companies across business generally and hospitality specifically, hiring at the same time, the best workers have options. Based on its research, the Mckinsey Report concluded that there will be a new wave of social, educational, technological, and economic changes in hospitality organizations.
The New Employees
The fact is that understanding a new generation of workers and the process of digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic has changed the whole game. The factors identified in this article include people analytics and automation, requiring specific skills and investment for staff to succeed and survive during complex economic times. Therefore, investment should be made in "people intelligence" technology. additionally, other criteria for success include, employee satisfaction and retention, investment in desk-less workforce, well-being and mental health, and workforce education: including reskilling and upskilling.
HR trends for 2022 and 2023 have and will include, flexibility, understanding all-in one employment management apps, prioritizing employee wellness, finding and investing in employee talent internally, offering record pay rises, owning the employer brand, and not neglecting the human element.
There is a new order in recruitment and selection of employees in the hospitality industry and across business sectors. The demand for high quality people is high! In the old days, there was what was described as a "warm body syndrome," which inferred an organization would hire anyone that is alive. Those days are supposed to be behind us, however, the demand for employees is so high, some operators are just hoping to have employees in place, if not the optimal person. During the Great Resignation, many high performers were promoted to managerial positions in an attempt to retain them. However, are these people qualified though education, training and experience to do these jobs?Â
The work to be done is to create, build and sell hospitality, more particularly lodging career pathways. There are great positions in hospitality and great opportunities, but we as a service sector do not appear to be packaging and selling those opportunities as well as we could. Similarly, in hospitality business higher education, the positioning of university programs was negatively impacted by the pandemic and is working to recover. In our case we are recruiting employees to be students. Noting parallel struggles for hotels and education.Â
The pandemic and subsequent economic downturn have had a significant impact on many industries and have changed them permanently. The role of hotel managers is about to change forever into a hybrid role, including more skills absorbed from HR managers, psychologists, Tech Geeks, and even university deans, or directors, in this author's case. Â For example, a dean or program director perform administrative tasks, hire employees, interact with students, and sets goals for a department, as well as handle the day-to-day running of their programs. A hotel can be thought of as a college, or an academy of learning, where a skill set includes handling technology, training staff, and managing the well-being among others. The question is how to attract the best employees and for education, how to attract the best students?
HR departments have to adapt to working with a staff that isn't physically present most of the time. Adding to the challenges, screening, interviewing, and onboarding new employees are being done remotely. Additionally, human resource professionals are also likely to work remotely or in a hybrid work capacity. This means that managing online portals and cloud-based systems is imperative to how human resources departments function daily.
Millennials have been entering the workforce for several years and will continue to make up a larger percentage of the staff at most companies. At the same time, members of Generation Z are graduating from high school or college and entering the workforce. HR departments have discovered that these younger workers have a different set of ideas and priorities for their professional careers. They want feedback on their job performance, and they want to collaborate on projects.
Human resource workers will have to adapt to these preferences and adjust policies to give young employees the flexibility and collaboration they crave. Some organizations are utilizing HR Apps for employee management. The pandemic was a catalyst for multiple and diverse apps for guests and potential guests to utilize so it makes sense that HR Apps for employees could optimize the employee management processes in a business. There are multiple potential benefits for HR Apps, including onboarding made more easy and efficient, enhancement of employee training experiences, development of assessment methods for learning and employee recognition. Additionally, HR Apps could make it easier for  needed documentation, enhanced communication and enhanced accuracy of payroll processing.
Another key topic that the new generation of employees wants is a focus on employee wellness. In current work environments, HR departments need a broader definition of wellness that includes, physical illness and stopping the spread of germs and disease, but also encompasses employee stress. Nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress in the wake of the pandemic. 87% of Americans feel anxious about inflation, and 70% of employees are worried that their compensation hasn't kept up with the changes. Therefore, businesses must have HR benefit options for employee and assistance programs.Â
Additionally, employees are attracted to organizations that provide great training, educational opportunities, even tuition reimbursement program that will all help the employee create and progress on their career pathway. A personal career pathway can also be a benefit for a company in that it may help with retention rates. There's also potential to use the metaverse for workplace learning and training. Meta is investing $150 million in creating an immersive learning ecosystem that will make learning more accessible through the metaverse. These and other topics note that upskilling will be a major differentiator in HR for multiple reasons. Lodging HR will need to enhance its efforts to build more inclusive HR practices, i.e. onboarding, development, promotion, and other people practices to create more inclusive workplaces where people feel like they belong.
Career Pathways
To create career pathways, lodging companies and their HR departments must set overt standards for career success. Overt should mean, employee input in the development of career pathways. Career development typically follows three steps : set a trajectory and communicate role benefits and requirements, find in-role opportunities for potential new roles and identify internal roles to achieve goals.
Additionally, lodging career pathways focusing on strategies to support strong talent and business outcomes in today's market include building an intelligence-based sourcing capability, creating an equitable internal labor market and building onboarding for optimal engagement. Companies will need to launch education and training programs that enable their workforce to utilize AI, automation, machine learning, data science, and other innovations that will rapidly change industries throughout the decade.
Obviously, competitive salaries and raises based on performance are essential and employee incentives must include benefits. A company raise policy needs to include market base pay for employees and also consider economic issues like inflation plus societal issues while benefits need regular review for companies to be current and competitive. Additionally, HR market research indicates that companies with successful employer brands receive 50% more qualified applicants and enjoy reduced hiring costs per candidate. This infers a disparity between independent operators and the well-known lodging brands.
Independent lodging operations must craft their HR, recruitment and selection structure for efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. The lodging industry must also consider new competitors for attracting talent, such as the broader service field including retail organizations, grocery retail, healthcare, HR recruitment organizations and more. Hospitality employees and the future leaders of the hospitality and tourism industry, who are inclusive of our hospitality business programs, are in demand from non-lodging industry sectors. Also, organizations more closely related to lodging are also competitively recruiting potential employees. These companies include property management companies and vacation rental organizations, etc. These potential employees have options like never before.Â
HR Duties and Responsibilities
The HR units of the future will likely have multiple duties and responsibilities that will include:
- Total well-being and managing workforce ecosystems
- Redefining remote and hybrid work strategies
- The evolution of the role of the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)
- Embracing the metaverse
- Creating purpose-driven organizations
- Employee inclusion across their work life cycle
- Upskilling leaders and managers
- Increased investments in deskless workers
- Algorithmic HR methods
- Reshaping workplace learning
Employees want clear communication and modernized policies. Additionally, they want better-designed workspaces and flexible spaces to combat potential loneliness at home, and workspace allowances to upgrade home facilities. HR experts posit that resistance to some degree of flexible working will put businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
Where Are The Employees and Who Are They?
Lodging operations and their HR departments have historically focused on permanent employees. However there has been much discussion of staffing alternatives. Sources for potential employees could include in-house talent, optimizing hiring criteria to the essentials instead of holding out for the perfect candidate, hiring freelancers or contract professionals who have the required skills and experience, building talent networks that allow the organization to reach out to job seekers proactively and training employees with the hard skills they lack instead of searching for new hires. For example, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is entrusting responsibility for the recruitment process for selected or all jobs to an external supplier. It includes finding optimal ways to attract job candidates and process applications for job interviews.
Originally, substituting temporary for permanent employees was intended to cut costs in payroll administration and fringe benefits and gain greater flexibility in the face of changing business conditions. The importance of recruiting scarce talent created recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) as one of the fastest-growing consulting services, with global growth rates of 22% from 2013–2015, 14% from 2015–2017, and 3.3 billion US dollars in contract revenue in 2017. This could be a viable alternative for lodging operators.
For HR units, managing permanent and temporary employees can create a delicate balance. Temporary employees want to be welcomed and treated well on the job. HR departments must manage employee markets to build a positive wok environment for all. Therefore, HR will become actively involved in managing its contingent workforce, e.g., integrate contractors, gig workers, and external contributors into the HR value chain. HR can also contribute to creating a more blended workforce ecosystem by adding value to external contributors.
Technology Tools
HR can play a crucial role in helping the organization figure out how to use the technology best. They will need to develop new hybrid working policies to ensure healthy metaverse working practices and teach leaders how to lead in this new environment. Some experts note that the majority of organizations will start managing employees with robots. AI and new technology can bring additional challenges related to fairness, communication, and inclusion. Additionally, HR units are moving towards one HR software app, instead of multiple apps to include: learning management systems (LMSs), and employee self-service (ESS), and benefits administration (BA).
Recruitment, Selection and Career Pathways
Some hospitality and tourism markets and communities are pursuing what may be called "Hospitality Hubs". These are communities that want to position themselves as the confluence of hospitality workforce. Partners, in such an effort, would be community colleges, high schools and university level hospitality management programs, as well as hospitality and tourism employers, tourism development areas and convention and visitor bureaus, economic development departments in a community. The general idea is to engage employers, students of all ages and teaching and learning institutions to partner and be sources of both job demand and a steady supply of employees and management talent creating the next generation of leadership in hospitality and tourism. Â
These work place environments can help customize employee experiences and blend personal and professional circumstances by offering more flexible work schedules and benefits, creating a shared purpose that aligns with employees' ethics, values, and politics and focusing on a holistic approach that considers employees' mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
Lodging companies, especially those in resort destinations, are also providing housing opportunities. Additionally, recruitment approaches could be, enhanced assistance with J-1 student visas and transportation assistance for employees.
Going ForwardÂ
It is clear that hospitality businesses in general and lodging in particular will need to focus on innovative recruitment and selection methods. A lot happens prior to recruitment and selection in terms of who, businesses are looking for (skills) and where will they find this pool of candidates?Â
Key terms in human resources going forward are likely to include micro-mentoring, performance coaching, upskilling, digital transformation, deskless workers (hotel and restaurant), upskilling, cross-skilling and re-skilling, environmental, social and governance (ESG), hybrid work, retention incentives, and much more. HR departments can't transform overnight and should not be in this process alone so perhaps the recommendation is to chunk their efforts and do a little at a time, always moving forward. Ultimately, the identification of innovative HR practices will include technology, employee environment, compensation, benefits and more, resulting in effective recruitment, selection, and retention.
Operators need to conduct task analyses to determine what exactly needs to be accomplished, what equipment if any will be needed and then document any skill audits. Helpful in this effort could be the Hospitality and Tourism Industry Model developed with the Employment and Training Administration of the US Department of Labor shared the Competency Model Clearinghouse. The model identifies the various tiers of our levels of our industry. These tiers are based on personal effectiveness and the academic competencies required.
Additionally, the model illustrates workplace competencies, industry-wide technical competencies, and industry sector technical competencies, all building to management and occupation-specific competencies.
Hospitality business college graduates strive to climb this career ladder adding tools to their backpacks as they go, positioning themselves (qualifications) for all challenges in our field and enhancing job specifications and job descriptions to be used by lodging operators. Current day employees will want input in creating new HR tools. The overarching goal for lodging is to development and create the mindset of its businesses to be Academies of Learning", serving the greater service sector and business community in general. Â
