UNIT 18 HRM FOR SERVICE INDUSTRIES ASSIGNMENT

Task A

a) Analyse the role and purpose of human resource management in a selected service industry

Businesses such as restaurants and hotels comprises the hospitality industry. These establishments are responsible for serving its visitor and quite often employ and recruit various staff members to efficiently accomplish various tasks related to hospitality industry. Human resource can be considered to be the most valuable asset of any hospitality business (Riley, 2014), Role of HR department is majorly focused on administration of employee-related activities that may be critical to smooth and successful functioning of the organisation. In other words it can be said that role of HR as a business function is to provide proper support to the organization by freeing up management to concentrate on other critical business functions in the hospitality industry.
Core purpose of the hospitality industry is to cater to people, and only those hospitality business can be considered to be successful which make it a priority to expertly serve their guests and provide complete customer satisfaction from their services. In this endeavour HR has a major role as it is responsible for recruitment of good employees and train them to become efficient and great employees who have flair to serve others and enjoy their job responsibility. Compensation and benefits administration is another important task which the HR department's role has to focus on. This aspect includes making sure that wages and benefits offered by the organisation to its employees are competitive enough with other similar restaurants or hotels (Werner, 2014, pp.127-129).
Another important observation regarding HR in hospitality industry is that it can be considered to be a champion of employee morale, creation of employee programs for focusing on continued development and growth of high level of morale. One major aspect related to the HR department is to promote fostering of employee development through various methods such as mentoring of management as well as line staff, and ensuring that they get proper guidance through the various steps to achieve their goals. In various hospitality business HR might also be involved in creation of specific plans for its staff members to follow, recognizing their success and providing timely feedback and proper direction for areas which might need attention.
Protection of employees from any possible adverse or negative employment practices or policies, and protecting the organization from any possible employee litigation is a highly weighted responsibility of the HR department. Due to high business levels, quite often it has been observed that hospitality organizations may employ too scarce or too many staff members on its payroll. Both conditions are not recommended for a hospitality business, as in such situations a manager might end up scheduling employees either to work too many hours per shift or too many consecutive days, engendering a situation outside the limits of compliance with current labour law of that particular country in which the business might be located. Intervention by the HR department in a situations such as harassment etc. due to large and diverse staff is also a critical function of the HR department (Manoharan et al,2014, pp.1-9).

b) Justify a human resources plan based on an analysis of supply and demand for a selected service industry business

Human resource planning is an important part of entire HR management function. As discussed in above section, hospitality business might employ either too less, or too many resources at time, which might impact the overall operational efficiency and business revenue. That is why human resource plan is considered to be important part of any hospitality business. Human resource planning initiates with a forecast of the various types of employees which are required to achieve the organization’s objectives.
Majority of the hospitality businesses especially hotels in tourist destinations are seasonal in nature. For example, there business depends on the inflow of tourists, hence in a peak season of the tourism there might be high requirement of the human resources to manage the visitors, whereas in offseason not too many resources might be required. Thus there has to be proper balance between the demand and supply, due to which human resource planning becomes even more important. Forecasting plays a major role in achieving a balance between demand and supply of the human resources required at various roles in a hospitality business.
In general the human resource planning function involves defining an organization’s goals, establishing a well-structured strategy through which these goals can be achieved successfully and ultimately focusing on development of a set of plans which his comprehensive in nature and can help in integration and coordination of the activities. It is important to understand that activities related to planning can be complex or simple in nature, implicit or explicit, impersonal or personal, hence based on the environment of the organisation and its business objective the HR Manager or the person who is responsible for the resourcing should take decision regarding the forecasting of the demand (Naidu & Chand, 2014, pp. 156-168).Order Now