Service quality is directly linked to front line employee morale, knowledge, skills and motivation

Course Title: Human Resource Management in Hospitality Industry Module Code: MGPL 2104 B

Submitted By: Josian Troubat - 102122 Malehka Lagan -102119

Submitted to: Mrs N V Seebaluck Rengasamy Module Conveyor

Date: 15/03/12

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express our sincere thanks and heartfelt gratitude towards Mrs. Vanessa Seebaluck Rengasamy our lecturer who has given us the opportunity to work on this assignment. While completing this project, many a time we had came across difficulties. Our respected lecturer has guided, helped and encouraged. This study has enabled us to emphasize on team spirit and have better coordination in the delegation of work and above all this study has enhanced our knowledge. We equally like to thank our respective work place for having given us the necessary support to carry out this assignment.

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Abstract
The Hospitality and Tourism Industry is known to be a labour intensive, in this era where mangers have to deal with fierce competition and new technologies. They now need to care about the quality of service the offer and these services are offered by front line employees. This study examines the key role the front line employees behaviours play in an organization and what motivate them to engage in service quality. Organizations should focus more on creating a proper work environment that will help the development of its employees. Findings are based on observation, current literatures such as journals, related books, online articles and some from hotel newsletters.

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Contents
Introduction 5 Conclusion Recommendations 10 References and Bibliography 11 9

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Service quality is directly linked to frontline employee morale, knowledge, skills and motivation

Introduction
The purpose of this study will look into the relationship between service quality and frontline employee morale, motivation, knowledge and skill in Mauritian resorts hotel. This case study will be made on resorts hotel, as in Mauritius, most of the hotels are classified as resorts. The main characteristics of service quality are closely related to front liners. The attributes of service quality are Assurance, Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, and Empathy.

Tangibles: Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials.

Reliability: Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.

Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

Assurance: The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence.

Empathy: The caring individualized attention the organisation through it front liners provides its customers. Parasuraman et al. (1985)

Empathy, responsiveness, availability, reliability and tangibles cannot be dissociated to frontline employees, as the hotel industry is a service and people oriented business, these front liners who are the first and last contact with the customer and also delivering the service. Service quality
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depends essentially on the aptitude and the attitude of the front liners to attend guest satisfaction and expectation. The service encounter goes to the heart of hospitality and tourism industry. The success of the service encounter depends on the extent to which customer needs are satisfied or exceeded and further, hospitality and tourism organizations depend on satisfied customers for their survival (Pizam and Ellis, 1999). Being internal customers to the organization, frontline employee also needs these attributes in order to achieve organizational objectives to service quality. Albrechts (1990) suggested a quality service triangle which notes the relationships between the organization success and the customer contact staff. This new approach value the front line employees through different aspect such as investment in people rather than machine, where machine are the considered as liability and people as an asset to the organization, which will led the employees to deliver high quality service. The achievements of individuals and organizational goals are independent process linked by employee work motivation. Individuals motivates themselves to satisfy their personal goals, therefore they invest and direct their efforts for the achievements of organizational objectives to meet with their personal goals also. It means that organizational goals are directly proportionate to the personal goals of individuals. The major issue in all services organizations is the motivation of employees whether they are skilled or unskilled or professionals. Employee motivation is also a major issue for hospitality industry. It is todays challenge for the management in this competitive world to motivate employees to offer efficient and good services that customers expect so for. The employees motivation, their enthusiastic and energetic behaviour towards task fulfilment play key role in successes of an organization to benefit (Cheng, 1995). According to Petcharak (2002), one of the functions of human resource manager is related to ensure employees workplace motivation. The
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human resource managers function should be to assist the general manager in keeping the employees satisfied with their jobs. Another goal in organization is the goal for the services manager is to develop motivated employees and encourage their morale regarding their respective works. The employee work morale, such as supervisors, peers, organization, and work environment can be defined in a sense that the employee has the feeling and be conscious about all aspects of the job. The performance is poor if the employee is not satisfied and happy. Workplace dissatisfaction often leads organization and its employees poor performance. In many studies (Mei et al., 1999; Kandampully and Suhartanto, 2000; Gounaris et al., 2003) it has been established that service quality depends on more than one variable, and the main variable is where the time which the frontline employee meets the demand of a customer. Consistency in service quality reveals to be a main issue in customer satisfaction. Valuing employees enhanced motivation and commitment of front liners, organisations who are committed to satisfy the employees needs would definitely have a competitive edge. By giving simple attention to front liners such as some giveaways, recognition letters for personal or group achievements can help to motivate these employees, thus will be a boost to service quality. This issue that been identified to be an important discussion as mentioned by Chiang and Jang 2008, Wong, Siu and Tsang 1999. In hotel group such as Sun International, many programs are made available to motivate staff, a program was proposed by the management, in first instance for front liners; called FLAG, Feel like a guest had an important impact on the employees moral and motivation, where they were invited to come along as a guest, so that they can indulge in all hotels facilities and also they could notice all the problems that may arise during their stay, at the end of the program the employees were invited to fill out a questionnaire where they will express their ideas, remarks and comments about the services that they have received. This program had a
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positive impact on the frontline employees due to its success and it was then extended to all staff. (Sugar Beach, Newsletter Issue 22 October 1999) This example shows that when employees are well treated, in return they feel proud of their respective establishment and also they provide better service to guests. The human element needs to be considered, as the nature of service is tangible and intangible. No two service interactions are identical and this situation gives rise to uncertainty in the service delivery process. As a result it is not wholly possible entirely to prescribe job tasks to ensure quality standards. The service provider and customer are both liable to introduce variation to the service, with the individuality of customer needs or the service provider lacking consistency. The quality of service may vary between different service encounters, and this variability can lead to difficulties for companies in defining standards and ensuring consistency of service. It is without doubt that knowledge and skills are considered to be an important feature in delivering service quality. Years back, it was possible to work in a hotel, with no formal training, there was no pre-requisite for hospitality employment, but as more and more competition occurs within the hospitality and tourism sector, it has shift to a new dimension, nowadays this sector is looking for people who have followed training courses and also have at least good secondary school results. In order to grow and maintain a workforce that is customer oriented and focused on delivery quality service an organisation must train, and work these individuals to ensure service performance ( Zeithhaml & Bitner, 2000). In Mauritius, most of the hotels offer on the job training and courses for their front liners; foreign language courses, health and safety courses, communication skills. This empowers the front liners to be more proactive toward their job, therefore enhancing service quality. Another way of promoting skill and knowledge is the knowledge sharing among employees. Most of the hotels have internal trainers among their
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personnel and also a training department attached to the Human Resource Department to provide training among employees, to provide specific training to new comers and refresher course to existing employees. This exposure creates a prospective working environment for employees who have long service. Frontline employees moral can be affected by various factors; social and family background, supervisor`s attitudes and also working conditions. Generally most of the employees ignore their rights and are mostly exploited to undertake some tasks that are not prescribed in their usual duty, when an employee explained his grievances to their immediate supervisor; the supervisor will tend to be more disinclined towards this employee, consequently affecting his moral. Working conditions in hospitality sector reveals to be long hours with low pay, in many circumstances, front liners are affected in two ways, firstly they have to cope with family problems and secondly the long contact hours that prevails in this sector, moreover it seems that most of new comers who could not adapt with this lifestyle leave the hospitality sector, which causes staff turnover. Moreover as most of the hotels have more and more difficulty to recruit qualify staff, some of the front liners need to assume extra job without any proper compensation, but only pledge that he might have a promotion in the near future. This attitude sometimes prevails in many hotels in Mauritius; many front liners perform their job by obligation rather than a pleasurable job. Conclusion What we attempted to examine in this study is the complex relationship between service quality with employee morale, knowledge, skills and motivation in resorts hotels. The success of a service encounter depends, therefore, on the availability of aware, service oriented, competent employees who understand the context in which they work, and are well versed in the specific organizations strategic objectives and culture. This is not just about levels
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of proficiency but also includes different types of skills that are appropriate for the particular customer segment and characteristics of the business establishment. A waitperson may carry plates with proficiency, but still be unsuited for a five star dining environment. Win-win scenarios must be applied in this sector where human contact cannot be replaced, imitated. There is an urgent need to focus on the human side rather than on sales and revenues. Aspects of profit sharing can be part of this focus, which will make the front liners are more enthusiasts to give beyond guest expectation. The service quality does not only enable a firm to learn from customer complaints, it effectively compels the organization to respond to customer feedback immediately. In realizing the cost involved with each failure, the company has an additional opportunity to learn from the mistake and so eliminate the possibility of further similar mistakes. In essence the service quality assists an organization to create a customer-driven standard of service. Service management literature suggests that well managed service guarantee programs substantially affect organizational benefits whose success has been linked to their service quality programs. Service quality is influenced by expectations, that is the standards of service is defined by customers, customers who has already experienced that service uses his former experience to form a judgment. In order to achieve a quality service organization, commitment from employees and support from all levels of management is necessary. Therefore, it is important for managers who provide services to keep track of information about the companys well being as far as meeting its customers needs are concerned.
Recommendations

In this paper we attempt to demonstrate how the service quality is directly linked to frontline employee morale, knowledge, skills and motivation but past researches had not been conducted for linking the service behavior
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(Serving customers with movements, voice, attitude) performed by service providers and the service quality recognized by customers particularly in the tourism and hospitality industry where much emphasis is laid on the service quality, employee empowerment and service behavior. The tourism industry is a competitive industry. We would suggest organizations employee, to reinforce their training and development a of the the organization must supply employees healthy

environment for learning and growing and offer more opportunities for career opportunities and development. As customers evaluations of service quality are always based on the behaviors of frontline employees, organizations rely upon these employees to improve overall service quality. By encouraging employees to expand the domain of job through their participation of various team activities so as to establish the responsibility and creativity and avail make them to offer constructive suggestions to organization, then the employees can feel their influence and contribution toward organization.

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References and Bibliography Michael Armstrong. (2006) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th Edition. Kogan Page Limited Darren Lee-Ross. (2004) Perceived job characteristics and internal work motivation. Journal of Management Development Vol. 24 No. 3, 2005pp. 253-266. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Abby Ghobadian, Simon Speller and Matthew Jones. (October 1993). Service Quality Concepts and Models. International Journal of Quality& Reliability Management, Vol. 11 No. 9, 1994, pp. 43-66. MCB University Press Osman M et al, Lulu Baddar. (2005) The effects of selected individual characteristics on frontline employee performance and job satisfaction. Elsevier Science Ltd. Terry Lam, Hanqin Zhang, Tom Baum. (2000) An investigation of employees' job satisfaction: the case of hotels in Hong Kong. Elsevier Science Ltd. Dennis Nickson, Chris Warhurst and Eli Dutton. (2005) The importance of attitude and appearance in the service encounter in retail and hospitality. Managing Service Quality.Vol. 15 No. 2, 2005pp. 195-208. Emerald Group Publishing Limited Sheng-HshiungTsaura, Yi-Chun Lin. (2003) Promoting service quality in tourist hotels: the role of HRM practices and service behavior. Elsevier Science Ltd. Marcjanna Miroslawa Augustyn. (1998) The road to quality enhancement in tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 10/4 [1998] 145158.MCB University Press.
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