week 10

Week Ten: Human Resource Planning

Revision and Review

• Moments of truth in service are significantly affected by human interaction.
• Employee satisfaction is crucial for customer satisfaction.
• Customer perception is directly related to the morale, motivation, knowledge, skills, and abilities of frontline staff.
• Responsibility for these factors lies within the organization, and effective development strategies are needed.

Seminar Objectives

• Address organizational responsibility in pursuing service excellence.
• Highlight key organizational responsibilities in attaining service excellence.
• Examine the role and importance of an effective human resource planning system in pursuing excellence.

Introduction

• The industry has faced a service quality challenge.
• Responses vary: some did nothing and failed, some followed industry leaders, and some became industry leaders by setting service standards.

Organizational Characteristics of Leaders

• Sponsorship of change by top management.
• Clear commitment to excellence.
• Proactive service leadership.
• Creation of a tangible service culture.
• Flatter organizational structures encouraging total involvement.
• Continual resource allocation.
• Commitment to people as customers.

Organizational Leadership

• Quality behaviors thrive in a supportive environment.
• The organization must enable and support quality initiatives.
• Commit total organizational capability to service quality improvement.
• Requires attention on multiple fronts (strategy, customer, systems, staff).
• Harness the creative power of human resources.

Getting Results Through People

• Customer Care: Customer becomes the prime focus.
• Quality Care: Common definition of service quality.
• Leadership Care: Management actions and behavior conducive to the mission (setting an example).
• Communication Care: Avoid misrepresentation of the mission.
• Total People Care: Internal marketing extended throughout the organization.
• The reality often differs; barriers exist.

Barriers to Employee Performance

• Management provides little or wrong priorities (profit vs. service).
• Breakdown at management/employee interface.
• Management is complacent and out of touch.
• Organizational structure and environment not conducive to innovation or creativity.
• Service staff not empowered to deal with customers (authority and skills).
• Lack of formalized/systematic human resource planning to ensure the "right people in the right place at the right time."

Comment on Employee Importance

• Many companies claim employees are important, but their actions often contradict this belief (Davidoff, 1994).

Personal Experiences & Barriers

• Wrong person, wrong job.
• Inability to perform.
• Unwillingness to perform.
• No authority to act on initiative.
• Lack of consistency of contact.
• Organizations should remove these barriers to achieve excellence in employee performance.

Developing the Human Resource

• Quality leaders understand the centrality of human resources to quality improvement.
• Strive to harness the creative and analytical powers of the entire human resource system.
• Starting point: development of a systematic Human Resource Planning (HRP) Process.

Human Resource Planning (HRP)

• HRP is derived from human resource strategies, which are integrated with wider organizational strategies.
• Leads to plans that are responsive to internal and external changes affecting organizational objectives.

HRP Defined

• Human resources are the main asset.
• Effective HR planning is important.
• HRP is "A strategy for the acquisition, utilization, improvement, and retention of an enterprise’s human resources" (HMSO, 1974).
• Should be viewed in the context of the overall strategic planning process and consider external market conditions.

Core Concerns of HRP

• Ensuring that a company’s future needs for labor and skills are met.
• Translating organizational objectives into terms of employee needs.
• Systematically forecasts an organization’s future demand for, and supply of, employees.
• Provides staffing requirements for strategic and operational planning.
• Indicates trends and likely changes in staffing resources to anticipate and plan for potential future difficulty.
• Provides a foundation for establishing an effective HR program.

Growing the Human Resource

• Development of a systematic HR plan:
  • Recruitment
  • Selection
  • Orientation
  • Training
  • Empowerment
  • Motivation
  • Reward
• Attention in these areas should ensure service consistency - investing in people.
• Human Resource Planning (Matching human resource needs to organizational objectives).

Selection vs. Training

• Many organizations invest heavily in training frontline personnel.
• Training is only effective if correct selection decisions have been made.
• No amount of training can solve service performance problems caused by poor selection procedures.

Recruitment and Selection Process

• Establish staffing need with specification/job analysis.
• Develop selection criteria.
• Selection strategy and tools.
• Determine where to look (internal or external).
• Select a recruitment method (coverage and cost).
• Screen applicants and develop shortlist.
• Interview short-listed candidates (2nd interviews).
• Check references.
• Make final selection and offer of employment.
• The need for orientation and follow-up.

Customer Service Perspective

• Appropriate training procedures are required to develop employee skills for effective service delivery.
• Involves developing both employees' technical and social skills.
• Aimed at improving the ability to perform to customer and organizational requirements.

Social vs. Technical Skills

• Traditional focus predominantly on technical skills (particularly in hospitality).
• Interaction, however, is predominantly a social experience.
• Social skills training may be a critical differentiating factor.
• Combination of both technical and social skills (what and how).

Profit Funding vs. Profit Making

• Good training often occurs as an exception, not the rule.
• Traditional attitudes view training as a drain on resources.
• Companies should view training as profit-generating, not just profit funding.
• Short-term organizational view prevails often to the detriment of long-term goals.
• Benefits clearly contradict this short-term view.

Importance of Training

• Enhances knowledge and skills and develops attitudes.
• Individual development and management succession.
• Equips staff to do their jobs.
• Optimizes staff performance - fewer mistakes.
• Prepares staff as diagnosticians.
• Teaches them how to be problem solvers.
• Vital to future staffing levels.
• Vital to remaining competitive.

Key to Effective Training

• Having a clear idea of the training objective.
• Examining which jobs are affected (performance analysis).
• Determining the particular knowledge, attitudes, and skills required for the job.
• Motivating people to want to learn.

Benefits to Employees (Through HR Planning)

• Employees will be better utilized.
• Employee and organizational objectives will be more closely aligned.
• Improvements in productivity and profitability.
• Employees can be recruited at the best time, for the right cost, and in line with future organizational requirements.
• Idle labor/oversupply can be avoided.
• Future skill requirements can be forecast and met.
• Likely redundancies can be anticipated and managed effectively.
• Customer demands/needs can be effectively met.

Key Aspects of HR Planning

• Analysis of present staffing needs.
• Labor demand forecasting.
• Labor supply analysis (internal and external).
• Estimation of likely changes by the target date - determines the supply forecast.
• Forecast of staffing requirements for the target date - determines the demand forecast.
• Puts in place measures/functions to ensure the required staffing resources are available when required - central to removing barriers to employee performance.

Effective HR Planning Requirements

• Depends upon management understanding and commitment to the HRP process and its outcomes.
• Recognition of the equal importance of human and other organizational resources.
• Understanding the critical links between external and internal environments and organizational strategies.
• Effective linkages between HRP and HRM.
• Provision of adequate staff, time and resources, and effective HR information systems.

Summary

• The hospitality industry is characterized by high levels of customer contact.
• Places the customer contact employee in an important position.
• May make or break the service encounter.
• Key to the eventual level of customer-perceived quality.
• Organizations must ensure they can at least deliver consistent service.
• Requires consistent human resource planning and practices.