Recruitment and employee retention: An empirical analysis of human resource development from hospitality services industry

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The scale of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industry is enormous. It has become the world's largest employer and, despite the global financial crisis, it is predicted that the decline in international tourism arrivals may have bottomed out (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, 2009). It encompasses virtually every country and culture and has its foundations, according to Baum (2006), in the semi-feudal European society. Today the industry has multiple facets and the terminology can become confusing. For the purposes of this paper we will use the terms tourism, hospitality, lodging and hotel industry, which will be deemed to include the leisure industry, interchangeably. These industries include multinational companies (MNC) such as McDonald's, Marriott, Hilton, IHG and Accor as well as smaller national companies. Although the following discussion will be focused mainly upon larger companies, it is acknowledged that the industry as a whole is primarily made up of small and micro businesses.

The paper addresses HRM in the hospitality industry by examining and analysing trends over the past five years. The literature review covers the linkages to the general management theory of HRM, which are discussed together with the constructs of “soft and hard”, unitarism and pluralism, and SHRM. The paper then focuses upon specific hospitality issues covering the application of SHRM in hospitality, generational influences and change, training, skills and service quality, impacts of technology upon the workforce, high-performance workplaces (HPWPs), casualisation of the workforce and outsourcing. It summarises the views of a number of industry executives and posits several conclusions and possible future directions for HRM in the hospitality industry.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Development of human resource management (HRM)

In order to understand the future role of HRM, consideration must be given to its origins and historical development (Nankervis et al., 2008). Both HRM and human resource personnel have been influenced by management theory, which has evolved as economic, social, political and industrial relation factors have changed. War, technology, globalisation, and unionism have impacted on the development of new management theories. The foundation of the HRM paradigm is based in the notion of the welfare of employees (Carey, 1999), as first seen in the 1940s with the use of welfare officers in organisations. Table I provides an overview of the stages of HRM development.

The welfare and administration stage of HRM (Table I) identifies a rigid and mechanistic process simply dealing with the mechanics of having employees and the need to hire, pay, and fire. A company aligned with this process was run by line managers who performed this function with administrative assistance. This is similar to the classical management approach that follows Taylor's scientific management principles and places emphasis on the drive for productivity rather than on individual employees.

The next stage moved to incorporate staffing and training, and saw the resurgence of unionism and behavioural science. In management theory the HR movement began to make a significant impact with the famous “Hawthorne experiment” and the ...