INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENT OF HOTEL INDUSTRY.

In hotel industry, the job of HR manager can be compare with the job of conductor, whose job is to instruct and direct all of the various musicians so that they can perform well together. But before a conductor can direct a beautiful performance, all the musicians must be able to play their instruments well. What kind of performance could one expect if the violinists did not know how to play their instruments or the flutists could not read music?

So it is the hospitality industry, before a manager can direct and shape employee’s individual contributions into an efficient whole, he or she must turn employees into competent workers who know how to do their jobs. Employees are the musicians of the orchestra that the members of the audience-the –guests- have come to watch performance. If employees are not skilled at their jobs, then the performance they will give get bad reviews. Just as an orchestra can have a fine musical score from a great composer and still perform poorly because of incompetent musicians, so a hotel can have a finest standard recipes, service procedures and quality standards and still have dissatisfied guests because of poor employee performance.

That is why properly managed human resource is so important. No other industry provides so much contact between employees and customers and so many opportunities to either reinforce a positive experience or create a negative one.

As in the five star hotel [such as Le meridien] or five star deluxe hotel, there are around a lots of employees involved in different jobs in different fields there is dire need to look and control on them. No doubt different department’s heads are prsent to look their department employee, but HRD is a place, which supervise and effectively communicate with these departments head and communicate with the top management. Thus their function is very large and diverse as compared with respect to different department’s heads.

The personnel function in hotel includes many activities such as:

Consideration of leadership style Relationship Responsibilities Philosophy Social orienatation Organizational structure.

In most of the hotels the personnel policies are put in writing. These policies are distributed to key and responsible executive to provide guidance and ensure consistent application. Periodically the HRD review these policies.

In Le meridien, the personnel policies are:

To design employee remuneration and benefit packages for employees of the

hotel, in consultation with the concerned department heads or other authority towhich the concerned employees are to report.

To review requests for recruitment of staff made by various departments, identify

suitable candidates, conduct interviews, draft contracts of employment andperform all other duties incidental to the selection and appointment of hotelpersonnel. Such selection and appointment of personnel is to be made inconsultation with the HOD of the requesting department.

To ensure that there is no documented job description for every position at the

hotel. It is to be noted that it is the responsibility of the HOD’s to prepare such job descriptions for positions in their department, and for the GM to prepare those forthe HOD of each department. The HR department’s role is to ensure that eachemployee is provided with a job description upon joining or on appointment to anew position, and that copy of the same are filed in the employees personnel file.

To co-ordinate the annual performance appraisal process with each hotel department.

To provide information to the accounting department in order to enable them to

process employee payroll.

To maintain updated personnel file for every employee of the hotel, and to

provide information from these files, at the reasonable request of the concernedemployee.

To initiate, implement and administer schemes for employee motivation, in

conjunction with relevant department heads, at the hotel.

To maintain an up to date record of all the employees employed by the hotel, in

the form of a staff list, by department. This list is to include the followinginformation;NameDepartmentStatus/PositionSalary scale, present salary and automatic incrementDate of joining and date of the end of the probation periodVacation and indemnity balance.