Employee performance in the hotel industry

1.1 Background Information:

Employees are the assets for an organization. This is true because the success or failure of any organization depends upon its employee too. The importance of an employee in hospitality industry becomes more significant because of its nature- manpower intensive industry. In hospitality industry and hotel sector especially it is very important for organizations to stay focused on employee performance and so how to get enhancement in the employee performance.

There are many reason of providing training to the employees. One basic reason is to fill the performance gap after having been identified the same. This gape can be known while having performance evaluation process. These days hotels have been taking continuous efforts to provide most practical and relevant training to the employees of all the functional area of the hotel concerned. These efforts of the hotels are more towards integration and getting more concrete results. Those hotels earning good profit have their well-developed training systems and they resort to a planned approach to training its employees. This level of hotel organization has regular training programmes regardless of its concrete tangible gains or not. There are many hotels where they have different approach to train the employees, that approach is intentional training, this includes providing training to all the employees irrespective of their deficiencies and strengths. This kind of approach of training goes on as one of the function of the organization. Srivastava.V.N, Shafiq.M, Ghosh.K (2005)

Employee performance is more important in this industry because employees are having direct interaction with the guest and secondly it is employee of the hotel industry that satisfies its guest. So it is very important for the manager concerned to know the factors that affects employee performance.

There is a saying that perfection of work depends on pleasure at job. So pleasure and performance both can be achieved by quality education about the subject area and systematic training of the same. As far as Indian hospitality industry is concerned, a report commissioned by the department of tourism, Government of India, revealed that the annual demand for trained manpower in hotels and restaurants is likely to touch 29,000 by the year 2010. This figure is likely to increase to approximately 39,000 by the year 2020.And the actual supply of manpower? A total of approximately 18,000 students are being trained in hotel management and food craft annually in the country. Currently, in hotels, attrition rates are at 18-25 per cent per annum, and growing at an alarming rate of 10 per cent per annum. This, exacerbated by an escalating wage bill of 10-12 per annum with a five-year forecast pegged at a minimum increase of 40 per cent over current levels. Thus systematic training will play a life saving role in hospitality industry to counter with the current scenario. www.indiatoday/may2007/page24

After having basic information about systematic training and its significance to the hotel industry author would like to provide definitions of the key terms of this research.

1.2 Definitions:

"Training means learning some new things for increment or development of the working personnel. Training is becoming a necessary for having skills and attitudes as a part of each individual's working life for the higher performance.

Performance Management: it is a process which is designed to improve organization, team and individual performance and which is owned and driven by line manager". Fool.M, Hock.C (2002).

"Training constitutes a systematic approach to training which includes taking the time to analyze what results the organization needs from its employees, if employees are accomplish those results. A systematic approach includes evaluating approaches before, during and after training to ensure employees truly benefited from the training in terms of enhanced results to the organization". www.managemertthelp.org/trng-dev/basics/sd.htm.

"Training is a planned process to modify attitude, knowledge or skill behavior through learning experience to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities." Golssmith.A, Nickson.D, Solan.S, Wood.R.C,; (1997).

"Training is a systematic process through which an organization's human resources gain knowledge and develop skills by instructions and practical activities that result in improved corporate performance". Frank.M.G, Mary.L, Monchello, BaumJ (1996).

1.3 Aim and objectives / Research Questions / Hypothesis:1.3.1 Aim and Objectives:

Purpose of this research work is to explore systematic training as a major factor in enhancement of employee performance in service department of hotel Industry.

To explore the term "Systematic Training" and employee performance in hotel Industry.

To explore the determinants of employee performance

To find out relation between systematic training and employee performance.

To explore training as motivational tool that leads to employee satisfaction.

To explore the process involved in systematic training

1.3.2 Research Question:

R.Q.1: