Introduction
Human resource management has become one of the most vital emphases of the management in most organizations. The success of every organization to a great extent depends on the effectiveness of human resource management.
In both manufacturing and service industries, the quality of products or services depends on the effectiveness and level of human resources management. Human resources management plays a big role in organizational and man power management, personnel administration and lastly industrial management all of which are vital in ensuring that quality services are rendered by the organization.
HRM is an important tool in ensuring that there is effective total quality management in an organization. In both service and production industry, total quality management is crucial because it ensures products or services of the best quality are produced by the company.
The aim of every organization is to produce the best services or products that will best serve the interest of the customers or offer great satisfaction to them (MacMillan, 41). The whole idea of customer satisfaction is addressed by total quality management commonly referred to as TQM. Human resources management plays a big role in ensuring that there is TQM in an organization. It should therefore be maintained at a high level to ensure successful TQM
The general purpose of this research is to investigate the role of human resources management in ensuring that there is successful implementation of total quality management. Specifically, the research explores the concept of human resources management, the concept of total quality management as a component of HRM and then the role of HRM in ensuring successful implementation of TQM. All these areas are tackled in the context of hospitality industry. We first describe the methodology used in obtaining the information presented.
Methodology
The information presented in this research was gathered from different literature materials that have been published concerning the topic in question. The books, journals, web pages and articles concerning human resource management, total quality management and the role of HRM in ensuring successful implementation of TQM were also used in this research.
There was no formal research that was carried out but secondary sources were used to obtain the information. Personal opinions and experiences are maintained to a minimum level. The literature materials obtained about human resources management and the role of HRM in the success of TQM are discussed in the context of hospitality industry.
The concept of human resource management in hospitality industry
According to McNamara (1), human resources management is a composite function consisting mainly of deciding or assessing the staffing needs of an organization, decisions on how to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best qualified candidates for the posts, maintaining high performance of employees, conducting performance appraisal and ensuring that employees comply to various regulation in the course of their service.
It is also the role of HRM to ensure that employees get their entitlements and other benefits as per their contract of service and at the right time. The employee policies (personal) and record regarding their induction and contract of service are also recorded and kept by the HRM.
In the hospitality industry, quality of services offered should be maintained at a high level in order for any organization in the industry to stay in business. The success of every business in this industry is directly dependent on the level of quality of services rendered to the customers.
To ensure that customers’ satisfaction is met, quality of services must be maintained commensurate with the customer’s expectations. Customer satisfaction is the whole idea of HRM developing and implementing the concept of TQM that will be discussed in the later chapters. TQM is actually a function of the roles of human resource management in an organization.
According to Nickson (1), it is the role of the HRM in the hospitality industry to come up with HRM policies regarding the employment needs of the industry and the criteria to be used in selecting the best staffs to serve the companies.
The aim of these polices is to ensure that the industry gets the right persons to work for it every time it is in need. This will in turn ensure that the company delivers the best quality to satisfy the needs of the customers. HRM also lays strategies of ensuring that the organizational culture within the organization is well manned in order to ensure quality services to customers.
The HRM ensures that the culture is upheld and that all the employees of the organization work towards achieving the goals of the organization. The new recruits are introduced to the organizational culture and are trained on how to ensure quality service delivery.
To ensure that the whole organization is focused to providing quality services, the human resource management is charged with the role of ensuring the success of organizational and man power management, personnel administration and lastly industrial management. These areas cover the main areas of the organization that are vital in maintaining the customer royalty. The HRM therefore plays a big role in ensuring the success of the organization and satisfaction of the customers.
The concept of total quality management as a major component of HRM
The role of human resource management is made complete in any organization when total quality management is achieved. The two concepts are inseparable in the event of appraisal of the performance of the organization. The need to ensure customer satisfaction through offering quality services or products is the core reason of instituting the two departments in the organization.
The future of an organization and its strong positioning in the market depends on the level of satisfaction of its customers. Customer satisfaction is a goal that every organization strives to realize. The success of an organization depends on how well it satisfies its customers. All the practices set by the company that helps to ensure that the organization fully meets the needs of the customers are referred to as total quality management or TQM.
According to American Society for Quality (1), total quality management entails continuous measurement and improvement of the extent to which the organization fulfils the requirements of the customers. TQM employs strategies and effective communication within the organization in order to incorporate the quality principles in to the culture and activities of the organization in order to ensure that all the activities are geared towards satisfying the customers.
Total quality management is a long-term success strategy that a company seeks to achieve through customer satisfaction. In a successful total quality management, all members of the organization work together to improve the quality of products, services and the culture within the organization in order to achieve total customer satisfaction (O’Donovan 39). All members of the organization need to be taught on the ways of ensuring total quality management within the organization.
Due to globalization of business, the organizations have developed a new view for quality and to survive in the market, the Human resources management must ensure that the quality of products and services are in standard commensurate with the needs of the customers. TQM ensures that all the goods and services produced by the organization are fit for the customers. The TQM philosophy is to ensure that the there are no wastage or there are zero defects in production of products and services and that all customers are satisfied.
The role of HRM in ensuring successful implementation of TQM
The success of TQM implementation is made complete by the intervention of HRM. As mentioned earlier, TQM is a major component of the role of HRM.
In ancient businesses, the role of quality improvement was taken as the role of quality improvement specialists like product and process designers but in the current business environment, it has become a major role of HRM. This is due to increasing industry demand and the increase in customer quality expectations.
The HRM department is today charged with the responsibility of ensuring quality development across all department of the organization; the role it executes through Total Quality Management philosophy (Kotelnikov 1). If the HRM in an organization fails to take its charge of implementing Total Quality Management, the other departments will fail as well because they have less expertise of training and quality development.
The HRM must therefore ensure that TQM is well implemented in order to give way to the other department to focus on quality as a key to success. Training the employee on the principle of Total Quality Management is of paramount importance because it equips the employees with the skills they require in delivering quality services to the customers.
TQM as a management strategy considers quality as the key to the success of the organizations in the market. In the hospitality industry, the core business is service to customers and the aim of this services ensuring customer satisfaction. The HRM has been training frontline staffs to ensure that they serve the customers the best way possible (Skinner 110).
It is therefore the responsibility of the HRM to ensure that the staffs are well trained and developed in their career in order to ensure that they offer the services based on the quality goals of the organization. There should also be training to update the staffs on the chances that have occurred in the TQM. This will ensure that the staffs are well equipped to offer quality services always based on the policies of TQM.
For HRM to combat competition that has been increasing in the market, it has placed more emphasis on TQM. This is because the TQM is the determinant of the business or organization value perceived by the customers.
To keep pace with the growing competition, the HRM in the hospitality industry strategize on the mechanisms of improving the quality of services offered to customers. These mechanisms or strategies are implemented across all departments. TQM is therefore ensured in all departments and customers reap full satisfaction because they get quality services.
The human resource management is a vital tool in the implementation of total quality management and acts as a senior management tool of TQM strategy by training and developing the staffs so that they can provide skillful support to TQM. Long term training is conducted so as to shift the culture of the organization to the direction desirable for the TQM.
The long term training ensures establishment of a strong organizational culture built on quality thoughts. This is vital as it positions the company to cope with or keep pace with the changing market environment.
HRM also boosts TQM through its strong system of quality-first orientation. The Human Resource Management department has a strong system of characterized by recruitment and selection, performance appraisal and compensation system. This system ensures that at every stage, quality is instilled in the employees.
Quality recruitment and selection ensures that persons capable of meeting the quality standards stipulated by the TQM policy are hired. These persons are thoroughly trained to enhance their skills and make them able to apply their theoretical knowledge and skills practically.
Performance appraisal helps in determining the level at which the employees have been able to perform their duties and what they have achieved. This helps identify the higher performers and the task that one is good in. This might necessitate shift of employees from one department to another in order to ensure quality is delivered in all department. The specialists in a certain areas are also identified depending on the task they perform exemplary.
The idea in this form of strategy is to ensure the skills and the ability that the employees are endowed with is optimally utilized in improving TQM. The compensation or reward system is meant to recognize employees with exemplary performance and reward them. This is a very crucial role of HRM because higher performers are energized and motivated to work harder. The quality of service rendered by the employees is dependent on the level of motivation of the employees.
This improves Total Quality Management because employees are motivated to deliver quality. When these roles of the organization are done continuously, the customers will reap total satisfaction from the organization and the organization growth potential increases. According to Heathfield (1), reward system may include giving the employees prizes or promoting them depending on the decision of HRM.
The TQM that most organizations have adopted has called for the Human Resources Management to institute a participative system that is allowing the organizations to empower its employees to take part in the implementation of best quality in an organization. This participative model is important because all the members of the organization are involved.
To a great extent, it improves decision making process and ensures that all the decisions made address the needs of the members of the organization. Allowing members to participate in the implementation or quality policies motivates them to work even harder and quality services are ensured as a result. The participative model ensures that problem solving is performed in an open environment so as all the members of the organization can learn.
This sharpens the employees and improves their problem solving skills and also ensures there is transparency within the organization. This is an atmosphere conducive for quality service delivery since the employees are involved in the issues affecting the organization and are therefore they exercise caution. It also gives the employees a sense of ownership and they feel that they are really part of the organization.
According to Wilkinson (42), this is a motivation factor because employees also feel a sense of responsibility and they gear their potential towards achieving the goals of the organization. With this kind of motivation and devotion of the employees towards realizing the goals of the organization, the services rendered by the employees are of good quality and capable of satisfying the desires and the expectations of the customers.
Employees take it as their own responsibility to achieve the goals of the organization because they take them as their own goals. They do every act in keeping with the vision of the organization. They get married to the vision of the organization and devote their effort to realize it.
The HRM also plays a role of ensuring there is retention of the best employees. The implementation of TQM requires experienced, well trained and highly qualified persons to achieve it successfully. The role of HRM is to ensure that the best employees are satisfied by the salary they get and the work environment so that they are retained in the organization.
In the hospitality industry, there is high movement of the staffs from one company to another. It is the responsibility of a company’s HRM to ensure that its employees are not attracted by the terms and the work atmosphere of another company. Employees will always move to where they are best satisfied by the work conditions and other terms of environment.
The other role of HRM in the implementation of TQM is HRM department acting as a role model to the other departments in the organization. The HRM serves the other departments in the organization and therefore it must ensure that it delivers quality services to them.
The HRM department should therefore regard other department as its customers and serve them the best way to satisfy them (KING, 14). There should therefore be continuous improvement in quality service delivery by HRM to other departments. This will create a culture of continuous quality improvement within the organization. The other department will learn to give quality services to the customers as they receive from the HRM Department.
Lastly, the HRM demonstrate its commitment to ensuring that the principles of TQM should be upheld. The department will follow the principles of TQM in serving other departments and this will instill the principles to the other departments. For instance the HRM can be customer oriented and focus on the needs of the customers which are the other departments (Armstrong 23).
In cases of problem solving, team approach could be adopted to ensure participation of other departments. The other principle is to train the employees on how quality service to the customers could be ensured. The HRM should also focus on the strategies to prevent the problems instead of solving them. The idea here is to ensure that the problems encountered in dealing with the customers currently are not encountered in future.
Conclusion
The concept of HRM and TQM are inseparable in any organization. Due to the increased competition in the market, The Human Resources Management Departments of many organizations have concentrated on implementing Total Quality Management as a strategy of winning a bigger market share.
TQM has the responsibility of ensuring that there are zero defects in the production of goods and services. This is aimed at ensuring that the customers are fully satisfied by the products or services rendered.
The success of TQM is the responsibility of HRM. For service industry like hospitality industry, TQM is vital as the customers measure their satisfaction with the quality of services they receive. TQM is therefore a major strategy of HRM for ensuring the success of the organization through improving the services ands products offered by the company to the customers.
Works Cited
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