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Is human resources management in market economies really capable of providing a warm welcome?

Alexander BERGMANN - Professor, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland

Mr. President, Dear Colleague,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Before giving my opinions on the question posed to me by the title suggested for this short talk, I would like to thank the organisers of these "7th Tourism Summits" for having honoured me and entrusted me with an invitation to speak to you. And I would like to thank you who are taking part in these days of reflection and discussion for wanting to listen to me. I think it was wise to put my talk at the beginning--after this it can only go up from here, towards the peaks of our summit.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I will answer the question "Is human resources management in market economies really capable of providing a warm welcome?" in the negative. Human resource management cannot provide a warm welcome. However, good management can greatly contribute to it, and bad management can seriously compromise it.

Knowing me, Mr. Keller had the good sense to place the term "human resources" in quotation marks; he did not do the same with the word "management". That's too bad, because, given that I actually believe that work associates must not be treated as resources (but as colleagues), I also believe (and this goes hand in hand) that they cannot truly be managed, as an account is managed. They cannot even be motivated, developed, or changed. And, of course, a good mood, readiness to serve, human warmth, and other attitudes essential for a warm welcome cannot be demanded from someone. All one can do is, on the one hand, create conditions promoting their motivation and development, and, on the other hand, reduce the sources of their loss of motivation and the obstacles to their development. All one is in a position to do is avoid the conditions that destroy a good mood, where one feels a readiness to serve to be degrading and where a climate of anonymity, routine, and standardised and empty formality pervades. Of course, colleagues can be forced to behave properly and smile, but this will not produce a warm welcome, as long as they aren't putting their heart into it, are not themselves, and are not naturally and spontaneously seeking to be pleasant and to satisfy their guests. (I say "their guests", instead of "the customers" and I will explain why later).

These few remarks are general and are tied to human nature, and not specific conditions, i.e. the market economy. In a market economy--in particular a globalised market, governed by financial logic, where short-term profit has become the principal measurement of a business's performance, and where competition has degenerated into war--companies are driven to adopt behaviours the reverse of those that would encourage a warm welcome. They reduce the size of their staff and put their employees under pressure, and try to lower costs where they can, consequently above all where the harmful consequences of doing so will not emerge immediately, for example in training colleagues or eliminating services that aren't profitable.  So, for example, in air transport hardly any companies fight over the hospitality and service quality; they are all obsessed by questions of cost, major savings, network, slots, etc. And if quality is still counted on elsewhere in the hospitality industry, it is only considered in terms of output and results, and not in terms of input and resources. However, there is no quality product without quality factors of production--and we all know that for services the human element is the determining factor of production.

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"Human resources" are "managed" (to use this commonly-accepted terminology) in three ways: (1) interpersonally, by direct supervision, or coaching;(2) institutionally, by setting up an organisation and management systems; and(3) culturally, by defining a vision, a climate, and values that you try to have your colleagues share. Supervision takes place at all levels of responsibility; setting up the organisation and management systems--for task determination and for selection, payment, evaluation, etc.--is first and foremost the business of the human resources department. Deploying a company culture is above all a matter for the general management.

Let's begin with supervising. In the hotel and catering trades, the management style has never been highly participative. However, authoritarian approaches produce obedience, conformity, but not commitment or a sense of responsibility or initiative. They can provide minimal quality, but will not produce maximal quality. For maximal quality, colleagues need to identify with the company, greet guests as if at their own home, and have the ability to react to the guests' wishes in the way it seems best to them and according to their best judgment, instead of having to keep within strict rules and to ask permission for the slightest thing from their superiors. This approach obviously implies that the colleagues are competent; one cannot and must not give a person the authority to do something that he or she is not able to do properly.

I have noticed that, these days, the more we speak of empowerment, the less we do with it.  I have also observed, to a certain extent everywhere (and therefore also in hospitality jobs) a growing number of people who have a hard time at work. They suffer from a lack of job security, stress, not feeling equal to the task, of always having to hurry through things, not to mention various kinds of harassment. But how do you expect people who suffer at work, and are therefore preoccupied with themselves, to be attentive to the needs of others and to take pleasure in pleasing them?

With this, I do not mean that I recommend letting this matter go. Quite the contrary. What I mean, and what is, I am convinced, the winning formula for any supervising, coaching, or education is this: you have to be demanding and to like them. Yes, it is necessary to set high standards. However, while encouraging colleagues to do their very best, it is necessary to have respect for them, to take an interest in them (as individuals and not as human resources), to support, and to protect them. This is the opposite of the approach consisting of demanding results and of saying: "figure it out yourself or you're out".

Human resource managers provide the human resources to the company by recruiting them; then, they attend to their optimal use (not to say exploitation), by assigning them duties where the company can best benefit from their skills, while developing them through training activities, and by creating/maintaining conditions and a work climate in which they can be most productive, in the short and long term; finally, managers monitor their efficiency and their progress.

How can they encourage a warm welcome in all of this?

First, of course, through the selection of colleagues, in particular those who are in direct contact with the guests. There are people with more social skills and tact than others, and who have a more cheerful nature than others, and, especially, who are truly interested and motivated by welcoming. An error is often made during recruiting or transferring of overvaluing skills (which can be learned), and of undervaluing motivation (which is not so easily mastered). And among skills, manual and intellectual know-how is often overvalued (although the hotel and catering trades usually do not require a very high level), while interpersonal skills (which, however, are essential) are undervalued. Finally, it is often assumed that a certain degree of experience guarantees applicant quality, forgetting that there is a major difference between having experience and learning from one's experiences, and that the value of what one has learned always depends largely on the environment in which one applies it.

You may say that that these errors when choosing colleagues are not the main problem, that the primary difficulty lies in the quality of applicants from among whom one can choose. I do not deny this problem. This is due to the low appeal of the sector, where the hours are long and irregular, work conditions difficult, and pay is low. But none of this is inevitable. It is precisely the job of human resource managers to apply themselves to working on problems regarding schedules, work conditions, payment, and so on. 

I do not have the time to deal with all these aspects here, nor, of course, the miracle solutions for them. But it seems to me that these conditions must not be treated as unavoidable.  Just a few avenues for reflection: 

• Regarding hours, as one example, the problem can be addressed through despecialisation and job versatility that will make it possible to better equalise work flows and to distribute chores more equitably. Furthermore, difficult schedules are often much more tolerable if they are not imposed, but rather if the employees can participate in managing their time and if some kind of balance exists. 
• The same principle of participation could be applied to payment. It is not so much the absolute amounts received that determine satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one's income, but the comparative amounts. Now, equity between the payment of financial backers and the employees, on one hand, and between the different categories of employees, even different individuals, on the other hand, is always subjective. Consequently, any unilateral method can only with difficulty do justice to unexpressed, subjective assessments, and therefore risks causing some kind of frustration. 
• The same problems of equity often arise with work/performance evaluations. In this case, the causes are typically quite different. In particular, there is on the one hand the evaluation system that mixes an evaluation with an eye to the colleague's development with one that serves as a basis for his/her payment or for a promotion decision (by mixing everything, unfortunate inconsistencies and contradictions are created). And, on the other hand, there is a lack of a systematic collection of the information on which the evaluation is based (giving it a fragile foundation). Finally, there is the evaluator's lack of awareness of his/her own systematic and nonsystematic biases.

What remains is the creation of a companyculture compatible with and encouraging a warm welcome. On this subject, I have a few not-too-drastic thoughts to submit to you.

I will not go so far as to suggest a company culture modelled exactly on those of non-profit institutions. However, I think that a warm welcome is incompatible with a culture dominated by the desire to minimise costs and maximise profits. In the hotel trade, just as in health, education, or the arts, money should be regarded as a constraint, not the goal, and especially not as the exclusive goal. Similarly, in hotels or restaurants, again as in a hospital, school, or the opera, the customer will not be treated as such. It is necessary at least to give the impression that what binds the hotel and restaurant is not just an economic contract, but a psychological contract, not based on an exchange, but on devotion and generosity. The customer is treated as a guest or a friend. Finally, and still in the same line of thought, a welcoming culture is a culture that does not define the hotel and catering trades as industries, but as a sector unto itself, closer to craftsmanship or art. Industry evokes anonymity, the pursuit of growth, efficiency, standardisation, establishing routines--in short, Taylorism--while a warm welcome must be personalised, it implies a human scale, relies on an ideal of unselfish service, hospitality, generosity, etc.

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I would like to end with the following comments. You asked me to speak to you about the impact of personnel management on the quality of the welcome. I am aware of the fact that the majority of a hotel or restaurant's employees never or only rarely see the customers. They work in what, in a bank, would be called the "back office". They aren't trying to satisfy the customer as much as they are their boss. This does not mean that what I said about those who work in the "front office" does not apply to them. Perhaps this will not have as immediate an impact on the quality of their work, but nevertheless this remains equally valid for them.