The importance of training towards hospitality staffs in order to enhance the service quality.
The Importance of Training Towards Hospitality Staffs In Order To Enhance The Service Quality.1.1. Study background
There are many ways researchers define service quality. Taylor and Cronin (1994) view service quality as a form of attitude representing a long run overall evaluation. Roest and Pieters (1997) define service quality, as a relativistic and cognitive discrepancy between experiences based norms and performances concerning service benefits.
Service quality is related to every place which provides any goods or service to customers, in a way service quality and staff training are interrelated. A staff who has been given training will be able to a quality service to their customers unlike a staff who haven’t been given staff training, this is seen practically if looked at restaurants. Most of the time hotels which hire temporary staffs for peak season will have a high percentage of showing low quality service because these temporary staffs are given just a minimum or basic training.
When a staff is given basic training this will contribute very highly to the quality of service given by this staff also this will contribute to staffs getting dissatisfied with there job because they are unable to see any advancements in there career. When this happen there will be staffs planning to resign their jobs after a certain period of time. Once old and experience staffs leave their working environment. As for those new staffs, it will take some time for them to adapt to the environment and perform as what the pervious staff did. Most of the times newly hired staffs will struggle to meet the current requirement that is to prove the same service quality or better which is provided by the staff before them, this is one of the major problems to companies who try to improve their service quality.
There are a many things which make working in hotel industry difficult especially for front line staffs. These things are:
Shifts working hours
Public contact
Low salary payments
Odd working hours
Simultaneous production and consumption
Also the midlevel staffs (managerial level) will face similar problems but compared with the front line staffs their problems might be slightly different, they are:
Supervision
Staffing problems
Long hours of work. (Meier,1991)
Organizational stability has been shown to have a high degree of relationship with low turnover and quality of service provided to their customers. Staffs are more likely to stay when there is a predictable and comfortable working environment also staffs tend to perform well under familiar environment when compared to new environment, new staffs in a hotel will need time to adjust to the environment while the staffs who are working there will be already used to that environment.
Hotels tend to hire temporary staffs as a replacement or as a back up; they provide these staffs with training and product knowledge. Hotels maybe using these temporary staffs during the peak season specially in the F&B department to cope with the influx of tourists to the hotel. When the temporary staffs resign and new staffs take over their positions, the training process will need to repeat again and again which will cost the hotel a lot of capital. In order to have an organizational stability in a company, training is compulsory. When turnover happen, there will be a cost for re-training another employee. (Zuber,2001)
1.2 Problem statement
Providing training helps the organization to train its staffs so that they will be able to provide a good quality of service to their customers. After training there has to be evaluation for the staffs, this is done to find out weather the staff has really put into practice what they are thought in the training, if what the staffs put into practice what they are thought there is a very high degree that they will provide a top quality service to their customers. Whether the training results are done within that particular period is acceptable or not, the training process never ends, until the staff resign. This happens because their will be new products coming into market and staffs need to be up to date with these things, for this also they need training. As training is very important to labor intensive market like the hospitality industry to provide top quality service to their customers, but how far the training will give significant to the industry? Focus of this study will be looking into the process of training and how training improves the service quality.
1.3 Conceptual Framework
1.4. Research Objectives
The objectives of this research is to:-
Identify the importance of training and how it contributes to the quality of service provided by the hospitality staffs.
Identifying the relationship between training and service quality and how its going to help companies/ hotels to get loyal customers.
Identifying the effects trained staffs and staffs without training have on Service quality
1.5. Hypothesis
The hypothesis on this research will look at the major areas where hospitality staff training has an affect on the service quality they provide to their customers. Below are the hypothesis fields which the research is going to look at:
H1: Training and service quality is related
H2: Staff training and quality of service have substantial affect on the hotel/company
H3: How hospitality staff training helps staffs service quality
1.6. Scope and Limitations
The scope of this research focuses on the importance of training towards hospitality staffs in order to enhance the service quality. The time limitation given to complete this research paper and the limitations of online journals is considered as a limitation.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Service quality
Where is explaination about service quality. Here, u also need to explain about it. This the main important part where u need to have it
Before employment of a staff, there will be recruitment session for all the interviewee after this the selection process will be done at a later stage.
The process of training includes two parts.
1. Training
2. Evaluation
2.2 Training
The purpose of training is to improve the knowledge, skills and to change the quality of service provided by the staff. This will lead to many possible benefits for both staffs and to the organizations. This can be:
Give a feeling of personal satisfaction and achievement; also widen the opportunities for career progress.
Help to improve the quality and skills of staffs
Increase the confidence, motivation and commitment of staff towards the organization
The need for training starts when there is discrepancy between the desired out come of the results as against what really happens. Many a time these discrepancies are not mentioned by the guest themselves but identified by the managers. (Chandrashekhar, 2006)
There are several types of training which the company can provide.
Classroom Instruction
A special type of classroom facility is used to give instruction in the operation of equipment like that found in operating departments, like in front office
Cooperative training
Training program that combines practical on the job experience with formal educational classes.
Apprenticeship Training
This is a system of training in which a worker entering the skilled trades is given thorough instruction and experience both on and off the job, in the practical and theoretical aspects of the work.
Internships
Programs jointly sponsored by colleges, universities and other organizations that offer students the opportunity to gain real life experience while allowing them to find out how they will perform in a work organization.
On Job Training
Method which employees are given hands on experience with instructions from their supervisors or trainers.
When the staff has been trained, there will be other job attractions from other companies. In order to prevent staffs from moving away after training, the company must ensure that they will be able to retain their staffs, if not they are going to loose not only trained staffs but both capital and part of service quality they provide.
Retaining staffs is not only increasing there pay. Retaining valuable staffs is one of the main objectives of human capital measurement. When figuring out exactly what makes the staffs to stay on working in the company will be a complicated problem to solve, because human beings are very difficult to study, but the management can make some policies to retain their valuable staffs.
Hospitality industry has the highest demand for workers, unlike desk jobs staffs, staffs in hospitality industry needs to keep on moving and always be focus. They want to feel that they are capable to finish their job with the current resources that they have, when these resources don’t exist, the staffs tend to resign and the company is forced to pay more for that cost (cost of training, time, money and manpower).
Employees are driven by an emotional commitment, whether they feel themselves are valued, challenged and capable to make things different. (Froggatt, K)
Staffs in a company don’t necessarily work for money and some tend to work for the satisfaction they gain after completing the task, this type of staffs tend to provide a better service quality to their customers then those who work for money.
2.3 Evaluation of Staff Performance to enhance the service quality
A formal evaluation will be used to analyze the staffs’ performances; it is normally done once or twice a year.
Evaluation can be done in many ways, some of them are stated below.
Team Evaluation
This type of evaluation is done on team accomplishment other than individual performance.
Subordinate Evaluation
This is done by staff members to their superiors; this is a very good tool for the development of staffs and for the service quality rather than for administration.
Self performance evaluation
Mostly a self evaluation is done by the managers like how a peer evaluation is done.
Manager or Supervisor’s evaluation.
This type of evaluation is done by the manager and reviewed by mostly the manager in charge of human resources department.
Peer Evaluation
These types of evaluation done by fellow staffs, these evaluation forms are used by the manager incharge of the staffs when they are conducting a meeting, when trying to improve the service quality.
These types of evaluation is considered as a tool to improve the service quality provided by the organization and how well there method of training is working or if they need to change it.
Staff turnover and how it affects the service quality
Companies and hotels which has very high staff turnover will find themselves having hard time coping up with the turnover and training the new staffs, when this happen the company sees very little growth compared to what they have forecasted before, in other words the company stays stagnant. This is most likely to be seen when the economy starts to improve as this gives investors time to invest and new hotels and companies to flourish. This is the time when employers will have a problem because their staffs will start to go around with their resumes trying to find a new and better job. When this happens the companies are losing are lots off money and experienced staffs, which in turn will effect a lot with their service quality, because the company spends a lot of money in training their newly selected staffs and these staffs takes time to improve their service quality. While the staffs who have been working with the company for quiet sometime start to find better positions especially from the competitors and leave the company this will give a very big blow to the companies service quality because their rival company got a senior staff who knows the working of their pervious company. When there is high staff turnover this will force companies to focus most of their priorities on staffing. It doesn’t matter if the staffs replaced are senior level executives, midlevel managers or the low level staffs, the company owners need to bear the responsibility of recruiting, interviewing and training new staffs. This will create a big cost as time, money and manpower are being used in order to fill up the positions. Mostly when senior staff members leave their company, they take with them the valuable knowledge of the company and also these staff serves as morale boosters for work teams and help new staffs improve more quickly. Many times companies mistakenly believe that the cost of replacing staffs is just the price they are going to incur for newspaper or web advertisements, but in reality both direct and indirect cost must be taken into consideration.
Why Staffs choose to leave their workplace and how to prevent it
It is very important to understand why staffs look else where for jobs because this will put the quality of service of the company down. Mostly lack of appreciation, lack of team work and the thinking that the managers don’t bother about their staffs are the major reasons which causes low job satisfaction. This most of the time result in the form of poor communication between staff to staff and manager to manager.
As career advancement and salaries are considered as important tools to keep staffs at bay, there is another area which managers most of the times forget to look at which is the appreciations. Surveys reveal that more than forty percent of people who leave their jobs do so because they don’t believe their companies value their contributions. (Shehan, 2004)
Those business owners can avoid high staffs leaving their company by addressing compensation and benefits, implementing training programs with clear paths for advancement and providing comprehensive employee relations programs. (Shehan, 2004)
Another method to control staffs from leaving is to give staff formal training programs that will provide staffs with clear paths for promotions. According to Shehan,2004 staffs are more likely to remain loyal to business who are committed to their staff development.
Hiring the right person from the start will reduce the staffs leaving the company, managers must have a clear idea of the types of people they want to hire for every position available in their company.
Difference between skilled and unskilled employees, how this hinder the quality of service.
Unskilled positions often have high turnover and staffs can generally be replaced without the organization or business incurring any loss of performance. The ease of replacing these staffs provide little incentives to employers to offer generous employment contracts, on the other hand these contracts may strongly favor the employer and lead to increase in turnover as staffs seek and eventually find, more favorable job.
However, high turnover rates of skilled professionals can pose as a risk to the organization due to the human capital (such as skills, training and knowledge) lost. Particularly, given the natural specialization of skilled professionals and these staffs are likely to be reemployed within the same industry by a competitor, most of the time loosing the quality of service provided and company secrets to their competitors Therefore, turnover of these individuals happen both replacement costs to the organization, as well as resulting in a competitive disadvantage to the business.
1.7. Data Collection
Data is collected using books, journals and internet database, mainly from journal searching engines like Google scholar.
(elaborate more!)
Recommendation and Conclusion
It is recommended that staff training is a very important tool in this labor intensive competitive market. This tool will help the managers to improve their staffs output and service quality, staff training and service quality is almost interrelated. The best choice for managers is to train their staffs on a regular basis so that they won’t loose the skills, also providing the staffs with a good environment to work with will improve their service quality. In conclusion it is a must for the management to provide training to there staffs in order to improve their skills which in return will provide a better service quality to there customers. Once a company provides a very good service to its customers there is a very high percentage that they will make royal customers.
