GM Speak

‘Retention of manpower necessary’

With the hospitality industry being the favoured poaching ground for all industries, the need and means to retain employees is ever so critical, says Sanjeev Shekhar, GM of Hotel Marine Plaza, Mumbai, and regional director, western region, Sarovar Hotels to Neeti Mehra

Sanjeev Shekhar GM Hotel Marine Plaza and Regional Director, western region, - Sarovar Hotels

The Indian hospitality industry is a witness to an exodus of employees, this time not to verdant international shores, but to other service-oriented industries within the country. Pointing out a core deficiency which may drag down the rapid growth, Sanjeev Shekhar, GM of Hotel Marine Plaza, Mumbai and regional director, western region, Sarovar Hotels, says, "The industry has reached a level of maturity today, and in terms of products, I feel that India is second to none, with better services in many instances as compared to foreign destinations. But we are limited in terms of man power resources.”

While he admits that today's generation have much more exposure and awareness to the effects of globalisation, he feels that the flipside to this is that loyalty to an organisation gets affected if personnel managers are unable to meet their aspirations and expectations. "Today, the industry is losing people to the BPO industry, cruise liners, etc. Unless we manage the churn, we will continue to lose people," he laments.

A critical part to retaining employees is training, which will empower and add value to an employee. "Training managers is a mainstay of big hotel chains; it is the smaller hotels which would have difficulty in appointing a manager devoted specifically for this function. At Sarovar, we have regional managers for training across five centres, who travel to different properties to conduct training. The process is carried out in a scientific manner, with a view to familiarise them on our Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)," he informs.

In addition to this, films shot on the job and role-playing are essential to ingrain the essence of an organisation into an employee, before he actually takes up the tasks in hand. Role playing, essentially, is a multi-agenda social process, which scientifically judges participants assuming individual roles within a hypothetical social group. This enables them to experience the complexity of establishing and implementing particular goals as established for the exercise, bringing home the fact of 'placing oneself in another's shoes'. Apart from tools like this, he believes that specific counselling for employees will tackle individual problems faced by them.

He believes a sense of ownership among the staff can be established through a hotel's social corporate responsibility, empowering the employees to play a larger role. "In-house campaigns by staff, be it on the lines of plantation of saplings or guest speakers addressing staff will create ownership and boost employees' moral," he adds. This goes a long way in establishing an organisation as not only a corporate entity, but also as a social community and social concerns.

"Ultimately, all these methods work as an important tool for retaining employees in an industry which is in a constant state of flux, as it keeps them motivated," he concludes.