Special Features - HR Today - Ashutosh Nath Shukla, Corporate HR Manager, Pride Hotels
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Now that the world is getting vaccinated and spaces opening up, what does the hospitality landscape look like from an HR perspective?
Vaccination is the key towards opening up of the business landscape for all industries and specially for hospitality and tourism it will be the boaster dose for all. With the magnitude of vaccination across the globe increasing day by day almost every where the vaccination is going to be the passport for movement. Having said so as the number of vaccinated people increases we can see a good comeback in the hospitality landscape. The biggest change in HR Landscape is stress upon hiring the people wherein vaccine status is going to a be a priority. No one will like to face the situation of compromise of health of existing stake holders because of a new hire who has not taken due precautions. On a lighter note apart from qualifications a specific information of Vaccinated status needs to get added with the About me profile now.
How did you keep the staff motivated during this difficult time?
We had ensured that the new normal definition is not at all adopted in HR landscape. We continued to do all the sort of activities which normally used to happen in the hotel like the townhall & departmental meets. Communication is a key to continuously engage with the team and by doing so we made it possible that team didn’t felt low morale because of situation back at home. Our teams have ensured that employee as well as their family could be extended with whatever help we can make available. Our hotel units had made arrangements for keeping atleast1-2 oxygen cylinders in premises for employees so that in worst situations too they don’t get any inconvenience. By God’s grace we didn’t required that system but having them was a big morale boaster for team as they felt assured. Giving the sense of assurity in itself is a big morale enhancer. Apart from this we have been doing everything possible to keep teams motivated.
What lessons do you feel you have learned from this period?
Lessons learnt has been majorly sour ones. We all have learnt how to survive with the resources inhand and to manage a crisis never seen before. We have seen hotels utilizing the scarcest number of resources being put forward for ensuring operations continuity. We have seen the addition of multi-tasking and multi skilling as an integral part of all operations.
Is hiring coming back soon?
Yes hiring is coming back soon with all the levels but in general current trends is with lots of opportunities for front lines, here too the people who don’t have any mindset hindrance to multi task are the preferred ones. Even the head of the departments opportunities will be coming back in but the most important aspect will be for finding talent who have good practical handson knowledge and those who can handle multiple areas proactively.
Did you experiment with any new L&D ideas/tech? Any other thoughts on this period, this time.
L&D has been an integral aspect of operations during the lockdowns which was used as an effective tool to engage the teams. We had extensively used mobile based Learning management system and online trainings using google was continuous process. We had also worked a lot on skill upgrading of teams and for that skill development courses from online learning platforms like udemy was utilized and we had our teams enrolled to do the same. This period has let everyone go back to basics and refurbish the earlier learnt concepts as well as let the people unlearn the not so effective concepts and add on new practical skills.
