Problem Breweries of Hospitality HR - Need Focus on People

Supply Shortfall of Manpower in Hospitality Industry is going to be a challenging task in coming days as the problem is being precipitated to the many Hospitality Training Institutions also. Institution and Industry coordination along with the transformed HR Strategies and policies are the leading requirement and the issue need to be addressed without delay to timely mitigated the impact of the problem. Only effective HR System implementation can bring these changes. Hardly Graduates are experiencing the same what they have dreamt while graduating in Hospitality Management. What they are getting is nothing but situational exploitation due to the organization’s unproductive HRM practices and policies which need to be altered without delay.
Understanding hospitality graduate’s expectations is equally important key component in ensuring effective management

It is a misunderstanding that the hospitality graduate only look for a management position. There are people who also look for entry level, supervisory and junior management positions. Organizational Objectives and employees aspirations should go hand in hand. Disparity between expectation and reality, incompetent hiring system, quality of leadership and supervision are some of the common causes for the shortfall as well as failure to retain employee.

Aspiration for better pay, better work life and faster career growth becomes priority in comparison to liking for hospitality job and desire to excel as a hotelier.
We shall not do justice if we don’t mention the feed back of majority of the Graduates. The reason for disinterest is always not monitory but other hygiene factors also e.g. the way they are treated every day, lack of appreciation, lack of team work and the perception that the company doesn’t care about employees are consistently the highest-rated reasons for low job satisfaction. Behaviour of the staff, which is never supporting one to the new joinee and trainees, easily frustrate them. This starts distracting students from the attraction of Hotel Management despite having good objectivity & usefulness to the students. This approach of the industry is being filtered to future hoteliers thus affecting their motivation, interest and seriousness. By the time they pass out their genuine love for hospitality and desire to excel as a hotelier, are slowly giving away. The current hotel internship programme offer good exposure to the industry, but little chance to develop the applicant’s supervisory and managerial skills.
Working conditions and longer hours and lower salary are also some of the major reason to poor retention in the hotel industry.
The right way will be to manage and control their expectations and majority merely seek an element of recognition and discussion around and what areas of development would benefit both graduate and employer.



Why the turnover rate is so high among new entrants?
The issues and benefits of managing employee retention is equally important as a higher level of training and time investment have gone into both the recruitment and induction of a graduate.
High attrition rate is also attributed to amateurish training programme both by the Institution as well as by the Industry. “On the job training” is cheapest but most traumatic for employees, which leads to mistakes resulting in deterrent & de motivation. In many of the cases this is also among the major cause of developing lack of interest towards the Hotel job as students are not having any formal training schedule, proper supervision and guidance.

Adoptability and suitability to fit in the culture of a particular property as a professional is not insured in many cases during hiring process as well as during the course of the job. Job satisfaction will be helpful in motivating the employee.

Recommendation to Employers

Sincerity is needed from the organization to address the concern of the trainees, new joinee and of course issue of retention of employees.
Training and HR department should be manned with sufficient / required number of staff so that right training environment with objectivity is created which will automatically increase productivity of organization by effective utilization of trained man power.

HR department shouldn’t be neglected or treated as record keeping and payroll maintaining department. The investment here in turn will generate higher sales margins and profitability in the future with complete guest satisfaction. Productivity and Efficiency depends upon quality of people we have.
Professionalism need to be practiced and communicated that will travel down the line developing interest and seriousness among future hospitality aspirants.

Application of scientific approaches in Human Resources Management

Ensure the manager or supervisor of the graduate clearly understands the expectations of both the graduate and of the organisation employing the graduate. New joinee and Trainee should be given due deliberation from HR & Training department personnel as well as from senior employees.
Behavioural training to the senior employees on dealing with the new joinee

Ensure that Clarity in Job Description, Systematic and well structured orientation and induction with plenty of contact with management personnel

Formal well designed training programmes during various training e.g. Industrial training as well as during job training
Ensure salary and benefits packages are fair for the role and experience of the graduate
Give the graduate relevant, project based tasks in addition to their daily role
Escalating the role of the management graduate in various productive operations and management, so that some of their knowledge is utilized and they achieve job satisfaction and motivation level increases. Training for professionalism and multiskilling will help in productivity which needs to be evaluated time to time. Also it will lead to effective utilization of manpower thus reducing employee requirement per room.

More Industry-Institution interface should be included in the policy of Corporate Social Responsibilities of the Organization. Industry- Institution interface helps to get instant feedback as well as the need for training, Need of the students and sharing the need of the organization will help in a big way in right selection and to design Effective Training that will help in increase retention in future as well as learning of the employees.


Recognizing the value of people and maintaining regular clear communication with them. To Manage the long term career expectations, Career development, progression and succession planning for employees along with in- service training programme should be in place and need to be communicated via open, honest and realistic discussions and planning from the beginning. Make clear and define what needs to be learned, experienced, and achieved before any future role can be realistically considered. Parameters should be clearly performance based.

Retraining and motivating the best people is critical to the future.

Emphasis on building team culture
Employers that have senior management who are interested in the development of their employees will always be seen as a preferential employer for hospitality graduates.
Those organization paying attention to the retention of the graduate and employees will be least affected.
Higher employee satisfaction & pride will improve employees productivity & retention and will reduce both recruitment and manufacturing cost with improved service quality and standards as high quality service gives sales growth.