Hospitality Training Importance.

In every business, independently of the activity, human resources are the most precious capital. In terms of global competition and rapid change, personnel training are essential. Every manager should be able to attract qualified and capable personnel, in order to use their skills in achieving organizational objectives. In a market economy where uncertainty is rather widespread, obtaining knowledge and information is becoming a source for creating competing advantages. One of the most important aspects of the contemporary hotel industry is getting to know the new methods and techniques through training. Staff training is an important part in Human Resource Management, in order to improve employee performance, respectively it helps to put their skills to better use and specialization in their work. The application of an efficient training process has an important impact on increasing employee performance. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of personnel training in the hotel industry. The study includes the theoretical part of staff training, importance, and benefits. The paper’s results have shown that management has a relatively good understanding of the importance of personnel training; the hotel may be in a favorable situation if the employees keep taking continuous training.

My research outcome.

Service quality is related to every place which provides any goods or service to customers, in a way service quality and staff training are inter-related. A staff who has been given training will be able to deliver quality service to their customers unlike a staff who hasn’t been given staff training, this is seen practically if looked at restaurants. Most of the time hotels which hire temporary staff for peak season will have a high percentage of showing low-quality service because this temporary staff is given just a minimum or basic training.

When a staff is given basic training this will contribute very highly to the quality of service given by this staff also this will contribute to staff getting dissatisfied with their job because they are unable to see any advancements in their career. When this happens there will be staff planning to resign their jobs after a certain period of time. Once old and experienced staff leave their working environment. As for those new staff, it will take some time for them to adapt to the environment and perform as what the previous staff did. Most of the time newly hired staff will struggle to meet the current requirement that is to prove the same service quality or better which is provided by the staff before them, this is one of the major problems for companies who try to improve their service quality.

There are many things which make working in the hotel industry difficult especially for front line staff. These things are:

• Shifts working hours
• Public contact
• Low salary payments
• Odd working hours
• Simultaneous production and consumption

Also, the midlevel staff (managerial level) will face similar problems but compared with the front line staff their problems might be slightly different, they are (a) Supervision (b) Staffing problems and (c) Long hours of work.

Organizational stability has been shown to have a high degree of relationship with low turnover and quality of service provided to their customers. Staffs are more likely to stay when there is a predictable and comfortable working environment also staffs tend to perform well under familiar environment when compared to a new environment, new staffs in a hotel will need time to adjust to the environment while the staffs who are working there will be already used to that environment.

Hotels tend to hire temporary staff as a replacement or as a backup; they provide these staff with training and product knowledge. Hotels may be using these temporary staff during the peak season, especially in the F&B department to cope with the influx of tourists to the hotel. When the temporary staff resigns and new staff takes over their positions, the training process will need to repeat again and again which will cost the hotel a lot of capital. In order to have organizational stability in a company, training is compulsory. When the turnover happens, there will be a cost for re-training another employee.

Problem statement.

Providing training helps the organization to train its staff so that they will be able to provide a good quality of service to its customers. After training there has to be evaluation for the staffs, this is done to find out whether the staff has really put into practice what they are thought in the training, if what the staffs put into practice what they are thought there is a very high degree that they will provide a top-quality service to their customers. Whether the training results are done within that particular period is acceptable or not, the training process never ends, until the staff resigns. This happens because there will be new products coming into the market and staff need to be up to date with these things, for this also they need training. As training is very important to labor-intensive market like the hospitality industry to provide top quality service to their customers, but how far the training will give significance to the industry? The focus of this study will be looking into the process of training and how training improves the service quality.

Research Objectives

The objectives of this research are to:-

• Identify the importance of training and how it contributes to the quality of service provided by the hospitality staff.
• Identifying the relationship between training and service quality and how it is going to help companies/ hotels to get loyal customers.
• Identifying the effects trained staff and staff without training have on Service quality.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this research will look at the major areas where hospitality staff training has an effect on the service quality they provide to their customers. Below are the hypothesis fields which the research is going to look at:

1.    Training and service quality is related

2.    Staff training and quality of service have a substantial effect on the hotel/company.

3.    How hospitality staff training helps staff service quality.

Scope and Limitations

The scope of this research focuses on the importance of training towards hospitality staff in order to enhance service quality. The time limitation is given to complete this research paper and the limitations of online journals is considered as a limitation.

The purpose of training is to improve the knowledge, skills and to change the quality of service provided by the staff. This will lead to many possible benefits for both staff and to the organizations. This can be:

• Give a feeling of personal satisfaction and achievement; also widen the opportunities for career progression.
• Help to improve the quality and skills of staffs
• Increase the confidence, motivation, and commitment of staff towards the organization

The need for training starts when there is a discrepancy between the desired outcome of the results as against what really happens. Many a time these discrepancies are not mentioned by the guest themselves but identified by the managers.

There are several types of training which the company can provide.

Classroom Instruction - A special type of classroom facility is used to give instruction in the operation of equipment like that found in operating departments, like in the front office.

Cooperative training - Training program that combines practical on the job experience with formal educational classes.

Apprenticeship Training - This is a system of training in which a worker entering the skilled trades is given thorough instruction and experience both on and off the job, in the practical and theoretical aspects of the work.

Internships - Programs jointly sponsored by colleges, universities and other organizations that offer students the opportunity to gain real-life experience while allowing them to find out how they will perform in a work organization.

On Job Training - Method in which employees are given hands-on experience with instructions from their supervisors or trainers.

When the staff has been trained, there will be other job attractions from other companies. In order to prevent staff from moving away after training, the company must ensure that they will be able to retain their staff, if not they are going to lose not only trained staff but both capital and part of service quality they provide.

Retaining staff is not only increasing their pay. Retaining valuable staff is one of the main objectives of human capital measurement. When figuring out exactly what makes the staff stay on working in the company will be a complicated problem to solve, because human beings are very difficult to study, but the management can make some policies to retain their valuable staff.

The hospitality industry has the highest demand for workers, unlike desk jobs staff, staff in the hospitality industry needs to keep on moving and always be the focus. They want to feel that they are capable to finish their job with the current resources that they have when these resources don’t exist, the staffs tend to resign and the company is forced to pay more for that cost (cost of training, time, money and manpower).

Employees are driven by an emotional commitment, whether they feel valued, challenged and capable to make things different. Staff in a company don’t necessarily work for money and some tend to work for the satisfaction they gain after completing the task, this type of staff tends to provide better service quality to their customers than those who work for money.

Staff turnover and how it affects the service quality

Companies and hotels which have very high staff turnover will find themselves having a hard time coping up with the turnover and training the new staff, when this happens the company sees very little growth compared to what they have forecasted before, in other words, the company stays stagnant. This is most likely to be seen when the economy starts to improve as this gives investors time to invest and new hotels and companies to flourish.

This is the time when employers will have a problem because their staff will start to go around with their resumes trying to find a new and better job. When this happens the companies are losing are lots of money and experienced staff, which in turn will affect a lot with their service quality, because the company spends a lot of money on training their newly selected staff and these staffs take the time to improve their service quality. While the staff who have been working with the company for quite some time start to find better positions especially from the competitors and leave the company this will give a very big blow to the companies service quality because their rival company got a senior staff who knows the working of their previous company. When there is high staff turnover this will force companies to focus most of their priorities on staffing.

It doesn’t matter if the staff replaced are senior-level executives, mid-level managers or the low-level staff, the company owners need to bear the responsibility of recruiting, interviewing and training new staff. This will create a big cost as time, money and manpower are being used in order to fill up the positions. Mostly when senior staff members leave their company, they take with them the valuable knowledge of the company and also these staff serves as morale boosters for work teams and help new staff improve more quickly. Many times companies mistakenly believe that the cost of replacing staff is just the price they are going to incur for newspaper or web advertisements, but in reality, both direct and indirect costs must be taken into consideration.

Why Staffs choose to leave their workplace and how to prevent it.

It is very important to understand why staffs look elsewhere for jobs because this will put the quality of service of the company down. Mostly lack of appreciation, lack of teamwork and the thinking that the managers don’t bother about their staff are the major reasons which cause low job satisfaction. This most of the time results in the form of poor communication between staff to staff and manager to manager.

As career advancement and salaries are considered as important tools to keep staff at bay, there is another area which managers most of the time forget to look at which is the appreciation. Surveys reveal that more than forty percent of people who leave their jobs do so because they don’t believe their companies value their contributions.

Those business owners can avoid high staff leaving their company by addressing compensation and benefits, implementing training programs with clear paths for advancement and providing comprehensive employee relations programs.

Another method to control staff from leaving is to give staff formal training programs that will provide staff with clear paths for promotions. According to Shehan,2004 staffs are more likely to remain loyal to businesses who are committed to their staff development.

Hiring the right person from the start will reduce the staff leaving the company, managers must have a clear idea of the types of people they want to hire for every position available in their company.

Difference between skilled and unskilled employees, how this hinders the quality of service.

Unskilled positions often have high turnover and staff can generally be replaced without the organization or business incurring any loss of performance. The ease of replacing these staffs provide little incentives to employers to offer generous employment contracts, on the other hand, these contracts may strongly favor the employer and lead to an increase in turnover as staff seeks and eventually find more favorable job.

However, high turnover rates of skilled professionals can pose a risk to the organization due to the human capital (such as skills, training, and knowledge) lost. Particularly, given the natural specialization of skilled professionals and these staffs are likely to be reemployed within the same industry by a competitor, most of the time losing the quality of service provided and company secrets to their competitors, Therefore, turnover of these individuals happen both replacement costs to the organization, as well as resulting in a competitive disadvantage to the business.

Recommendation and Conclusion

It is recommended that staff training is a very important tool in this labor-intensive competitive market. This tool will help the managers to improve their staff's output and service quality, staff training and service quality is almost interrelated. The best choice for managers is to train their staff on a regular basis so that they won’t lose the skills, also providing the staff with a good environment to work with will improve their service quality. In conclusion, it is a must for the management to provide training to their staff in order to improve their skills which in return will provide better service quality to their customers. Once a company provides a very good service to its customers there is a very high percentage that they will make royal customers.

Summary.

The hospitality training packages can be easily sourced within the local industry/training companies in the respective country, however, choosing the right training partners is rather very important. In-house training must be drawn consistently with stringent KPI monitoring on both the training provider and its clients. The training providers should have a clear training strategy and long term results vision ensuring clients will see evidence of quality pieces of training and work-force improvisation at their work-place.     

Trainers must be well equipped with training credentials including Neuro-Linguistic Practitioners,  Certified Hospitality Department Trainer (CHDT) and Certified Hospitality Instructor (CHI) and from reputable institutions ensuring quality results are recorded from each training session.   

END.