HR Is Also About Maintaining Human Relations

Pawan Kapoor

The in-thing in management terminology today is ‘relationship management’. It is a concept applicable to relationships between the customers (or consumers) and the suppliers (or providers). Due to the efforts of a number of management scientists and consultants, ‘customer’ has become a very dynamic concept with new attributes added to define and refine the term every now and then.

By far, customers have been classified into:

(A) Internal customers
(B) External customers

Top and middle level management(s), over a period of time, have developed a number of tools and hopeful panaceas to entertain and ‘manage’ the latter. Similar concepts exist and are proliferating in other industries also.

We have PR - public relations (and also at times press relations), guest relations, etc as individual departments with people manning them in a hierarchy of its own. They in turn have devised various tools - forms and formats, software packages, etc - to ‘manage’ their relationship with the external customers, who we know better as ‘guests’ in the hospitality industry. The need of the hour is to also devise a system to manage the relationship with the internal customers, the employees if not at the same scale then at least on similar lines.

More often than not whenever we discuss such management of relationship with our internal customers or our employees, nothing specific comes to our mind. We may think of either HR (as in human resources) or the personnel department, but the common perception of their roles itself is generally restricted to attendance, salaries and wages. Is that all there is to it? Then where do we find and nurture relationships. Here enters another segment - the training department - and its broader range of goals and objectives. But even then the question is whether the whole concept-supporting infrastructure is in place or not.

By and large, it seems to be grossly inadequate. We must have encountered a number of software packages designed to process things like the comments and suggestions, feedback and other relevant details of our guests - these are better known as ‘guest history’ systems - have we heard about a similar package for the internal customers?

The role of HR as a whole then, is interpreted as ‘human relations’ rather than ‘human resources’. The argument is not against management gurus who have classified manpower as one of the resources; but to reaffirm the same management thinking which made (us) the hospitality professionals, address their customers as guests.

If our customers can be termed as guests then the employees who serve the guests and by all means and definitions, host them at the property - can’t they be called as hosts? And when full-fledged departments like marketing and advertising can go out of their way to retain the guests, why can’t the same be done to retain the employees, the internal customers... the hosts?

Although it is not directly visible, when an employee leaves the organisation (for whatever reason), the effect is the loss of trained manpower. This also has an adverse effect on the morale of the other employees and of course, the costs involved in replacing the employee with one who possesses similar abilities, sums up to a very high score indeed, but unfortunately against (us) the organisation.

One may also wish to consider the business lost in terms of those guests who were loyal to the property by virtue of the service provided by that particular employee who serviced them, and are prone to shift their loyalty to the place where the employee would resume work.

What exactly are the employees after? At this juncture, it would help to consider once again what a number of management theorists have tried to analyse and define in various theories based on a plethora of research works.

That, motivation factor is not defined, rather cannot be defined as a function of just the money involved being offered to the employee to change his job.

For the purpose of this discussion, let us exclude the ones who are really in need of a break in terms of higher salaries and wages; and also those who are very well equipped financially to ever worry about the same. In both the above cases, the discussion might fall prey to prejudice.

Focusing our attention back to where we started - let us consider energetic, enthusiastic, dedicated, loyal and ambitious employees who want to prove themselves and rise higher in the industry. What do they want? We must not assume that the ones leaving an organisation are not loyal to the company they were working for. Well, then, if that is also not the case then what do they need?

Here the need is felt for HR to be defined as ‘human relations’ rather than the traditional human resources. Employees working in a typical hotel spend more than half of their day at the hotel working for the hotel (this may also include their travel time to and from their workplace). Considering that a normal human being sleeps for anywhere between six to eight hours a day; this implies that they have a balance of only four to six hours to be with their families, take care of personal issues and pursue their hobbies, if any.

It also implies that they spend approximately twice or three times more time with the hotel, working for the hotel among their colleagues and management, than they spend with their own families. Naturally, if they have to spend so much time at work, they are looking at more than mere money.

One possible answer is that the employees are looking at building a deeper relationship, a sense of belonging. One may counter that the employees already are in a relationship with the organisation, however it’s just that it needs to be consolidated and reinforced from time to time. When that happens, the employees not only seek, they get a family at the workplace among their colleagues; and in the scheme of things the management is considered and respected as elders in the family. It is not an unlikely occurrence - in some organisations it may be happening, in some it may not. It all depends on the buzzword ‘relationship management’ with the employees.

Modern day HR should not, and in the above-described organisations is not, limited to the routine salary processing after attendance record verification and handling of disciplinary issues. It should not be treated as a department wherein only memos are filed in the employees’ personal files. The redefined and revived HR projects a friendlier image; it is accessible to the employees and rather reaches out towards employees. Employees feel comfortable in approaching and discussing matters - not necessarily official.

All employee friendly organisations have come to realise this and are coming up with events, which are the equivalent of promotions and marketing packages of their property, for their workforce. Not going too far, talking from my own experience, in our organisation, we, the employees are first, called as ‘team members’ and second, we conduct events and activities for our own selves. The most popular of these events is the ‘annual day’, which is celebrated, with much gusto and fanfare and ‘team members’ look forward to it months in advance.

It’s in these organisations that the employees don’t just feel like a number in the manpower plan of a department. It is in such organisations that the employees come forward to take initiatives for the development and propagation of higher quality standards for the property. Why? What drives them? What drives them is the recognition and pride of achievement that comes along with it. Because it is here that the people feel ‘we are working for our own benefit’; they feel part of a bigger system, not as a component but as an owner of the individual’s role and its importance in such a system.

Any organisation needs to project a specific culture both in and outside of the workplace, which reflects the organisations image in the market. Which organisation would perform better in establishing a positive and flexible work culture is anybody’s guess; however, what needs to be done to achieve that remains the organisation’s
decision.

(The author is training manager of one of the leading properties in Mumbai)