Content 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. What is motivation ................................................................................................................. 3 2.1. Basic Definition............................................................................................................... 3 2.2. Motivation Theories ........................................................................................................ 3 3.
Why to motivate ..................................................................................................................... 4 4. How to Motivate Employees ................................................................................................. 6 4.1. Build an Appropriate Wage System ................................................................................ 6 4.1.1. Use Diversified Pay Models ..................................................................................... 6 4.1.2. Other Wage System .................................................................................................. 7 4.1.3. A Fair Performance Evaluation and promotion Mechanism .................................... 8 4.2. Pay attention to employees self-actualization ................................................................ 8 4.3. Establishing a Staff Training System ............................................................................ 10 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 12 Reference ................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
1. Introduction Ordinarily, when we do our jobs the company gives to us, we only pay a small percent of our effort to make it. If we do much better, we may finish the tasks early or quickly. But the realistic is that there is no people are willing to do that without benefits and motivation. There is a survey from William James, a psychologist from Harvard University, shows that in a company, most of the employees paid only 20%-30% of their effort to finish the job. But if they got motivation or extra benefits, they may pay 80%-90%. From the survey, we can see that there is a lot of difference between common work performance and the performance with motivation (Price, 2007). In hospitality industry, beside the marketing strategy and facility, the most important aspect to increase the competence is service. Nowadays, more and more famous international hotel groups focus China as an important market. In this situation, the domestic hotel group will face a lot of challenge, meanwhile, they also have opportunity to learn and be more competitive. Domestic hotels could have customer resource and luxurious facility, but the key issue to be an excellent hotel is human. The higher quality of the employees, the better services will be provided. A hotel have good service will help to get profit and keep stable in development. When a hotel focus on enhance the quality of the employees, there always have several problems everywhere, such as low enthusiasm, weak capability and high turnover rate. Due to the low salary and low requirement of technology, hotels have to choose the employees without high education background, especially for domestic hotels and low star-rate hotels. The employees with low education background may lack of learning ability
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and service awareness (Kerry, 2007). These factors are contacting directly with the quality of service, customer satisfaction and the reputation of a hotel. For high turnover rate, it has huge effect on hotels service quality. With high turnover rate, a hotel could not ensure they have enough time and space to train the new employees and provide excellent service at the same time (Price, 2007). The employees may feel hard to achieve their goals and got good salaries because of the high pressure of working in a hotel. So what a hotel need is to have an available and effective motivation system to enhance the performance of the employees, and keep their loyalty and get their own value. The current situation of employee motivation in hospitality industry in China can conclude in below (Zhu, 2010): 1) Motivation is almost represented on oral, but hardly achieve in action. The employees have no prospect of outstanding motivation from human resource department. 2) Even if a hotel really did the motivation, the content and form were simple and poor. 3) The evaluation system is not perfect, the employees may get same salary whether he has a good performance or not. So, the lack of the enthusiasm is due to the disappointed system. 4) The hotel does not have a good training system to set up the goals of the employees. The employees could not get well training and have no idea of what to do; they may feel meaningless during the work. In general, these 4 points talked above are the major problems for hospitality industrys human resource management.
2. What is motivation
2.1. Basic Definition
It is really complex to give a definition of what is motivation. Due to the diversity industries, it has many different explanations. Generally, the definition of motivation is a dynamic force to drive a person to take a specific performance.
2.2. Motivation Theories
To know the motivation in depth, there have several theories to explain. The first is The Carrot and Stick Approach it is named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it. The mule would move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, while also moving away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of pain, thus drawing the cart. The same as the human, we are self-interested, we get pleasure and avoid pains by our desire. Take this theory into our life: we only accepted the job which has good salary or reward, no one like unpleasant job. The carrot and stick here refers rewards and punishment. Another theory is the most famous and widely used one in all over the world, which is Maslows hierarchy theory of needs. Maslow arranged human needs from low to high as physiological needs, security of safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and need for self-actualization. In his point of view, if one need of a person is satisfied, he will seek to the next one, then, the next goal will be the motivation of him. This theory can also used in hospitality industry, when an employee got paid and appropriate paid, he is willing to show
his ability to provide excellent service, because he want to get more: the high position and high salary. The next famous theory is Motivation-hygiene theory from Frederick Herzberg. It helps to better understand employees work attitude and motivation. He asked the employees what pleased and displeased them during their working times, the answers showed that the factors causing satisfaction (motivation) were different from those causing dissatisfaction (hygiene). The conclusion of his theory shows that the motivation is intrinsic such as work itself, achievement and recognition; and the hygiene is extrinsic such as company policy, supervision and work conditions.
3. Why to motivate Motivation is very important in modern enterprises, it can encourage the employees to maximum their potentials in creating the profits both for enterprise and individual. Motivation focus on arousing the enthusiasm of the employees, and it based on the employees personal needs. So, when setting up the motivation system, employees needs are the first thing to think about. And then, motivate the employees with systematic approach to achieve the goals. Achieving the goals of the enterprise not only depends on individual performance, but also relies on the common behaviors among employees. For hospitality industry, motivation has prominent effect on human resource management. It can be concluded at least 4 point: 1) Attract preeminent employees to the enterprise.
Many famous hotel groups, especially which is competitive and powerful use various kind of preferential policy to attract preeminent employees such as generous welfare benefit and effective career path. A hotel with good employees can provide excellent service and attract the customers to increase the profits. 2) Developing the potential of employees ability. William Jamess survey shows that, the performance of employees is dominated by employees abilities and level of motivation. If related motivation to employees innovation, creativity and self-improvement, the influence of motivation will be much bigger. A hotel has a large amount of employees working in each department, many of them has the potential to do much better. It can save a lot of money and time on recruitment if they pay attention to develop the employees ability. 3) Retain the talents A hotels reputation is basically based on its quality of service. With talented employees, it can have excellent service. So, a hotel which has effective motivation system will be the ideal work place for those talents. 4) Help to create a healthy competition environment Motivation system contains a competitive spirit; the operation of it will be able to create a healthy competition environment, and the benign to build a healthy competition mechanism. In the competitive environment, employees will get the pressure from the mechanism, and the pressure will transfer to employees motivation. McGregor said: "the competition between individuals is one of the main sources of motivation."
4. How to Motivate Employees
4.1. Build an Appropriate Wage System
Based on Maslows hierarchy theory of needs, physiological needs are the most basic need. But when we talk about motivation, the incentive thing was not just salary; it should include bonus, house or benefits. As the development of economic and the quality of the employees, human resource department in a hotel should focus on satisfied high-level needs of the employees, especially in psychological aspects. The salary incentive is an important method of basic management, the good or not of how it running has a huge influence on moral. The core of wage system for a hotel is effectiveness, and related it to employees job performance, responsibility and contribution, then, highlights the combine of effectiveness and contribution. For the mode of motivation, combine the salary incentive and non-wage incentive to motivate employees creative and enthusiasm. In performance evaluation and promotion mechanism, emphasize the transparent and build a fair competition environment. Appropriate wage system not only can save the labor cost, but also can maximum the potential of the employees to make more profits.
4.1.1. Use Diversified Pay Models
In my opinion, when considering the increasing of profits, maintain the employees moral and development, the ideal structure of wage system can conclude as follow (Ren, 2006):
Subject
Function
Remarks
Basic wage Post wage Merit pay
Ensure the basic live Shows the level and ability Shows the task and employees performance
Almost is fixed Depend on the ability Depend on hotels
effectiveness and profit Allowance for study Encourage employee improve himself Depend on the level of learning Seniority pay Subsidy Equity wage Encourage employee work in the hotel House allowance and medical subsidy Depend on the years Almost is fixed
Build a relationship between the employee Depend on the contract and the hotel
4.1.2. Other Wage System
As a beneficial supplement of basic wage system, there have several other wage distributions such as piece-rate pay, responsibility for each department and base salary plus commission. In hospitality industry it is used more widely than others. For housekeeping department, the piece-rate pay is better, because of the workload and the level of technology assessment; for sales department, they use base salary plus commission, it helped to motivate them make more profits. Besides salary motivation, there are several non-wage motivations such as promotion, concern and holiday. Each of them has different way to motivate, but there is key information
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in common, that is showing the affirmative of the employees performance.
4.1.3. A Fair Performance Evaluation and promotion Mechanism
Whether the performance appraisal system is fair and reasonable or not, is not only related to the problem of salary, but also has more important influence on employee's moral (Mary, 2011). In every hotel, guest is always right. It could not avoid that the line staff may get some grievances. They are easy to lose the mental balance. At the same time, if a hotel does not have a fair performance evaluation mechanism, that will has a bed influence on employees enthusiasm and make them disappointing. On the contrary, if the hotel showing the concern and understanding of the line staff, build a fair performance and promotion evaluation mechanism, those effective things will help the employees to adjust their mentality, stimulate more passion into the work.
4.2. Pay attention to employees self-actualization
The highest level of Maslows hierarchy of needs is the self-actualization and it is true to both managers and the ordinary employees. They all have the desire of improvement. For example, more than 60 % of the employees have received the education above the 3-year college level in the White Swan Hotel of Guangzhou. The signal of the hotel is: give you a stage, return me a miracle, and realize your value. Within a short time, this hotel built up a large stage for those talents and was regarded as the best one among top 50 hotels in China. Self-actualization fulfills the highest need of people and it means people want to finish the work which is match their ability and even arouse their potential, then becoming the one they
admired in the end. This process shows us the highest value of one person. The efficiency of the motivational system is depending on satisfying the different needs from different employees. As the result, hotel managers need to focus those aspects as follow: 1) Paying highly attention to the personal demand Understanding the employees personal needs and trying to fulfill them is regarded as the important part of modern management. Each single employee will pay more attention to several parts. For those aspects that almost everyone concerns about, managers need to think highly of them such as the salary, benefit, accommodation, etc. Those things are very cumbersome, but they are very important to each employees and it relatively will affect ones altitude towards the work. 2) Empower and let them join the management The sense of ownership is so important that it will highly affect the enthusiasm of employees. Right empowerment shows the respect and the trust to employees, and it also could improve the skills, abilities of employees at the same time (Stredwick, 2008). When they could join the decision making process and the management, most of them will raise the trust and loyalty to the hotel. Meanwhile, an effective communication channels from top to bottom or from the bottom to top will make a highly contribution to build up a democratization management atmosphere. Then, it will be more easily to understand and fulfill their needs. 3) Encouragement of innovation and creation The famous signal of Kempinski Hotel Group is all is about people. Those talents in the hotel will always be the fresh blood. Satisfying their needs and wants will arouse their
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creativity, their enthusiasm and the ambitious. At the same time, they help to improve the quality of the hotel service. For example, IHG built up a reasonable suggestion evaluation system within the hotel. They will give the prize for those people who offer the new idea or a new process. Its an effective ways to motivate their people and also can help hotel to find the short coming in the system. 4) Paying attention to help employees career planning Career planning has been an important part of human resource development and it continues to be a new trend around the world. It is extremely important for those talents who with good education background. (M.Leboeuf, 2011) First, everyone wants to be successful and few of them know how. Career planning gives them a guide and methods to achieve the goal. Second, the employee turnover rate is extremely high among all the industries. Third, career planning is an effective way to maintain those talents. One of the important essential of modern management is helping employees development on their way. Meanwhile, let employees realize that their career planning match with the hotels planning. They will be more loyalty to the hotel since they know they can grow with the hotel and they do hope to grow.
4.3. Establishing a Staff Training System
Training, in the most simplistic definition, is an activity that changes peoples behavior. (Kovach, 2009) In modern hotel business, it is all about competence in people, and especially the employees qualities. The level of service quality depends on the qualities of employees. The
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qualities are about knowledge, skills and thoughts which lead to a hotels survival and development. Therefore, training also motivates and inspires employees by providing them all needed information in work as well as helps them to recognize how important their jobs are. Staff training is a significant part as well as the key function of Human Resource Management and Development; it is the crucial path of motivating employees and increasing productivity in the business (Kerry, 2007). With the development of the technologies and the whole business environment, employees are requested to be more skilled and qualified, even if you are a good employee today, you could be out of the line some other day if you do not keep studying. A company needs organized staff training if wants to be competitive among others (Kovach, 2009). Staff training is the key task to help everyone in the company to be more united. An enterprise could hire experienced employees or train employees to be skilled. When the company trains their own staff, by providing and forming a harmonious atmosphere, accurate work specification and the passion of work, team spirit will be built between employees and management team within the process. (Kerry, 2007) Training of work tasks is one of the main aspects of staff training, including principles at work, professional knowledge and skills, by offering employees these essentials, staff training helps personal abilities match with business requirements. (Price, 2007) Training could be enormously demanding and should be in-depth; lack of training or poor training brings out high employee turnover and the delivery of substandard products and services (Kerry, 2007).
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5. Conclusion Have a fully understand of human resource in hospitality industry is the basic thing if you want to have an excellent ability in working in a hotels human resource department. The main product of the hotel is service which is made of human. The management of a hotel is due to the human. So, human resource management plays an important role in hotel management. The situation of domestic hospitality industry is not optimistic. The reason of this situation is the backward human resource. To solve the problem, to improve the quality of the employees, we must focus on motivation. This paper point out the important of motivation in hospitality industry and list some problems we meet today. And then establish a series of solutions such as the use wage system to build a comfortable working environment; Fair performance evaluation; Maslows hierarchy theory in hospitality and staff training.
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