Staffing for Service Comprehensive Notes

The Hospitality Service Staff

Section 2 focuses on staffing for service within the hospitality industry.
- Highlights the importance of people in the service of Coffee, citing Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks.
- Includes chapters on staffing, training/development, motivation, and guest involvement in value co-creation.

Chapter 5: Staffing for Service

Core principle: Hire individuals who are passionate about serving others.
Employees should smile, especially when facing customer service demands.
It's unrealistic to expect exceptional employee performance if the systems are the same as other organizations.
Learning objectives include:
- Recruiting for excellent guest service.
- Internal and external recruitment strategies.
- Screening and interviewing methods.
- Identifying skills/traits linked to service excellence.
- Focusing a service orientation for all employees.
- Importance of workforce diversification.

Key Terms and Concepts

Recruitment: the process of attracting job candidates.
Service Naturals: Employees who instinctively provide great service.
Selection: Choosing the best candidate from the applicant pool.
Human Resource Planning: Analyzing HR needs and capabilities.
KSAs: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities.
Job Analysis: Identifying job specifications and competencies.
Emotional Labor: Managing emotions to fulfill job requirements.
Emotional Relationship: Connecting emotionally with guests.
Surface Acting: Modifying facial expressions without changing inner feelings.
Deep Acting: Modifying inner feelings to align with required emotions.
Hiring from Within: Promoting internal candidates.
Succession Plans: Planning employee career progressions.
Unstructured Interview: Informal, spontaneous interview.
Structured Interviews: Standardized interview with pre-set questions.
Behavioral Interviews: Exploring past behaviors to predict future performance.
Situational Interviews: Assessing responses to hypothetical scenarios.
Assessment Center: Comprehensive evaluation of KSAs.
On-Boarding: Integrating new employees into the organization.

The Many Employees of the Hospitality Industry

Providing good service requires many employees in different jobs.
Front-of-house employees directly interact with guests.
Back-of-house employees or "heart of the house" support the service experience.
Management is crucial for hiring, training, evaluation, and coordination.
Legal and financial tasks are also essential for business success.

Serving the Guests

Frontline employees significantly influence guest experiences.
Exceptional customer service can make the service experience extraordinary.
Adding something extra and unexpected can create memorable experiences.
Employee (e.g., a flight attendant) made the flight a "wow" experience.

Supporting the Service

Excellent service requires something excellent to deliver.
Non-contact employees need abilities and motivation to support service.
Example: El Bulli restaurant's exceptional dining experience was supported by over 40 chefs.
Almost any service encounter requires back-of-house support.
Rooms cleaned, cooking, maintenance, full-time fire department by Walt Disney World.

The Role of the Manager

Hospitality is labor-intensive, requiring managers for supervision and coordination.
Managers handle scheduling, training, and performance evaluations.
Hospitality managers face unique challenges compared to product-producing firms.
They rely on subjective assessments like customer satisfaction.
Simultaneous production and consumption make the role complex.

Loving to Serve

The hospitality industry ultimately revolves around providing service.
Each employee contributes directly or indirectly.
"Service naturals" instinctively give great service and build emotional connections with guests.
Gross estimates that Service Naturals represent only one in ten of the available work- force.
Need to find, recruit, and select the 10 percent committed to excellent service.
Develop an effective process showing the rest how to provide the same quality of service that the naturals do naturally.
Skills are lacking in the people they do hire and train them in those skills.

Importance of careful recruitment and selection

Some organizations focus service naturals in guest-contact and others in support jobs, but truly excellent organizations try not to hire anyone unwilling or unable to provide outstanding service.
Entry-level jobs in hospitality have long hours, difficult conditions, and low pay, leading to high turnover.
Despite claims of hiring "the best and brightest," some managers hire anyone with a pulse.
Exemplar organizations know this leads to disaster: recruitment and selection must be planned and executed.
Critical for exceptional service organizations to find the employees who love to serve.

Recruitment and Selection Programs

Best-performing companies gain a competitive edge through effective recruitment, training, placement, and reward programs.
The selection process involves: (1) defining requirements, (2) recruiting candidates, (3) selecting the best, (4) onboarding, and (5) managing turnover.
Critical decisions include determining candidate criteria, sourcing (internal/external), using assessment tools (interviews, tests), and optimizing onboarding.

The First Step: Study the Job

Begin with human resource planning: analyze HR capabilities and needs.
Determine knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed based on organizational strategy.
Address current and long-term employee needs.
Consider the availability of candidates with necessary KSAs.
Develop plans to recruit, retrain, or hire from other markets.

Job Analysis

Analyze the job to identify required job specifications and competencies.
Identify KSAs for specific job functions (e.g., physically strong, skilled lifeguards).
Develop measures to test applicants' KSAs, ensuring validity and reliability.
Connect training needs and reward structures to critical KSAs.
Hospitality organizations must assess employee attitudes in addition to KSAs.
Staffing Principle: hire for attitude; train for skill.
Hospitality saying: “Guests don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Study Your Best Performers

Identify successful employees' traits, tendencies, talents, and personality characteristics.
Benchmark against top practitioners.
Hire employees with similar characteristics for potential success.

Develop Talent Profiles

Identify talent profiles based on research from organizations like Gallup and J.D. Power.
Use benchmark profiles to screen applicants.
Example: Theme park ticket sellers need empathic listening and interpersonal skills to upsell packages.
Extend this approach to entire departments, filling talent gaps through targeted hiring.
Companies like Choice Hotels and Marriott International prioritize identifying leadership competencies.
Competencies are identified by examining high performers' characteristics.

Leadership Competency Model for the Lodging Industry

Self management
- Ethics and integrity
- Time management
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Self-development
Strategic positioning
- Awareness of customer needs
- Commitment to quality
- Managing stakeholders
- Concern for community
Implementation
- Planning
- Directing others
- Reengineering
Critical thinking
- Strategic orientation
- Decision making
- Analysis
- Risk taking and innovation
Communication
- Speaking with impact
- Facilitating open communication
- Active listening
Interpersonal
- Building networks
- Managing conflict
- Embracing diversity
Leadership
- Teamwork orientation
- Fostering motivation
- Fortitude
- Developing others
- Embracing change
- Leadership versatility
Industry knowledge
- Business and industry expertise

Competency-Based Approaches: Disadvantages

Can be expensive to design for a single job.
Selection measures must change as competencies evolve.
Long-term helpfulness is unclear if employees are promoted.
To address this, Marriott and Choice developed generic competency measures.
Competency measures are anchored on current successful practitioners.

Other Key Characteristics for Service Personnel

Enthusiasm is crucial for exceptional service.
Enthusiastic employees create a "show" for guests.
They make experiences memorable, increasing the likelihood of return or repurchase.
Employees engaging in 'spontaneous, unrehearsed showmanship' can differentiate a service.
Authentic concern for guests is also important.
Employees must manage emotional labor by either modifying their facial expressions (surface acting) or inner feelings (deep acting).
Employees also burnout if they show same action or tire of complaining guests all day.
Must handle emotional labor, put on a show, care about the guest's reaction, and do it with enthusiasm.

The Second Step: Recruit a Pool of Qualified Candidates

Need a diverse pool of qualified applicants.
Consider internal (within the company) or external (outside) candidates.
Entry-level positions are typically recruited externally.

Hiring Internal Candidates

Many companies prefer internal recruitment. Seen as best practice in human resource management.
Advantages:
- Known Quantity: More accurate info about current employees.
- Internal Equity: Promotes fairness among employees.
- Experience: Employees know the business from the ground up.
- Knowing the Culture: Internal candidates are already familiar with company beliefs and values.
- Lower Cost: Reduces advertising and travel expenses.

Internal Search Strategies

Job Postings: Announcing open positions to employees via Intranet, bulletin boards, newsletters, etc.
Employee Records: Using computer applications to track skills, interests, and career aspirations.
Succession Plans: Planning employee careers over long periods.

Hiring External Candidates

Needed for entry-level jobs and when internal candidates are insufficient.
Advantages:
- New Ideas and Fresh Perspectives: Brings in diverse experiences and knowledge.
- Difficulties with Internal Candidates: Good line-level employees don't always make good managers
- Specific Skills and Knowledge: Access to skills unavailable internally.
- Diversity: Enhances diversity at higher organizational levels.

Importance of Diversity

Helps break cultural and racial barriers, increasing guest expectations for service providers.
Airlines hire multilingual flight attendants.
Embracing diversity is good business due to global travel and breaking down cultural barriers.
Contemporary hospitality organizations have very good reasons to foster diversity in their staff
U.S. Federal laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age (if 40 and over), disability status, veteran status, and genetic information.
*Diversified workforce will result in a better workforce.
Labor pool is becoming more diverse

External Search Strategies

Advertising: Newspapers, radio, television, associations, unions.
Colleges and Secondary Schools: Meeting with students to provide information.
Employee Referral Programs: Employees refer individuals to the company and often get a bonus if the individual is selected.
Employment Agencies: Using organizations to locate job seekers.
Employment Events, Job Fairs, Career Fairs: Attracting candidates for interviews.
The Internet: Posting information on the company website or job search service.
Temporary Employment Firms: Hiring short-term positions without committing resources to recruit, select, and train people.
Walk-Ins: Unsolicited individuals initiate contact with the organization.

Public Advertising

Still a common method for announcing openings.
Aggressive recruiters now segment their markets to reach potential employees.
Public advertising example: Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas used skywriting to advertise its jobs in CA.
Send a positive message to employees, potential employees, guests, and potential guests.

The Internet

The internet has turned Internet recruiting into a multibillion dollar industry.
Fit employees to jobs and companies they want.
Some companies have developed Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace pages as part of their recruiting efforts. (Companies must update their content continuously)
Company using own website to advertise openings.

Niches

Targeting specific segments of the labor market (e.g., high schools, minorities, senior citizens).
Offer older people the chance to have positive contact with other people.
*For example, McDonald’s offers McMasters, a nationwide program that identifies, recruits, and trains workers aged fifty-five years and older.

Professional Networks and Placement Services

Hospitality managers join organizations to find employees and ideas.
Networking enables the crucial face-to-face connection.

Student Recruiting

Develop pools of potential employees (energetic and recently educated).
Traditional campus visit by recruiters is the most common recruiting strategy.
Organizations can sometimes get students to work for them as part of a school experience (co-op, internship, or work-experience programs.
Some short-sighted organizations place young, part-time students only in simple, quickly learned, highly repetitive, and monotonous jobs that provide little learning experience and even less personal growth.

Employee Referrals

Good employees know what your organization is like.
A bonus of this strategy is that existing employees who bring in their friends feel responsible for them and their performance.
Some organizations pay a bonus to their existing employees if they bring in a job candidate who is hired and stays through a probationary period.

Employers of Choice

Publications list companies evaluated as Employers of Choice (good places to work).
Southwest and Marriott have a talented and deep labor pool even when the labor market is tight.
Being good neighbour enhances positive reputation among potential employees and motivating satisfied employees to say this is a great place to work.

Walk-Ins

Relying on walk-ins give advantage over manufacturing sector.
Almost anyone can casually walk into a hotel or restaurant and get a pretty good idea of what it might be like to work there.

The Competition

Scott Goss recommended seeking excellent employees in similar service jobs elsewhere.

Call-Back File

Companies call back unsuccessful applicants several months later to see if interested again.

The Final Applicant Pool

Selection decision comes down to two factors:
- How choosy can the company be in the selection process
- How well can the employee’s performance be predicted.

THE THIRD STEP: SELECT THE BEST CANDIDATE

Ideal candidate should be able to: quality of service, handle stress, handle failure smoothly and successfully, make each guest feel safe and special.

Screening and Evaluating Applicants

Many tools are available to help collect this information efficiently so as to make accurate hiring decisions. The more information that is collected, the better the potential decision can be.
The Application Form: include applicant’s employment history, education level, and conviction record.

The Interview

Determines if the information on the application checks out/what candidate actually like.
Most common method to help select employees, and (research shown) the least accurate.
Unstructured interview: Interviewers make up question with no way of scoring applicant.
Structured interview: Question increase like will assess all candidates to same criteria.
To succeed must be based on job analysis.
*Behavioral interview: specifically evaluate some instances of past performance.
*Situational interviews: involve hypothetical situations

Work Competencies

Interview closely connected to job analysis.
Assess competence of applicant to hotel front desk by asking specific questions.

Doing the Job as Designed

Assess candidate's willingness to do job as is designed. Ask about such aspects as willingness overtime, long shifts or working on weekends.

Commitment to Service

For positions with customer contrast, interviews include questions to help assess each applicant’s commitment to service
See whether candidate’s are true service naturals.
Assess service orientation by asking situational-stress-type questions.

Psychological Tests

Psychologists developed tests to distinguish one person from another( tests of mental health and personality traits).

Personality Traits

Five dimensions
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Emotional stability
- Openness to experience.

*Conscientiousness and emotional stability correlates with job performance.

Cognitive Ability

Helps employees process more information simultaneously.
GMA important criterion to use in selecting decisions.

Integrity Tests

Predict predisposition of job applicants to engage in theft, drug taking, and dishonest.

Assessment Centers

Measure KSAs of a group of people.
Measure seven key sets of KSAs including organizing and planning, problem solving, drive, influencing others, awareness of others, stress tolerance, and communication.
*High validity

References, Background Checks, and Drug Tests

Will often be conducted one candidate gets to the point of hiring
Check references(may involve recommendation letters)
Many candidates provide glowing references that may not really predict much, but manager still will look into references to make sure right KSAs and competencies are needed.
Criminal checks or background are critically important.
*Screen out people who use illegal drugs

THE FOURTH STEP: HIRE THE BEST APPLICANT

The difference between a good and great guest is indefinable extra that employee adds to equation. (Is right personality and is smart enough)
*Try to maintain strong relationship with all applicants.

THE FIFTH STEP: MAKE THE NEW HIRE FEEL WELCOME

Staffing process is not done until organization has ‘on-boarded’ new employee (to ensure the new hire feels genuinely welcomed).
Communicate company “culture” to new hires.
Gaylord’s Opryland Convention of the STARS is an innovative way to on-board its new hires in groups.

THE SIXTH STEP: TURNOVER-SELECTING PEOPLE OUT OF AN ORGANIZATION

While turnover has direct costs related to selection of replacement and training costs, it is an inevitable part of business.
Turnover has important indirect cost such as cost of disappointed customer.
For entry-level positions in the hotel industry, some estimate that replacing a single departing employee costs 30 percent of that individual’s annual pay.
Staffing is the first step in having the right human resources to give the level of service that customers want.

LESSONS LEARNED

Find the best people; train the rest.
Recruit creatively: Use the major search strategies, but try to think of new ones.
Carefully consider whether you should look inside or outside your company for new talent.
Build a large candidate pool; it will improve the odds of finding good people.
Carefully check applicants; are they the people you want serving your guests?
Know and hire the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to provide outstanding service.
Look for technical competence, strong interpersonal skills, and creative problem-solving ability.
Looking at internal candidates first sends a positive message to all employees about the kind of company they are working for.
Seek diverse candidates to enhance awareness of new ideas and trends.
Manage turnover with as much rigor as you manage the selection process.
You only get one chance to make a first impression with your new employees; make it a good one.