As technology shrinks the globe, the hotel industry is evolving ever more rapidly into a business without borders. To keep pace, human resources professionals must continue to focus on developing their competencies in a variety of skills.
Competency No. 1: expanding talent-sourcing skills
Competency in HR recruiting skills might be measured in practical areas that connect directly to success in hiring strong candidates. For example, an HR manager’s contribution of a Web-based recruiting brochure or recruiting page can be evaluated quite simply by comparing applicant qualifications with the desired traits in the Web application. At the time of the selection interview, it is also easy to learn whether the online recruiting material helped persuade the candidate to apply for a job.
Another emerging skill in demand is the HR manager’s ability to source non-traditional job candidates. A HR director utilizes benchmarking to first list the key job knowledge, skills and abilities for each position in the hotel. For instance, in a reception clerk, a key ability could be competence in providing a high level of customer service. With this information, HR is able to successfully source more candidates from not only other hotels but also car rental agencies, department stores and other employers who have jobs where similar key applicant attributes are present. The success of this program is also easily measured.
Competency No. 2: short-circuiting potential employment claims
Depending on their skill and availability, HR managers are typically partnered with the hotels’ counsel in varying degrees to defend employment litigation. The HR professional’s real value lies not in helping lawyers gather evidence, however, but rather in the far more productive pursuit of heading off litigation before it is filed.
HR managers must not only know applicable employment law (federal, state and local) but must routinely audit both the employer’s policies and the evidence that could become “Exhibit A” in litigation—the actual employment documents that show how the policies are, or are not, being enforced.
New trends in employment litigation also must be studied regularly. While a hotel’s labor and employment lawyer will gladly provide such information, the well-informed HR manager who subscribes to an online HR alert letter (counsel will no doubt recommend one) can become a greater benefit to both the hotel and its labor/employment attorney by being more alert to potential issues and contacting counsel as the need arises rather than waiting for an actual complaint.
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In a related way, a HR manager who routinely and affirmatively engages employees, including the less talkative, rather than simply processing complaints will gain for the hotel an even greater time advantage. Often, employees know of other team members who might be openly unhappy, are gathering information about the company’s policies or who have contacted former employees as a precursor to litigation.
With guidance from counsel, the HR manager whose skills include a strong investigatory savvy and a sincere, no-nonsense approach can not only perform valuable pre-litigation work, but there is a greater likelihood that complaints will be defused well before they leave the hotel’s four walls to be investigated by government agencies, lawyers or other third parties.
Competency No. 3: acquiring a strategic focus
Today’s multi-tasking hotel HR director could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed, particularly where her or his professional staff was “right-sized” during the hotel industry’s protracted downturn and wasn’t restored. Given the industry’s new reliance on a lean operating style, those HR staff members who were laid off or transferred might never return even as the challenges facing HR are likely to increase.
A competency in strategic planning could be most useful here. The HR director can develop strategic planning skills through coaching, online classes, continued learning offered by professional associations such as the Society for Human Resources Management, and of course, by being included in the hotel’s strategic planning sessions.
As strategic planning skills are acquired, the hotel HR professional will better recognize those ways in which HR should align itself with the hotel’s goals. This might lead to discussions of either completely outsourcing or at least minimizing a focus on transaction-based HR duties, thus allowing HR to concentrate on goals that have the highest potential return to the hotel (for example, developing line employees to become managers or designing and implementing employee retention programs).
By training HR to think strategically and align its mission to that of the hotel, tasks essential to that mission will receive the highest priority. While HR might not have less work to perform, it will know that the work it is doing is that for which it is uniquely qualified and which fully incorporates the hotel’s strategic values and goals.
Chuck Conine is a certified senior professional in human resources with nearly four decades of HR leadership. He is president of Hospitality HR Solutions, the industry’s partner in human capital. Chuck works with his clients to provide practical solutions to HR issues and develop managers into strategically focused leadership teams. He also partners with clients of HVS Executive Search, Synergy Restaurant Consultants and Cayuga Hospitality Advisors.
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