HEADING TEXT

Managing the
International
Hospitality
Service
derby.ac.uk
 [email protected]

Managing the International Hospitality Service

Experience
 [email protected]
Dr Faith Samkange

Week 7: Staffing, Service Quality and Customer

Experiences Satisfaction and Loyalty
  Exploration of staffing issues
with direct reference to
Session Focus service quality and the
management of customer
experiences.
 Personal reflection on
managerial competencies and
capacity to deliver customer
service excellence
 Introduction

Share your staffing

experiences?
 Staff retention and talent management
Post Covid19 pandemic
 Health and safety
 Operational challenges
 Economic viability threatened/sustainability issues
Disruptive technologies transforming workplaces
 New skills and knowledge/redundancy
 Changing values the most difficult problem
Key Staffing  The need for a creative and innovative mindset
Issues Facing Cultural working environment evolving
the Industry  Generational issues
 Diversity and Inclusivity
Today
 Struggle to keep staff not consistent with
service excellence delivery
 Unsociable working hours 69%
 Low pay 63%
 Lack of career prospects 35%
 Staff retention rate of just over 70%
 Need to review work environment
 https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/hospit
ality-struggling-to-keep-workers
Staff Retention Study  Institute of Hospitality 2019 supports emphasis on
(Heyndyk (2018) effective communication and generational
management issues
 Staffing Issues and
Customer Experiences
 Link between service quality management,
customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
and staffing challenges
 The role of the manager critical in delivering
customer excellence
 The need for appropriate competencies even
greater now given the challenges identified
earlier which is further compounded by the
evolving consumer trends and behaviour
Consumer Behaviour Challenges
with Staffing Implications
Consumer Behaviour Challenges
with
. staffing Implications Continued
 The Compensation era
 Consumers know their rights
 Mistakes in service delivery increasingly becoming
legal
 Demand for compensation
 Many organisations operating in the “Red Ocean”
 Higher levels of competition
 Customer satisfaction alone doesn’t guarantee loyalty
and competitiveness
 Disruptive technologies engaging with customers …
demand for innovation
Challenges
  Pattern planned human resource
deployment and activities designed to
facilitate attainment of organizational goals
towards success
 .HRM increases the quality of staff creating
a sustainable competitive advantage for the
organisation with implications for a
resource-based view strategic position
Strategic  (Al Adresi and Darun (2017)
Human  Strategic Human Resource Management is
critical for managing staff. The strategy
Resource determines the organisational structure.
Management
 Organisational Structure
 Based on organisational strategy
Organisational  Based on organisational systems
Structure and  Determine managerial structures and
Staffing competencies
 Determine employees required, their skills
knowledge and values and attitudes
 All these impact the delivery of customer
experiences
 Selection and recruitment of management
and staff is based on organisational needs

Organisational
Staff

Basic structure based on systems thinking

 Task 2

Task 2
  Recruitment process should be driven by the need for staff. This
process is very important and increasingly becoming more strategic
(Bartlett, Johnson, and Schneider, 2016).
 Workforce planning is for overall success in service delivery (van der
Wagen and White, 2015).
 the recruitment and selection process identifies the best ways of
reaching potential candidates and attracting the right candidates
 The creation of job descriptions and person specifications should
focus on the most important attributes required from candidates in
order to enable the appropriate level of service quality to be delivered.
 Focus, within the service industry, on softer skills, such as the attitude
and behaviour of candidates (Hotel Industry Magazine, 2012;
Pantelidis and Wrobel, 2008).
Recruitment  But managers in the service industry tend to cut corners when
recruiting, particularly for hourly paid employees, in order to save

and Selection costs (Miller-Merrell, 2013). Many our now using internships to fill
staffing demands. The impact of zero hour contracts on stability and
business longevity is a topical issue especially in the UK
  Recently there has been increased e-
recruitment
 Use of social media networking
prominent.
 Many organisations e.g. Hilton and
Travelodge now have websites pages
dedicated to the recruitment of staff
Evolving  Head hunting for talent on the increase
Recruitment  This is an attempt by organisations to
promote strong employer brands
Process (Beardwell and Thompson, 2014).
  There are a number of selection tools available to assist
the organisation in choosing the most appropriate
candidate(s).
 These include interviewing, assessment centres, and
letters of application, psychometric tests (Boella and
Goss-Turner, 2013).
 The size of the organisation determine the approach
taken, given the costs involved in this process.
 People 1st (2017) estimated the cost of recruitment and
Right Selection initial training to be £750 per candidate. With estimated
staff turnover of 75%, this can all add up.
Tools: Right  Organisations adopting varied, highly reliable and valid
strategies to meet a diversity of job specification
Employees requirements (Millmore, 2003).
  Organisations prefer consideration of
internal candidates against external
candidates.
 Beneficial for both parties (Ryan, 2017).
 Many organisations now going digital to
inform, attract, select and recruit
candidates. Torres and Mejia (2017),
Right Selection  The use of video interviewing for virtual
Tools: Right employee selection increasing
 The issue emerging is do these methods
Employees create a realistic understanding of the
candidates?
 Delivering Customer Service
Excellence
 Competence is what delivers customer service
excellence. It is crucial at managerial levels and at
grassroots level. Competence is based on two
concepts i.e. performance and merit
 Performance is your ability to be productive and
delver values
 Merit refers to the level of skills knowledge and
attitude development. Your personal qualifications and
capacity to learn. This is normally linked to your job
description and job specification.
  Levels of creativity and innovative capacity have
never been critical in the hospitality and other
related service industry given the current
challenges arising from the Covid19 pandemic.
 Service quality, customer satisfaction and more
importantly customer loyalty is going to
Delivering determine the viability and sustainability of
organisations.
Excellence  The current staffing challenges associated with
Covid19 are threatening the viability of the
service industry
 Manager’s
Responsibilities
in Creating a
Customer
Service Journey
  In a study conducted to determine the most critical
competencies of managers associated with service quality
results of Kim et al, (2011) recorded the following results
 Adaptability to working environment (the highest mean):
 You should adapt yourself well to the challenging work
environment
 You should easily adapt yourself to the working environment
Managementy
including early arrival, night duty, late work, etc.
Management  You should be highly sociable to customers or colleagues.
 You should perform well even though the work is repetitive and
Competencies monotonous.

Associated with  You should be neat and decent in your appearance.

 Active participation in social gatherings (the lowest mean)
Service Quality
 The
Competency
Model
  Practical competency (the highest at F&B division)
 Adaptability to working environment (Room, F&B and
cooking)
 Ability to make progress in work (Sales & Marketing,
F&B)
 Interpersonal skills
 Active participation in social gatherings (F&B, Cooking)
 Flexibility of time management
Competencies  Foreign languages (Room)
 Work-related learning (Room)
by  (Result of Kim et al, 2011 empirical study)

Hotel Functions
  Adjust leadership style to maturity level of
people, situational leadership (Blanchard et
al. 2010, Suliman 2023)
 Flexible leadership: efficiency, innovative
adaptation, and human capital (Yukl, 2008,
Elliot 2023)
What Does  New humanistic synthesis, holistic attitude
needed systematic thinking (Tate 2010)
Research Say?  Adapting non-standardised local problem
solving solutions (Bulchand-Gidumal, 2023)
 Non-standard concerns people feel
uncertainty which leads to negative
attitude (Melé and Sanchez-Runde 2011)
 Current
Leadership  Finding new sources of leadership and talent with
core competencies
Trends  Embracing disruptive technologies and digital
development of leadership
 Flexibility and Agility including global trends
 Sustainability focus
 Collective and collaborative leadership minority over
 Greater responsibility to employees for career
development with implications for coaching and
mentoring
  Key element of HR functions.
 Motivates employees.
 Need for more competent and qualified
employees.
 Builds team spirit
 Improves the skills and strengthen
competitive advantage.
 Improve personal character and
professionalism.
Employee Training  Employees are trained to enhance levels of
conformity and performance to satisfy
And Development
customers.
  Developing employees is a fundamental element
Talent of people engagement and ultimately talent
management (Tyson 2014)
Management,  Hook, Jenkins, and Foot (2015) Model
Training and  Highlights the need career development and
training across the organisation
Career  Links the process of training, career
development and talent management to strategic
Development objectives.
 Suggests the need for a long-term rather than a
piecemeal approach
 Importance of
employees in
delivering and
enhancing customer
experiences
Questions?
Conclusion  Managing and enhancing customer services
involves:
 Designing appropriate service experiences
 Managing the customer journey through high
level performance and conformity
Conclusion
 Delivering quality and pleasant experiences to
achieve customer satisfaction
 Creating customer loyalty for strategic reasons
 Managing and enhancing customer services
therefore demands leadership competencies
and effective management of staff