Exclusive Interview | Ashutosh Nath Shukla, Corporate HR Manager, Pride Hotels
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Editor: Tell us about your journey. How did it all start?
MY Journey started with the Hospitality industry is more of an act of Serendipity i.e. by chance. I started off my career at the time when BPO’s and Call centres were booming in the country and coming from a small town Nepanagar, I had also dreamt of making it big in BPO’s. As a matter of fact, I started with a telecom call centre as my first job and then after working for a year with them I got an opportunity to work with Sayaji Hotels who were expanding the HR team for their still nascent brand Barbeque Nation where I was given an opportunity to work as an HR Recruiter.
It was the first taste of hospitality workspace for me which was totally alien to what a hotel is and how it is managed.
My utmost learning from there was to respect each and every person who is working with you at whatever levels and also to be affectionate and understanding for each one whether it’s the MD or CEO or guest or the KST staff. Afterwards, I started working with various hospitality brands & was fortunate enough to work with Hospitality biggies like Wyndham Grand Hotel, and Carlson Rezidor Hotel group and my current workplace of Pride Hotels.
During the course of my journey, I had a chance to be involved with many 1st time initiatives in various hotel companies. I was a part of the pre-opening team of 1st Wyndham Grand Hotel in India. Being a part of Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group (Radisson Hotel Worldwide RH) I was the part of the Pan India rollout of two of the most prestigious learning modules at Radisson Group of Hotels.
With Pride Hotels I have been working very closely with our CEO- Mr Jain and VP-Mr Upadhyay where we have been driving a lot of initiatives to make the Brand Pride a key attractor of all hospitality professionals.
Editor: What do you think it takes to succeed in this industry?
Many people refer to Attitude as the key to succeed in the industry but I feel Attitude is only one of the pillars and the others which are equally important are learning agility, respect and sense of belongingness and last but not the least is Stability. I stress upon stability as its one thing which is slowly going off from industry and we see people are hopping every now and then without even giving time devotion and dedication to the workplace.
Editor: What are the attributes you look for while selecting or hiring? If someone wants to work with you, what should they do?
I look for the drive and passion to excel in the industry as well as attitude and also at stability too. We welcome and embrace all the talent as we always connect to the profiles as and when there is a compatible profile matching to the organizational needs as well as to the individuals. Pride recruitment selection is an ongoing process and we keep on expanding our resource pool so as to get to the individuals as soon as an opportunity comes.
Editor: What is the single factor that got you your promotion?
This is a question that ideally is to be asked to my mentors who saw the capability in me to work with the brand and to lead the team of all HR professionals as the Head HR of the Group.
If I am to analyze my success then I will attribute it to my passion to work closely with all as I believe that they are the ones on whose shoulder the success and failure of each and everyone.
Editor: What are some of the trends you see impacting the hospitality industry?
The current Covid times has turned the hospitality industry upside down and during these times the key trends which are impacting are Safety and hygiene, Rationalization & optimization of resources and also the optimization of cost structures which directly impact the financial health of every hotel company.
Editor: Tech is now an enabler for great hospitality. Can you share with us some of the techs that go into creating your guest experience?
At Pride Hotels we have tech enablers for both internal as well as external guests. For our external guests, we use almost all technologies which are used to give the best of guest experience to all our guests and also we have experimental tech like Alexa Operated Rooms at Pride Hotel Pune. Along with that, we have tech modules for our internal guests ie our team wherein we have tools for guest complaint management, for revenue management for booking interfaces for remote sales resources and last but not the least the cloud-based HR Information system for all our employees.
Editor: Two things you would like to change in the industry.
The most important thing if possible will be to change the perception of people towards the work requirement of hospitality industry wherein people assume a job of a chef as to be that of making food while it’s an art similarly people look at Housekeeping as a menial job while the kind of eye for detailing & passion is involved is not respected. This has to be changed and this can only be changed only if the industry propagates this first.
The other aspect is the standardization of different employee ratios as well as flattening of the hierarchical pyramid with the removal of layers to shorten the career succession path for individuals working within the industry.
