Different from other industries, in the hotel industry a Bachelor’s Degree hardly guarantees the attainment of management position. Based on interviews with 42 hotel employees including 19 managers from six hotels, this article suggests that work experience and leadership skill is crucial for hotel managers to perform their job. Other requirements are knowledge, education and English proficiency. This suggestion is supported by the employees’ profile. The implications are discussed, emphasizing the need to consider increasing hotel students’ work experience in the industry and enhancing their leadership skill.
Keywords: human resource management, hotel industry, career, leadership, education, communication There is a shortage of skilled workers in Malaysia due to its rapidly growing economy (Business Monitor International Ltd. , 2010).
Tourism is among the main contributor for the economic growth and its alignment with hotel industry has created many job opportunities to the local population. Based on the statistics by Malaysian Association of Hotels (2011a) from 2007 to 2010 the number of tourist arrival has increased from 20. 9 million to 23. million and this was followed by the increment in the number of hotels and motels from 1567 to 2005. This has led to the continuous growth of public and private institutions offering hotel management courses to fill the workforce needs of these hotels. Despite the increasing number of hotel graduates, hotels are still facing worker shortages (Malaysian Association of Hotels, 2011b).
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As in developed countries, Malaysian hotels are having problems in attracting and retaining skilled and knowledgeable workers (Patah, Zain, Abdullah & Radzi, 2009; Cheng & Brown, 1998).
On one hand, the shortage of skilled workers in Malaysian hotels is caused by the unattractive work atmosphere of the industry. On the other hand it is caused by Malaysian workforce inferiority to attain management position. Similar to the developed countries, Hotels in Malaysia are facing problems in attracting and retaining skilled and knowledgeable workers due to low salary, rigid job traits and conventional style of top-down operation (Ahmad, Solnet & Scott, 2010; Yamashita & Uenoyama, 2006; Davidson, Guilding & Timo, 2006).
However, such problem is less prevalent in Multi National Corporation (MNC) due to their strategic human resource management practices that managed to attract and retain skilled workers from competing hotels (Ahmad et al. , 2010).
MNC are required to involved more locals in middle and top management position. However, after three decades of growth foreign international hotel managers still dominate the Malaysian hotel industry and this could be due to the decreased level of human capital among the Malaysian workforce (Lazzeretti & Petrillo, 2006).
Numerous academic literatures in Malaysia have discussed on how the industry can retain their skilled employees. However, literature on how academicians can increase their students’ employability for 2040 nd nd 2 management position is scarce despite the indication of Malaysian workforce inferiority to attain management position. This deficiency in the literature gives rise to the research question of this article. The research question of this article is, “What are the requirements for managerial post in Malaysian five-star hotels? Although articles on required skills for managerial post or similar articles from other countries can serve as a guide, such articles based on empirical study in Malaysia is beneficial to provide a more specific information. Furthermore, to maximize the foreign exchange revenue and the employment of the local population, local colleges and universities need to increase their graduates’ employability. Prior to that, the students must be equipped with the knowledge, skills and abilities required for managerial post.
The Term Paper on The Hotel And Restaurant Management
The Hotel and Restaurant Management student of Central Luzon State University shows good deep manner and dedication which prove to others that the institution produces high quality product future hoteliers. The time that we will prove what things we what we earned in the school is a right weapon to compete to other school. This is the beginning, first step to become well refined HRM students to ...
The purpose of this article is to investigate and highlight what are the knowledge, skills and abilities required by the local graduates to attain management position in Malaysia. This article makes theoretical and practical contribution. It increases the number of academic literatures concerning human resource issues in the Malaysian hotels. It investigates the practitioners’ perception of what is required for management post. By including non-management employees’ perception, it provides comprehensive information of the requirements.
This article will benefit the hotel industry in the long term. With the aim to reduce skilled workers shortage and hotel graduates’ unemployment, it coordinates industry demand with academic institutions supply. LITERATURE REVIEW Skilled Workers Shortages Since 1970 there has been a rapid growth of tourism industry in Malaysia (Goldsmith & Zahari, 1994).
To cater tourists’ needs the supply of hotel and motel rooms has been increased to 158,480 in 2010 (Malaysian Association of Hotels, 2011).
The rapid expansion of the hotel industry has exaggerated the demand for employment of competent people.
This resulted in skilled workers shortages (Malaysian Association of Hotels, 2011; Business Monitor International Ltd. , 2010).
Based on Malaysian Association of Hotels Workforce Survey reports, in 2008 there was a shortage of 2113 workers in the hotel industry. To mitigate the problem hotels employed foreign workers to work in all the departments except finance and human resources. This has reduced workforce shortages to 1146 in year 2009. In both years Food and Beverage (restaurant) department faced the highest worker shortages while the housekeeping department employed the highest number of foreign workers.
The Term Paper on Hotel Management System 2
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The high percentage of foreign employees in housekeeping (10%), stewarding (9%), and food and beverage (restaurant) (5%) is understandable because Malaysian could earn more doing other jobs such as rubber tapping. Furthermore, the Malaysian Muslims are forbidden from serving liquor and this makes occupation in food and beverage (restaurant) department less favourable to them. However, the employment of foreign workers for top management posts (6%), executives (3%), and other posts in sports and recreation (5%) and front office and reservation (2%) is disturbing.
It suggests that Malaysian workforce (including hotel management graduates) is not skilled enough for these posts. Existing literature lends some support to this suggestion. Hospitality Education in Malaysia The employment of foreign workers to mitigate skilled workforce shortages is acceptable in the past but now it is a dilemma. Such practice may lessen the benefits (such as employment opportunities for the locals and foreign exchange revenue) gained from tourism activities.
In 1994 colleges did not have the capacity to produce sufficient number of graduates to meet the increasing demand for skilled workers because there were only ten private schools and colleges and two public institutions (Goldsmith & Zahari, 1994).
To date, there is at least 61 private colleges and universities, five public universities, five polytechnics and six community 2041 nd nd 2 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH (2 ICBER 2011) PROCEEDING colleges (Ministry of Higher Education, 2011).
Some of these colleges and universities have a number of branches.
Despite the rapid growth in the hotel education sector, shortage of skilled workers in the industry still persists. In Malaysia, local graduates’ Bachelor’s Degree in Hotel Management hardly guarantees the attainment of management position. This is different from other countries. Besides recruiting management employees internally, hotels also recruit graduates straight from the university (Mullen, 2007; Yamashita & Uenoyama, 2006).
Therefore, the attainment of a managerial position is either through hard work by starting from an entry level position or by a ‘fast track’ through having an academic qualification (Mullen, 2007).
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Companies should spend money on improving the work skills of their employees as it is to be seen from the leading top businesses that this will result in high success. Firstly, the more investment is made in improving a certain aspect, better results follow. By spending money on improving the skills, it will allow more productive workers making the production rate efficient which all leads to ...
Hence, there are managers who have never graduated from the university. They started their career as non-managerial employees and by being among the best performers they have been promoted to a managerial position. While internal promotion is common in Malaysia, direct recruitment from the local university for management posts is rare. Hotels, especially MNC prefers to recruit by advertising through the internet, newspaper and “words of mouth” in addition to establishing links with government agencies and related associations (Ahmad, 2010).
Fresh graduates are perceived to be incapable of handling management duties. Reduced human resource capital in Malaysia is among the reasons for skilled workers shortage in the hotel industry. Human resource capital is at a lower standard than the 1980s because the level of English proficiency and service orientation is lower among the young workforce (Lazzeretti & Petrillo, 2006).
Different from their juniors, the senior workforce’ early education was in English (Lazzeretti & Petrillo, 2006; Hanapiah, 2002).
Thus, their English proficiency is better. They are looked upon as those who can epresent the organization because of their ability to communicate and deal in English language (Hanapiah, 2002).
The importance of English proficiency is more obvious in MNC hotels whose customers and managers usually communicate in English. Besides English proficiency, other requirement for hotel management post is education, skills and knowledge (technical, human resources, finance and marketing), personality (dedication, creativity, sociability, adaptability and ambitious), leadership quality and work experience (Jayawardena, 2000; Hanapiah, 2002).
However, recent academic literature on these skills within the context of Malaysian hotel industry is scarce. There are a number of hotel management literatures from developed countries which discussed about management skills with implications for educational institutions. Kay and Moncarz (2004) stressed on the importance of knowledge in financial management and human resource management competencies. They suggest educational institutions provide proper coverage of financial management course. Likewise, they encouraged the industry to recruit graduates from hospitality programs with strong financial management curriculum.
The Essay on Developing management skills
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Their opinion has deviated from earlier research on management skills that suggested leadership and interpersonal skill as the most significant skills for hotel managers. However, the significance of leadership skill has continuously been supported by recent academic literatures (Boone & Peborde, 2008; Brownell, 2006).
According to Boone and Peborde (2008), there are five fundamental leadership skills and these are establishing credibility, managing time, being proactive, empowering others to act and networking.
Based on their article, credibility concerns on constituents’ trust and confidence of their manager, being proactive is knowing and executing what needs to be done for the organization’s benefit, empowerment includes enabling self leadership, providing choice, developing competence and confidence and fostering accountability and networking is developing personal contacts to get valuable support, feedback, insight, information and resources. They argued that leadership is not a charisma that one may or may not possess; it consists of attitudes, behaviours and skill that can be adopted, learned and mproved through practice. Therefore, they 2042 nd nd 2 suggest college students and early career workers to master the fundamental leadership skills to build a strong leadership base. Hotel management students should be properly tooled with the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to attain management position and then, face and handle the industry’s challenges (Kay & Moncarz, 2004; Boone & Peborde, 2008; Brownell, 2006).
Prior to that, it is beneficial to investigate what are the knowledge, skills and abilities required to attain management position within the context of the local hotel industry. With the aim to equip Malaysian students with the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities, the skills required for management position in Malaysian five-star hotels are assessed in detail. METHODOLOGY The methodological approach used in this study is framed within qualitative research. Respondents were contacted through e-mails and phone calls to request for an interview.
A personal interview method was used for data collection which was carried out in May and June 2008. Interviews were conducted according to the respondents’ schedule and availability and at their preferred location. It is important to provide a relaxed environment during the interview to encourage the respondents to openly and fully discuss the topics (Cooper & Schindler, 2003).
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The interviews were unstructured to give respondents the opportunity to provide more information. The interview started with informing respondents the purpose of the research and their right to withdraw from the research at any time to ensure they were comfortable.
To ensure confidentiality, develop trust and encourage the respondents to provide full information, names were coded. M1 refers to the first managerial employee interviewed while NM2 refers to the second non-managerial employee interviewed. Interviews were recorded on tape with the respondents’ permission. Taping the interview allows the researcher to concentrate on the discussion and listen to the interview as often as needed. Repeatedly listening to a taped interview enables the researcher to capture the essence and meanings of words, which facilitates quality analysis of data.
The data collected was analysed using content analysis. To capture the emotion, content analysis of transcripts was conducted manually and respondents’ answers were quoted in the findings. A software program was not used to analyse the data because relying on computers can “run the risk of trivializing the meaning of texts” (Krippendorff, 2004).
“Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use” (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 18).
Qualitative content analysis allows a researcher to discover what the text reveals.
All interviews were transcribed. The transcripts were read multiple times to understand the context of each statement and to enable the researchers to become immersed in the data The sample size for the study was 42 respondents, 19 managerial employees and 23 non-managerial employees. All respondents were from six Malaysian five-star resort hotels that employ more than 300 fulltime employees and have been in business for at least 12 years. All respondents had more than one year’s working experience with the hotel industry to ensure that they had the capability to provide the in-depth information required.
Twenty-one respondents were employees of three MNC hotels. Four of the hotels employed expatriates for general manager post. Foreign workers were employed for management and nonmanagement post. The respondents’ profile is described in Table 1. An exploration of respondents’ views on requirement for managerial post was sought.
