The hospitality industry is one of the most fast growing industries in the world. With the fast growth, its rate of competitiveness has skyrocketed with new strategies, styles, and approaches being developed to appease customers. In the hassle of maintaining competitiveness, employees in the industry face work burnouts.
For example, rapid changes in the coffee world leave Starbucks employees with the burden of coming up with new products to meet customer demands.
The burnouts result from internal pressures and pressures they succumb to from the external environment. Burnout in the industry is the result of a build up of anxiety and stress that last for long periods of time; and sometimes the stress and anxiety may be build within a short period of time, especially in the peak seasons.
In the changing environments, human resources managers/theorists have developed new intervention methods to deal with effects of burnouts in organizations (Bullen & Eyler, 2010). For example, the recent terror attacks in the United States have left employees of companies like Ford with much anxiety of their future in their jobs. The following are two main approaches, their pros and cons.
Burnout Prevention Program
When using this program, the management over and above human resource programs in their company adopt another program, burnout prevention program.
The program aims at establishing stress or any dissatisfaction in the company at its minimal stage. Stress and anxiety related to work are among the new phenomenon of modern jobs; there has been a change from what used to be injury from hard physical work, to psychological stress and mental disturbances.
Although different factors contribute to the psychological stress and mental disturbances, the net result is a work burnout. Jobs have shifted from physical to more psychological and mind involving; what is rather disturbing is that the more mind focused a piece of work is the more physically tired someone feels. (DiStefano & Maznevski, 2000).
Advantages of the method
- The method has the strength of establishing the challenges that an employee is going through and making an intervention at the most appropriate stage.
- Though the method is ongoing in an organization, it is seen as a normal way of human capital management, thus employees don’t feel as if they are spied out.
- The management gets the chance to manage chances of low performance and poor service arising from burnout programs.
Disadvantages of the method
The method has one major disadvantage which is the human resources managers will need to keep monitoring the progress of employees almost at their every move. This creates an environment where people get concerned about others limiting the growth of a good working environment. Professional or work related stress poses a threat to employee’s psychological and physical health, however when someone has gotten burnouts from other areas outside the working environment, it may be very challenging.
Rotational work structures
Under this method, the hospitality company engages in compulsory rotational working environment with staffs. Staffs are expected not to work in one area for a long period of time, but are rotated to undertake tasks in different segments. When doing this, the management ensures that an employee does not work in one area alone, but allowed to work in different segments on a rotational basis.
The rational of this method is to ensure that an employee does not work continuously in a stressful environment. For instance, in the event that the waiter post is the most challenging, stressing, and has much of anxiety building, an employee is transferred to another area. With this employees will learn different functions and avoid instances of fatigue and stress building.
Advantages of the approach
- Under this approach, employees learn different segments and what they entail, this makes them all rounded employees which is beneficial for the company.
- When employees are changing positions, it is likely that they will learn and utilize their strengths and talents in a certain area. When this is happening, there is a high possibility of better human resources utilization.
- Stress among employees is managed at the point of developing; this makes the employees more willing to attain the corporate goals and objectives.
Disadvantages
- The method is likely to discourage employees from specialization; when employees learn one thing then the next one, they are likely not to specialize in one area for higher efficiency. Specialisation offers high efficiency among employees.
- When an employee is moving from a “stress-free” area to another area of stress, they are likely to feel discouraged thus increasing chances of de-motivation and hatred of a particular area
- The method assumes that the perceived stressing area will be seen as stressing to all people (Fernandez-Alles & Ramos-Rodríguez, 2009).
Recommendation for best method: Adoption of psychological stress theory in line with strategic human resources management
Hospitality organizations should use psychological stress theory to manage their staff’s chances of burnout; the theory comprises of two concepts which include appraisal and coping.
Appraisal refers to evaluating what is happening to a person’s life in terms of well being, and coping involves efforts of thoughts and actions that a person doest to manage specific demands; this should be done in line with other strategic management approaches to ensure that staffs are well understood not only from what they are going through but also the effect its likely to have on their performance.
Although the Lazarus theory has undergone many revisions, the latest version regards stress as a relational concept; the bottom line is that noting changes among staffs that can lead to burnouts, stress, or anxiety. To understand the relationship between an individual and the environment they are cognitive appraisal and coping processes that will serve as mediators; the appraisal concept was introduced by Arnold (1960) and it forms a key factor of understanding the concept of stress.
The method has been advanced to look into anxiety, depression, and chances of burnout among employees. The concept is based on the fact that emotional processes such as stress depend on what an individual expects with regard to specific encounters or challenges. This explains the difference in every individual on how quality and intensity are translated. Lazarus distinguished forms of appraisal into two parts, this include primary and secondary appraisal.
Work related stress does not only affect individual performance, but consequently affects the general performance of an organization. Current tough economic trends have worsened the level of stress in every workplace regardless of the profession, seniority or salary scale. Rice, (2007) argues out that each day employees are facing different types of pressure in their work making the more fizzled and burnout.
Having a little stress at work is normal, excessive of it becomes destructive and interferes with a person’s productivity. Finding ways to manage stress at work does not involve changing carriers or making huge changes in the workplace, stress management only requires a person’s attention (Landsbergis, 2006).
References
Bullen, M. L., & Eyler, K. (2010). Human resource accounting and international developments: implications for measurement of human capital. Journal of International Business & Cultural Studies, 31-16.
DiStefano, J. J., & Maznevski, M. L. (2000). Creating Value with Diverse Teams in Global Management. Organizational Dynamics, 29(1), 45-63.
Fernandez-Alles, M., & Ramos-Rodríguez, A. (2009). Intellectual structure of human resources management research: A bibliometric analysis of the journal Human Resource Management, 1985–2005. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 60(1), 161-175.
Landsbergis, A.P. (2006). Interventions to Reduce Job Stress and Improve Work Organization and Worker Health. New York: Free Press