HRM Practices and Organisational Culture in Hospitality

1. Summary
The culture in an organisation has a huge impact in the behaviour and development of the business and its employees. Organisation culture should concentrate on the actions, behaviour and effectiveness of employees. It is through effective Human Resources Management (HRM) practices that culture is really implemented by employees on the daily basics. Culture and HRM bonds are critically examined defining links, challenges and opportunities both could face.

2. What is Culture?
Clarke & Chen gives the following definition:
“Culture is a set of accepted behaviour patterns, values, assumptions, and shared common experiences.

Culture defines social structure, decision-making practices, and communication styles. Culture dictates behaviour, etiquette, and protocol. It impacts everyone, and influences how we act and respond. Culture is communication. It is a way people create, send, process and interpret information”.

The purpose is to teach employees the values, beliefs, views, goals, and behaviours of the hotel brand and the corporation hotel belongs to. Culture can be used as a competitive advantage.

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Cole (2010, p.93) affirms that the ‘right’ culture is gradually essential to ensuring an organisation’s long-term viability. Managers have to find and select people who are more suitable for the job and who can make of theirs the organisation’s culture. That is where human resource management (HRM) comes in.

3.Human Resources Management
Human Resources Management (HRM) is important for three reasons: first, it is seen as one element for organisations to be competitive. Secondly, HRM is an essential part of organisational strategies. Finally, the way organisations treat their people has been found to considerably affect organisational performance.

According to Robbins & Coulter (2012, p.313) the thread for HRM among those practices is an obligation to bond with employees; to improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities; also increasing their motivation and enhancing organisation culture.

Managers should focus on integrating all hotel functions with HRM, in order to emphasise its strategic role of setting and achieving the business goals. It is through staffs that a real hospitality atmosphere can be sensed by customer where customers are the centre of attention by employees. 4.Culture & HRM Relationship

Through culture, hotel aims to mould its employees so they can represent the brand, the organisation; and also that they can provide a magnificent customer service working as a unite work-team that communicates effectively and interacts remarkably. Achieving competitive success through people means managers must change how they think about their employees and how they view the work relationship.

They must work with people and treat them as partners, not just as costs to be minimized or avoided. Culture is a priority when creating a high customer service becomes a management priority, and managers must therefore seek the correct practices and procedures which employees should follow in order to meet the requisite service culture. Human resource practices within the organization act to maintain culture by giving employees a set of similar experiences (Langton & Robbins 2006, p.338). 4.1.Challenges

Employees can be resilient to completely adopt hotel’s culture; also they cannot be comfortable with the management style. One challenge for HRM is to deal with employees talking and listening to them in order to understand them and to apply corrective strategies. Even though in most of cases culture is taught and explained at induction sessions, managers may face circumstances where employees would lose interest on culture.

Therefore culture should be reinforced by the use of different resources like staff events, posters, and staff evaluations. But the real challenge is whether HRM practices would evolve and adapt and become more important in an organisation or would disappear and be replaced by outsourcing and technology (Davidson, McPhail & Barry 2011); it is also suggested that the type of organisation and its culture will regulate which of these possibilities occur in each organisation.

HRM practices in hotels should remain but instead of being purely an administrative tool to hire personnel, HRM should become a strategic department. 4.2.Opportunities

Having employees from different cultures will definitely enriched hotels’ culture. A multicultural organisation will be able to understand better customers’ needs and expectations according to their background. Another opportunity is that culture gives members an organisational identity which can lead to better understanding of their place within the organisation, and from there HRM practices can support and develop members towards a better future for them.

Dawson & Abbott (2011) argue that having the adequate HRM practices include recruiting and retaining the right people; but finding highly committed employees who show a greater understanding about the customers’ needs and desires is the biggest duty. The possession of such knowledge is imperative for hotels which can lead to have a significant chance of creating a sustainable competitive advantage and a more profitable business. 5.Conclusion

In order to be successful, a hospitality organisation must have a strong culture. That culture should be learnt by employees. They must show a real understanding of culture and put it in place on their daily duties. Culture gets reinforced by a multicultural staff. HRM practices should aim to create a hospitality atmosphere within the organisation.

It is through effective management of people that a hotel can have remarkable competitive advantage and be profitable. The interrelationship Culture-HRM faces some challenges, and must take the most of the opportunities.