This chapter suggests many different approaches to develop service cultures within hospitality organizations sharing only a brief review of the literature on the subject but focused on prescriptive actions that HR can take to develop a service cul- ture and climate. First a suggestion of matching the culture to the job environment was suggested by using high and low levels of sociability and solidarity. Further, the type of culture that aligned best with most hospitality and leisure businesses was suggested to be the communal service culture environ- ment. Once the culture type is decided, four traits within serv- ice climate were identified. Together, these traits make service climate. Due to the importance of hospitality, authors’ added hospitableness as a fourth dimension. The alignment of the cli- mate and the culture was shown as crucial for accomplishing the desired culture in an organization. From the organizational climate, an organizational culture is developed through the cul- mination of how individuals in an organization act and react.
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Next, the authors focused on the potential role of HR in developing and maintaining a service culture. The importance of inter-departmental communications to service culture was presented suggesting HR as a champion for the improvement of inter-departmental communication. Next, the types of HR intervention, HRs representation of company values and traits was proposed, the specific functions of HR were presented including staffing from recruitment to retraining. Finally, steps that HR can take towards ensuring a culture of internal service for employees were detailed.
Certainly the human resource intervention will vary with structure of organization with large corporate restaurant chain human resources management functions differing from human resources in a small one-city restaurant chain. Since our dis- cussion centered on the roles of HR roles in achieving a serv- ice culture, a limitation of this chapter is that various industry structures were not considered yet the information presented here can be adapted to different HR structures.
However, gaining an insight of each role HR portrays, as detailed in the example by Ulrich (1998) offers a better under- standing to an organization’s cohesion. Within these roles, human resource practitioners are asked to perform their job functions efficiently while observing, maintaining, and reacting to the organization’s culture. The strategy begins with recruiting and selection, moves forward to training that includes an intro- duction to the organization’s culture through orientation, contin- ues with departmentalized training by managers, and empowers employees with decision-making abilities in relation to guest service. In summary, the approach to creating a service culture can be achieved by several different methods. Different strate- gies on how to develop and attain a culture have been addressed along with the suggestion to minimize gaps from the human resources department.
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Employee relations:
a problem-solving approach
R. Thomas George
Hospitality Management Program The Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210-1295, USA
C H A P T E R
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Introduction
The establishments of the hospitality industry employ a wide variety of individuals, each having a unique experience, skill set, and motivational pattern. A high level of employee turn- over is not only costly but also highly inconvenient when attempting to deliver a consistent level of quality product and high level of service. Hinkin and Tracey (2000) found that employee turnover runs into the thousands of dollars and has a negative affect on moral and service quality. They also sug- gest that poor supervision is a contributor to the problem. It is to the advantage of the unit manager to have a variety of tools to assist employees to perform at a high level.
This chapter presents a discussion of employee relations from a problem-solving orientation. The set of activities of