STAFFING FOR SERVICE:

A discussion of human resource

issues involved in managing the
guest experience
Understand the process of
recruiting employees who will
give excellent guest service
- Customer-contact employees, frontline
- Interact with the guests and has the most direct influence
- Directly responsible for providing the value and quality of
an exceptional experience because they are the interface
between the guests and company

- The employee that can turn a guest experience into a wow

that is memorable

- They can make the service experience something special by

adding an extra service to an already outstanding service
product—by going above and beyond what was expected
- Sometimes called the heart of the house
- Helps create the service experience
- They fix the rides, clean the sheets, cook the meals, and
so forth so that the guest’s experience meets or exceeds
expectations

- Provides support to those interacting with guests

- Must have the right abilities and motivation to do their
jobs if an excellent service experience is going to result
- Hire the employees, train, evaluate, reward, discipline,
celebrate, promote, and oversee all the other tasks that
must be done to ensure that there is someone at the right
time and place ready to serve the guest

- Beyond these tasks, there are regulations that must be

followed, accounts that must be balanced, financial
statements that must be created, strategies that must be
developed and implemented, marketing and sales that must
be done

- Hospitality managers are held accountable for success on

qualitative measures and often perform a customer-service
role as well
• Employees in different positions play different roles
and have different levels of customer contact

• Each employee helps deliver that service, either

directly or indirectly

• Scott Gross coined what he refers to as “service

naturals” and that 1 in 10 of the available workforce
are “service naturals”

• “service naturals” –employees that instinctively give

great service when provided the opportunity, these are
employees that can change a regular interaction into
something special
• Challenge:
a. systematically find, recruit, and select those 10%
who are truly committed to providing excellent
service
b. develop an effective process for showing the rest
how to provide the same quality of service

• Service Effectiveness depends on everyone

throughout the organization taking service
responsibility seriously
Human Resource Planning - the process of analyzing an
organization’s current human resource capabilities and the
organization’s human resource needs that are required to
meet organizational objectives
Determine what knowledge, skills, abilities (KSA’s)
employees must possess to accomplish your goals, what
levels of KSAs currently exist in your organization, and how
you expect both your organization and people to develop
over time
HR planning not only is directed at today’s employee needs
but also should be done with a longer-run perspective.
While most recruitment activity is focused on filling jobs
that are currently vacant, some effort should be given to
anticipating the long-term employment needs of the
company
HR planning may reveal that the company may have too
many employees (layoffs may be necessary), current KSAs
are inappropriate, or the organization needs to acquire
more people with more skills
• Job Analysis - analyzing exactly what sort of job will be
filled; the process of studying positions, of describing the
duties and responsibilities that go with jobs and of grouping
similar positions into job categories.
• A careful and thorough job analysis allows the organization
to identify the exact job specifications and required
competencies for each job classification and type
• A job analysis will tell you if you need physically strong
people to assist park visitors or multilingual people to speak
to foreign guests
Hire Internal Candidates
- Hiring from within is often seen as a best practice of human
resource management

ADVANTAGES
a. The Known Quantity - the company has much more
information and more accurate information about its current
employees, the employee’s performance has been available
for observation and the person’s strengths and weaknesses
are generally known
Hire Internal Candidates

ADVANTAGES
b. Internal Equity - many hospitality organizations employ
people from varied backgrounds and with different levels of
training and education. Many employees start at the same
entry-level point. Each has an equal opportunity to prove a
commitment to service excellence if they wish to get
promoted. If an outsider gets the vacancy at a higher level,
these hardworking employees will feel not fairly treated
Hire Internal Candidates

ADVANTAGES
c. Experience - companies want their employees to know the
business from the ground up. Another experience-related
point in favor of hiring from within the organization is the
belief that you cannot manage someone doing something
you’ve never done. The core competence of any hospitality
organization is providing service and unless you have had any
experience in providing service, you don’t know really what
its like
Hire Internal Candidates

ADVANTAGES
d. Knowing the Culture - internal candidates already know
the company’s beliefs and values and have proven
themselves to be comfortable in that culture. The cultural
learning curve for promoted internal candidates is
substantially reduced
e. Lower Cost - no need to pay for advertisements and travel
expenses for candidates to be interviewed, and the decision
often requires less time, which saves money.
Hire Internal Candidates

Internal Search Strategies

a. Job Postings - company intranet, bulletin boards, newsletters, or
other means of communication
b. Review of Personnel Records
c. Succession Plans - employee careers are planned over a long
period, including a progression through a number of key
positions or key locations
Hire External Candidates

Advantage
a.The total labor pool is much bigger than the company’s
internal labor pool
b.New ideas and fresh perspectives
Hire External Candidates

External Search Strategies

a. Advertising/ Internet
b. Professional Networks and Placement services
c. Student Recruiting (Colleges and Secondary Schools)
d. Employee Referral Programs
e. Employment Agencies
f. Employment Events, Job Fairs, Career Fairs
g. Walk-Ins
With a pool of applicants assembled, the next step is to
determine who will be hired into the company
Selection process - figure out what an ideal candidate
looks like, collect information on potential candidates,
and the select the person who best matches the ideal
 Screening Tools
a. Application Form - the first screen the employer should
use in deciding whom to hire

b. The Interview - seeks to determine if the applicant

seems fit in the organization, see if the candidate is really
committed to service excellence, and tell the candidate what the
job is actually like
 Screening Tools
b. The Interview
*Structured Interview - interviewer will assess all the candidates
according to the same criteria. There is a structured array of
questions that are job related, consistently scored and asked of all
candidates

* Unstructured Interview - interviewer makes up questions

as they go along, have no predetermined way to score applicants

*Behavioral Interview - often the most effective way to assess

applicant’s qualifications on critical criteria. It is based on trying to
specifically evaluate some instances of past performance to help
predict future performance
 Screening Tools
c. Psychological Test - to distinguish a person from
another along different dimensions
*Tests of Mental Ability - measures logical reasoning, intelligence,
conceptual foresight, ability to spot semantic relationships, spatial
organization, memory span (GMA-general mental ability: the ability
to learn and process information)

*Personality Test
*Integrity Test - predict the predisposition of applicants to engage
in theft, drug or other dishonest behavior

d. References, Background Checks, and Drug Tests

• The hiring decision must be made while balancing a
number of factors

• The purpose of the different selection devices is to

collect information that will help companies hire the
kind of employee who can make the company’s
service experience truly stand out
• The staffing process is not done until the organization
has “on-boarded” the new employee

• On-boarding: the process of getting the new

employee started in both a new company and a new
job

• Formal orientation programs- communicating the

culture to new employees is an absolute necessity for
properly on-boarding a new employee
• Those leaving the company are “selected out” of the
company’s workforce

• Turnover can be costly for organizations

• Turnover is not always a bad thing- if the poor performers
leave and are replaced by better employees, the
organization will benefit in the long run. Customer service
can be improved by shedding employees who do not
embrace the company’s mission.

• Employing the best to serve your guests