Leisure and hospitality

Poor staff engagement – and, as a result, failure to maintain headcount – is a major threat facing the hospitality industry, and its importance will only magnify as the “war for talent” continues to impact the sector. Hotel leaders must focus and invest time to address the employee attachment factor if they are to keep employees fully engaged – and fully employed – within their organisation.

Engagement issues, such as staff motivation, identification with the company goals or willingness to “go the extra mile”, are rarely discussed at a senior level, as hoteliers tend to focus on the all-important revenue and profitability factors. But how do you drive sales and revenue when your sales people are leaving you?

Unless the sector is able to adopt the systems it needs to motivate, engage and, ultimately, retain its employees, it will continue to suffer.

Staff retention is a serious issue and should start at the top. Training and career development programmes should be part of a company’s overall retention strategy and not viewed as a by-product of training alone.

This is especially important among generation Y employees who are easily bored, and known to leave an organisation after reaching 90 per cent learning capacity.

Andrew Chan, chief executive officer, TMS Asia-Pacific