Session

Hot seat: The human capital crunch

Plunging into the much-discussed subject of human resources, Chris Mumford and Mark Keith decided to raid the panel with a barrage of questions dealing with the topic. It began with discussing why the situation exists in the first place. Neeraj Chadha believes it is due to the lazy stakeholders. The hierarchy needs to change and so does the priority; the lower cadres need to be given more importance. There has to be a commitment to face issues in a simplistic manner with clarity of thought. Khalid Helmy, GM, Serena Islamabad Hotel, also reiterated the lack of commitment together with lack of proper skills. Meanwhile, Farhat Jamal, president of The Grand Hotels Palaces & Resorts opined, "Attention and retention is a situation which needs to be addressed directly."

According to him, employees need to be treated as an asset and not a liability. There has to be a good structure to retain quality staff. The service industry must keep up and grow accustomed to global expectations. Another interesting aspect touched upon was the concept of recruitment from institutions beyond hotel management institutes. The demand for people will eventually force hoteliers to look at recruitment options beyond the hotel management institutes.

Rattan Keswani, president, Trident Hotels India, presented a different approach to the scenario. He believes that it is not that the industry is facing any real crunch but that employees are not taken care of. "A professional would join and stay in an organisation if he/she gets a caring environment, the industry has to be worth staying long enough in," he said. He also said that perhaps the impression of the industry is comparatively less glamorous or less exciting as compared to other industries. It therefore has to lose the archetypical image and adapt.

Chadha too affirmed this and added that traditionalists do not believe in change and the biggest example is how a young hotel trainee is treated during the training period at the hotel. Timothy Williams added that this image problem could be dealt with by controlling the microenvironment. The core value of a company should include the human capital within it. The change also needs to be made at the supervisory level; how a supervisor treats subordinates reflects the core value of the company.

As for poaching from other players in the service industry, Helmy said that rapid development and growth in the industry is the root cause of this because of the skill sets possessed by a hospitality professional. Pakistan, he adds, lacks technological training - a situation he is hopeful will improve with the government's special focus on tourism. The challenge faced by HR professionals, as Jamal put it, is the need to reinvent. Therefore, by a consensus of the panel, Mumford and Keith reached the conclusion that the best hotel company to work for would include Marriott International, Four Seasons and the W brand of Starwood.

The session concluded by discussing the need for an HR department. With a mix of varied opinion, the final decision was that, even though heads of departments need to know how to deal with human resource issues, it is imperative that there is an executing body, which can expedite matters. There has to be a growth path provided to an employee within a department or in other departments, otherwise it will be difficult to retain the most valuable resource of the industry - people.