Talent Management Innovations in the International Hospitality Industry

Stefan Jooss, Ralf Burbach, Huub Ruël, Stefan Jooss, Ralf Burbach, Huub Ruël

• Editore: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800713086
• Argomento: Negocios y empresa
• Categoria: Hostelería, viajes y turismo

The hospitality industry relies on the sourcing and development of talent to deliver excellent customer experiences and interactions in a 24/7 environment. Talent Management Innovations in the International Hospitality Industry explores both research and practical perspectives on contemporary talent management, presenting a diverse range of stakeholder views in a variety of international hospitality settings.
This collection circumnavigates a wide range of subjects within the talent management field, including employer branding, creative talent, talent pools, and mentoring initiatives, along with a focus on talent identification, development, and retention.
The new insights aid academics and professionals in gaining a greater understanding of the multifaceted nature of talent management in this people-centric industry and offers a comprehensive set of evidence-based research and practical examples of talent management innovation in the international hospitality industry.

Chapter 1

Strategic Talent Management in the Hospitality Industry

Thomas Garavan, Geraldine Matthews-Smith, Ann Marie Gill and Fergal O’Brien

Abstract

Purpose: Talent management and in particular strategic talent management (STM) has emerged as an important issue for hospitality organisations worldwide. In this chapter, we address some of the complexities evident in hospitality organisations in relation to the practice of STM, the types of internal and external STM issues that arise and both the research and practice implications of pursuing STM in hospitality organisations.

Methodology/Approach: This chapter presents a review of the literature on the wider topic of STM, with particular focus on the integration of issues and themes identified in the hospitality management literature related to STM perspectives.

Findings: We find that STM is a topical issue for hospitality organisations irrespective of size, complexity, or geographic location. However, research that explicitly addresses STM in hospitality is nascent leaving many unanswered questions. The notion of what constitutes STM is shaped by the complexities and values of the hospitality industry itself and its meaning is not necessarily the same as in other industry contexts. However, as yet we do not have sufficient insights to reach conclusions as to what STM truly looks like in hospitality organisations.

Research Implications: Here, we add to the literature, highlighting the need for more research on the many dimensions of STM in hospitality organisations including its antecedents, processes, and outcomes and the extent to which it is different in hospitality organisations compared to multinational corporations and public sector organisations.

Practical Implications: We highlight a number of practical implications around roles, processes, practices, and skillsets to utilise a strategic approach to talent management in hospitality organisations.

Originality/Value: This chapter continues the debate as to the role of STM in hospitality organisations as well as providing a more focussed agenda for both future research and practice. We also analyse and critique the internal and external forces and pressures that shape STM in hospitality organisations.

Keywords: Strategic talent management; hospitality organisations; opportunities and challenges; innovations in strategic talent management; research agenda; practice agenda

Introduction

Globally the hospitality industry is one of the fastest growing sectors and contributes to both the economic and social development of nations (Baum, 2019a). The industry provides a wide variety of jobs in a diverse set of organisations and it is estimated that hospitality organisations provide employment to one in 10 people worldwide (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018). The industry has a strong employment reputation, yet numerous reports have highlighted the significant human resource (HR) challenges and the predicted deficit in talent, which this industry will encounter over the next 10 years (Johnson, Huang, & Doyle, 2019). Hospitality organisations are highly labour intensive (D’Annunzio-Green, 2008; Nzonzo & Chipfuva, 2013) and for many prospective graduates the industry has become tainted with a negative perception, including long working hours, low pay levels, and high levels of employee turnover. These issues point to some of the challenges that hospitality organisations face when it comes to talent management.

It is generally accepted that hospitality organisations need to be both strategic and proactive when it comes to responding to talent shortages if the industry is to continue to be successful (Baum, Kralj, Robinson, & Solnet, 2016). One such response is the implementation of strategic talent management (STM) which is defined as

activities and processes that involve the systematic identification of key positions which differentially contribute to the organisation’s sustainable competitive advantage, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to fill these roles, and the development of a differentiated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these positions with competent incumbents and to ensure their continued commitment to the organisation. (Collings & Mellahi, 2009, p. 304)

The argument is that STM will enable hospitality organisations to acquire, develop, and retain HR that are rare, inimitable, and non-substitutional (Barney & Wright, 1997). Barron (2008), for example, highlights the value of having superior talent as a key source of sustainable competitive advantage due to high performance.

The need for STM and its primacy in hospitality organisations is driven by a number of factors, including competition for quality hospitality labour (Jaworski, Ravichandran, Karpinski, & Singh, 2018); demographic change, including increased mobility and globalisation (Thunnissen, Fruytier, & Boselie, 2013); an increased focus on work–life balance issues (Bratton & Watson, 2018); high levels of employee turnover (Giousmpasoglou & Marinakou, 2019); and major changes in the composition of the labour market in terms of age, education, and career expectations (Frawley, Goh, & Law, 2019). Remarkably, is widely acknowledged that many hospitality organisations are conscious of these issues but lack both the mindset and skillset to position talent management as a strategic activity and link it to business performance (Deery & Jago, 2015). In the wider human resource management (HRM) hospitality literatures there is a renewed emphasis on aligning HRM practices and business strategies with the goals of enhanced operational and financial performance (D’Annunzio-Green & Teare, 2018; Osterman, 2018). Therefore, strategic selection, the provision of specific training and talent development activities and the implementation of strategies to engage and retain talent are of primary importance (Kim & Ployhart, 2014; King & Vaiman, 2019).

The purpose of this chapter is to outline and evaluate the scope of STM strategies and practices in the context of hospitality organisations through a review of the hospitality literature on talent management and STM. We specifically provide an outline of why the hospitality sector is different when it comes to STM and we discuss the components of STM in these organisations. We then address the key STM external and internal issues that arise in hospitality organisations including globalisation and technology, precarity, vulnerability and COVID-19, diversity and dignity issues, generational difference and STM, buying versus developing talent, talent differentiation and pooling and STM in SMEs. The chapter concludes with a discussion of both the research and practice agendas for STM in hospitality organisations.

The Nature and Scope of STM

The concept of talent management has received some attention in the hospitality literature (e.g. Goh & Okumus, 2020; Gupta, 2019; Kichuk, Brown, & Ladkin, 2019). Additionally, in the wider non-hospitality literature, talent management is conceptualised as having an individualistic/star (Collings & Mellahi, 2009) or strategic focus (Garavan, Carbery, & Rock, 2012; McDonnell, Lamare, Gunnigle, & Lavelle, 2010). The individualistic focus has its origins in human capital theory and is based on the notion that potential employees have ownership of their human capital and hospitality organisations can avail of this through recruitment and selection, further training and development, and the motivation and engagement of employees (Beechler & Woodward, 2009). This individualistic approach is characterised by Schreuder and Noorman (2019) as generic talent management. The approach has a number of important characteristics that are useful to highlight here. It starts with the notion that talent is supply driven and focusses on how it can be utilised in organisations. There is a particular emphasis given to the development of all employees and it promotes the idea of an inclusive approach. In practice, while the emphasis is on the development of all employees there is usually a concentration on the development of leaders who are considered scarce talent resources. STM operates under a very different set of assumptions. Collings and Mellahi (2009), in a seminal contribution to the literature, highlighted that STM is characterised by a differentiated HR architecture, the creation of talent pools, pivotal positions, and the development of talent management strategies that respond to the external environment. They propose that the practice of a strategic approach to talent management will lead to a number of individual and organisational outcomes including motivation, organisational commitment, extra role behaviour, and firm performance. Schreuder and Noorman (2019) expand on this model and postulate that STM starts with the business strategy, is demand driven and poses the question of the types of talent that are required to realise the business strategy. Unlike the individualistic or generic approach there is a particular focus on top talent and in particular leadership talent. STM is therefore strongly exclusive as a theoretical concept and advocates intensive investment in top talent wherever it occurs throughout the organisation. Such talent is considered the route to sustainable competitive advantage provided it occupies key positions within the organisation, and can be recruited externally or developed internally.

There is however much debate and some research concerning whether such a strategic approach operates in hospitality organisations. A number of trends emerge from the literature are worth noting here.

• There is a genuine recognition among researchers and practitioners of the need for a strategic approach to talent management. For example, D’Annunzio-Green (2018), Deery and Jago (2015), and Sheehan, Grant, and Garavan (2018) all formulate the argument for an increased focus on STM. The four key reasons put forward include: the challenging nature of recruitment and selection in a highly labour-intensive industry; the seasonal and cyclical nature of the hospitality industry; the dependency on peripheral and often young employees, and finally the reliance on migrants.
• Not much has changed in the past 10+ years with several of the same issues continuing to persist. This suggests that for many hospitality organisations there is insufficient attention given to the strategic management of talent. However, this appears to depend on the nature of the hospitality organisation. For example, Jooss, McDonnell, Burbach, and Vaiman (2019) found that some multinational hotel firms are pursuing STM even though they did not explicitly label it as STM. They found that there was concern to align talent management with values, goals, and business strategies. In a similar vein, Sheehan et al. (2018) emphasised that hospitality organisations are highly diverse and consequently they will have different priorities. In addition, they will operate in different geographical and cultural contexts, which may affect the extent to which STM is practiced or not.
• D’Annunzio-Green (2018) emphasises that organisations have a better und...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Strategic Talent Management in the Hospitality Industry
• Chapter 2. Conceptualisations of Development Approaches to Promote Individual Creative Talent
• Chapter 3. Sustaining Hospitality Talent Pools Through a Common Pool Resource Lens
• Chapter 4. Talent Management, The Employer Brand, and Employee Retention: Evidence from the Irish Hotel Sector
• Chapter 5. Mentoring Initiatives as Talent Management Innovations
• Chapter 6. Talent Management Innovations in the Hospitality Industry: Insights from the Winners of the Hospitality HR Award
• Chapter 7. Talent Management Innovation in a Time of Unprecedented Disruption: Implications for Practice and Research
• Index