Description
Sociological empowerment often addresses members of groups that social discrimination processes have excluded from decision-making processes through - for example - discrimination based on disability, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Empowerment as a methodology is often associated with feminism: see consciousness-raising.
Case Study on Human Empowerment, Management and Tourism
that reviews some current definitions of empowerment, the aim is to arrive at a practical understanding of what empowerment means within the service industry and what this entails. The chapter will also explore supporting disciplines, in the interests of looking towards the future of empowerment and its potential to become a core strategic driving force.
EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment is a strategic approach which has been covered within the fields of generalist management, human resource management (HRM) and organization behaviour. As Smith (1997: 121) states:
To empower is to give power, to open up, to release potential of people. In these terms it can be viewed as a commonsense activity. Typically, it embraces job involvement, job enrichment, participation in various forms, including suggestions schemes. Essentially the main thrust of empowerment is through having greater autonomy over 'how' jobs are done, carrying with it immense potential for improving productivity.
Empowerment has been variously described:
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'The act of vesting substantial responsibility in the people nearest the problem'(Barbee and Bott, 1991). 'Pushing responsibility and decision-making down the organization to those employees closest to the customer' ( Jones and Davies, 1991). 'The process of decentralizing decision-making in an organization, whereby managers give more discretion and autonomy to the front-line employees' (Brymer, 1991). 'Giving employees the authority to make everyday decisions is the most straightforward aspect of empowerment' (Sternberg, 1992). 'Giving employees the power to make decisions that in?uence organizational direction and performance' (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). 'Strategies that strengthen employees' self-efficacy or confidence in accomplishing the objectives of their tasks as set out by managers' (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000). 'A cognitive state,a psychologically empowered experience with power-sharing,competence and value internalisation in organisations' (Chang and Liu, 2008).
Thomas and Velthouse (1990) and Spreitzer (1995) describe four dimensions of empowerment: (i) meaningfulness; (ii) competence; (iii) self-determination; and (iv) impact.
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Meaningfulness relates to the perception of congruence between a task and the employee's values, attitudes and beliefs. Such task meaningfulness is a major factor in determining job satisfaction. Competence is about self-efficacy and capability to perform a task successfully. Employees who are confident about their efficacy and competence are likely to perform their tasks well. ? Self-determination allows employees to choose the course of action in various task situations and is closely related to a sense of autonomy that they need to feel in organizations. ?
Impact refers to the degree to which employees can in?uence events in an organization. In other words, impact is about the level of control an employee has over his or her working environment. A sense of control is important in creating ownership and job satisfaction. These psychological components of empowerment are closely in?uenced by the social and structural aspects 159
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of the workplace which include organizational structure, organizational support, access to strategic information, access to organizational resources and organizational culture. Bowen and Lawler (1995) include personal control over job performance, awareness of business strategies, and higher accountability for performance outcomes as the major facets of empowerment. Examining the role of empowerment in service recovery, Hocutt and Stone (1998) describe autonomy and training as two important components of employee empowerment. Autonomy is about allowing employees absolute freedom to do the job, so that when exceptional incidents occur, they can take decisions without looking for guidance elsewhere. Training is an essential aspect of skills and competence development, without which autonomy will have no meaning. Probably one of the simplest ways of employee empowerment is giving them the choice in how to approach their work (Chua and Iyengar, 2006). The underlying idea in this approach is that choice gives employees a sense of personal control, which can enhance their intrinsic motivation towards their work, resulting in higher morale, creativity and innovation, better performance, greater organizational commitment, and lower turnover (Chua and Iyengar, 2006). The rationale behind encouraging empowerment within business organizations can be summarized as attempts to:
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retain work interests; increase employee motivation; assist employee development; encourage fresh thinking; increase job satisfaction; and reduce labour turnover.
Given these benefits, empowerment could probably be a key strategy to overcome some of the innate human resource issues in tourism, which include: (i) its poor image as an employer; (ii) poor rewards, benefits and compensation; (iii) skills shortages; (iv) concerns about ?exibility and innovation; and (v) recruitment, retention and high attrition rate (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). These are discussed later in the chapter. Also, empowerment could be a useful tactic to bring out the best in the stars within organizations: the unsung heroes, who manage to make their mark when dealing with customers. However, few are able to share this learning experience among all employees, and bring thesepractices within the formal confines of customer policies. Some argue that their documentation could loose the essence of what actually happened, how it worked and why. The challenge there- fore lies in finding a way to faithfully address such rich facets of working life and spread these pockets of tacit learning more widely. Empowerment attempts to provide a positive reinforce- ment of 'best practice' which encourages staff members to become more active stakeholders.
Points for consideration:
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Why does empowerment even warrant a separate mention - when in our private lives, we wouldn't even give it a second thought? We just do what we can to make our guests happy and we don't even get paid! Are we at risk of inheriting many of 'our' management procedures from other disciplines, almost like 'hand-me-downs' - which are ill-fitting, or even worn out? ? If we do make a concerted efort to empower staf: who, where, when, how and, most importantly, what are we letting them do?
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EMPOWERING STAFF AND CUSTOMERS
Interestingly, when looking towards the discipline of consumer behaviour, the term empowerment is often replaced, or compounded, with the word choice. The suggestion is that empowerment carries with it the connotation that this choice is restricted by a management function. This being the case, such an overt use of the word may be coun- terproductive to customer relationship management (CRM) philosophies, which encour- age a consumer to consider themselves as being central to decisions. However, within the realms of employment, these connotations may serve towards offering necessary structural guidance. As a cursory note:
We must also acknowledge that this definition of empowerment hinges more on some notion of accountability than on any wider change in the processes of work and decision making which might be implied by a more active modelling of empowerment. Thus, workers are empowered only in the sense that they have a greater responsibility to act within a narrow sphere directly related to production, and then held to be accountable for their action or indeed their inaction. (Collins, 1995)
When things go wrong
For failing or stagnant organizations, empowerment is often produced as a cost-effective panacea for the ills that they are currently suffering. However, as with any approach rooted in subjective ad hoc decisions, the propensity for discontentment and disagreements may conversely increase. Once empowerment is adopted as a strategic method there inevitably comes with it the call to justify actions in definable terms. While empowering employees to have more control over their duties may yield short-term benefits, the focus should nevertheless by on implementing such a philosophy over the long term. Within successful organizations, empowerment is a word which may in fact never be considered as employees are simply performing their tasks, the best way that they know how. Therefore the overall objective of empowerment is to refine and optimize existing strategic decisions for competitive gains.
Barriers to implementation:
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organizational and consumer cultures; skill bases; management styles; hierarchy and management structures; information technology (IT) infrastructures; health and safety concerns; legislation; and experience.
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Potential problems resulting from empowering staf:
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lack of willingness to participate; self-imposed customer distances; turf and ego battles; fear or suspicion; departure from a standardized and streamlined strategic approach; applicability in too few areas to warrant time spent; potential to favour some staf over others, leading to discontentment; over-customization; over-emphasis on empowerment, leading to distraction from core duties; a mask for lazy management and lax procedures; lack of significance in increasing motivation and interest within employees; too much control taken away from management; and too time consuming.
As organizations have created departments such as finance, human resources and marketing, their individual focuses will inevitably interpret empowerment in different ways - taking into account their immediate and respective accountabilities. Cross-functional management styles, which look to integrate responsibilities, act as agents for addressing these issues. The following of processes take time and have to be robust enough to overcome any preconceptions that upper management may have, even if well founded.
Class discussion: How would you handle the following objections to empowerment?
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'It's just an excuse for people to chat.' 'It's a waste of time.' 'Our staf can't be trusted.' 'They don't have what it takes.' 'We're encouraging people to do what they want, rather than do what we want.' 'Staf just use it to make themselves look good.'
The recent exodus and almost prodigal-son-like return of many call centres to their native countries are testament to the fact that purely financial and resource-based calculations may be short sighted in attempting to increase customer satisfaction. These experiences have encouraged organizations, whether they have stood firm or made an about turn, to focus more of their attention on the softer skills of communication.
(re-)Humanizing services
Within the hospitality and leisure industry, the intangibility of services has been argued as being problematic when looking to ensure consistent excellence. This could be down to an overly mechanistic approach, which is often prescribed, when organizations attempt to scale up and control their operations. As hospitality, leisure and tourism are relatively new disci- plines (with regards their branding as separate business subjects) the literature at times appears 162
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to have been grafted, or at best inspired, by more tangible product management approaches. This is not to say that this approach doesn't produce praiseworthy results. However, there is a risk that an over-reliance on process and procedure may result in neglecting the naturally occurring and potent attributes within the industry. In short, hospitality, leisure and tourism aim to enact a basic facet of human nature; and their intrinsic value is enjoyed by both staff and customers alike. In addition, they are experience driven, highly emotive and have the power to beguile all in their path. Therefore, the call to implement policies that empower staff is seen as an essential activity which seeks to address not only the efficacy of an organisation's corporate strategy, but also more importantly a deficiency in employees' job satisfaction. A resulting philosophy from this approach, has suggested that employees should be viewed as an organization's internal customers. While employees have been viewed as a company's mostvalued (not to mention volatile) resource, the contributions of all employees, regardless of position, are now revered as being notable in actively providing significant and informed judgements. The standardization and mechanization of services has necessitated the formalization of every decision. With this being the case, empowerment has sought to ensure that a fan of opinions remains, in order to counteract the risks associated with an over-convergence of decision making. By and large, empowerment exists to promote understanding, in an almost yin-and-yang-like manner, across all facets of the value chain. A philosophy rooted in empowerment would be of assistance when addressing the relationship between services and products. As services and products extend their offerings, their very nature and terms of engagement are in turn being redefined. Rather than being seen as separate disciplines, each are progressing towards a more convergent, symbiotic state. This carries with it added pressures on employees and management procedures to in turn deliver on increasingly more complicated activities. In addition, the usage of hospitality, leisure and tourism often play a pivotal role in affording other industries attractive 'sweeteners', rewards, incentives and differentiators, for both consumers and employees. After all, how else can a manager or marketer make the mundane or insignificant seem less so when attempting to attract the masses? As remits expand, so does the appetite for creating bespoke solutions to all of the challenges faced, and some would argue the call to share the burden across several broad shoulders.
Methods of engagement
If empowerment is to be used as an approach that optimizes the differentiating factors in service offerings, the key questions which still remain are, where and how? This has posed challenges when attempting to coordinate coherent management practices which look to implement more innovative approaches:
most studies on the connection between leadership and individual innovation have explored the role of theory-based leadership styles, originally developed for other purposes such as the assessment of leaders' impact on performance or effectiveness rather than innovation-related outcomes. They did not attempt to develop models aimed specifically at finding out how leader behaviour could stimulate the innovative behaviour of employees. (de Jong and Hartog, 2007)
With regards to decision making there are various methods of engagement: (i) a staffcentric approach with either decentralized or centralized decision making (Fig. 8.1a); (ii) a customer-centric approach with either decentralized/centralized or centralized/decen- tralized decision making (Fig. 8.1b); and (iii) an holistic customer/staff-centric approach involving integrated decision making (Fig. 8.1c). 163
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(a) Staff-centric approach
Staff (trouble-shooter)
Staff (front desk)
Staff (concierge)
Staff (laundry)
Staff (room service)
Customer Decentralised decision making All employees attempt to engage with customers, when appropriate, and are empowered to make decisions. Objection handling and problem solving is centralized and remains largely under the control of management.
Staff (trouble-shooter)
Staff (front desk)
Staff (concierge)
Staff (laundry)
Staff (room service)
Customer Centralised decision making All employees attempt to engage with customers, when appropriate, and are empowered to make decisions. They work closely with their colleagues, sharing information and duties. Objection handling and problem solving is largely distributed among subordinates.
Fig. 8.1. Methods of engagement with regards to decision making. 164
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(b) Customer-centric approach Staff (front desk) Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Staff (customer-advocate)
Customer Decentralised/centralised decision making A key accounts approach is taken here, where the customer is shepherded by a member of staff, allocated to see to most of their needs. This method is largely used when dealing with major customers, or those with specific objections or problems. The benefit to staff is that it shields them from any difficulties of queries, which may over-burden them, or risk affecting the level of output on their core duties. Staff (front desk) Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Staff (customer-advocate)
Customer Decentralised/centralised decision making Following the same rationale from the example above, queries and objections are more similar in their nature across functions. In addition the sharing of knowledge and decision making is present to a higher degree. (c) Holistic customer/staff-centric approach Staff (customer-advocate trouble-shooter) Staff (front desk) Customer This is the highest quality level of interaction for both the employee and customer. Knowledge and responsibility is shared equally amongst staff. In addition the customer feels confident that any member of staff can attend to their every need. Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Fig. 8.1. Continued. 165
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Clearly the holistic customer/staff-centric approach involving integrated decision making is the best option. However, it is perhaps unrealistic and chaotic to assume that everyone can be empowered to the same degree; so following the decision to move to a holistic customer/ staffcentric approach to decision making, empowering staff, a screening process is necessary.
Screening approach:
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Where are we lacking? Where would it have the most impact? Are we in a position to formalize and document these activities (e.g. IT contact management systems, team meetings)? Are our staf willing to take part? Do our staf have sufcient training and support? Do we recognize and reward staf and team achievements; if so how? How much will all of this cost, or save? ? Are we ready to take the plunge? Isolate empowerment activities to specific areas of service. Define the scope for innovation and entrepreneurship. Monitor, feedback and review.
Strategic planning:
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Mini case study: 'Firefighting'
The fire service ofers an interesting source of reference; which goes beyond the often glibly used business term 'firefighting' - which in fact only paints a partial picture. Staf undergo rigorous training, which equips them with an ability to adopt a ?uid approach to a variety of tasks. Firefighters are encouraged to tackle both problems and tasks, based on their proximity to a given situation. Once they are called into action, there is a culture of doing what needs to be done, as soon as possible. This requires:
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thorough preparation beforehand; high levels of trust; little consultation between staf during a task; swift decision making; conformity in risk taking; Plan 'A' and at least a Plan 'B'; a style of management which deals with the fundamental during a situation; management to focus on the bigger picture during a situation and re?ect upon the detail afterwards; documented post-preparation; and comprehensive debriefing.
Of course hospitality, leisure and tourism roles do not exact such high levels of risk or intensity, but many have seen their stress levels rise when large numbers of customers suddenly engulf them. The essence of this example is in encouraging the:
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pursuit of calculated evolutionary processes; galvanization of staf through their activities; suggestion that to optimize performance clear instructions should be given away from the site where the task is to be conducted; reduction of stress, confusion and risk during tasks; mindset that customers pose little threat to staf; rather they are the raison d'être; understanding that customers are a necessary, yet sometimes unpredictable, component to the successful completion of a task; and desire to achieve through empowerment, rather than simply historical procedure.
In order to manage people, it is essential to consider their psychological dimensions. We found that providing employees with an empowering experience in conjunction with their training, significantly improved the outcomes of that training, as well as increasing their motivation and satisfaction. (Kappelman and Richards, 1996)
IDENTIFYING THE KEY CUSTOMERS
'how to communicate with those customers to be clear of their needs and expectations ?' and how to make sure employees 'will meet those needs'. (Pastor, 1996)
As a comparator, key account management within the field of media may serve towards offering a fresh approach. As with leisure, hospitality and tourism, their dealings are largely concerned with the sale of intangibles. With such large amounts of money changing hands, for highly substitutable and perishable packages, aggressive marketing and price elasticity have always played a vital part. Behind this are account handlers, who are often thrown in at the deep end, but who are encouraged to find creative ways to delight the customer using their own initiatives. Account handlers spend a considerable amount of their time trend spotting and recording details about a customer's habits, likes and dislikes. The rationale is that these pieces of information can be used:
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when crafting effective communication; to speculate on future business; to avoid potential customer discontentment; and to document tacit information which may also be of use to others.
The key to documenting all of this lies in having a contact management system which has the facility to hold this added information in a format that is readily accessible to many. Account managers are trained in the art of unobtrusive open-ended questioning. The questions appear as part of natural conversation and the collection of resulting information is undertaken in a casual manner. Account managers have often recorded anecdotal snippets of information and trivia such as 'doesn't drink alcohol', 'likes going to the opera', 'nut allergy', 'has come down with the ?u'. These pieces of information are then used as ice-breakers, possible topics of communication or even opportunities to offer additional desirable commercial services. The worthiness of this pursuit hinges on the following:
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an understanding that this information plays a necessary part in optimizing services; a culture existing among staff, that encourages, celebrates and rewards such practices; 167
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a willingness of staff to think laterally; a desire to delight the customer; a fear of misunderstanding customers; and a commitment towards looking to convert this information into a commercial gain.
Managing customer expectations
The hospitality, leisure and tourism sectors face an interesting puzzle when addressing aspects surrounding culture. On the one hand, environmental factors steeped in culture, are the lifeblood of many service offerings to customers. But on the other, cultures often need to be packaged and restricted in such ways that they conform to neutral universal ideals of optimal service. For example, once a precedent has been set for a consumer (or for that matter an employee) to experience a certain level of service, there exists a pull to make this the norm - or face potential future problems. The global marketplace ensures that employees and custom- ers are becoming more savvy and discerning; which brings with it increased expectations. In addition, staff are faced with consumers who bring with them their own cultural norms and expectations which they may feel no desire to let go of. After all, the world has been informed of the fact that the customer is there to be served! Harris (2004) states that:
It is critical to understand the importance of synergy when working or managing within multinational organizations, their subsidiaries, divisions, and teams. Within such a context, global leaders who promote cultural synergy in?uence social change in human behaviour and improve system effectiveness.
Language plays a pivotal role in addressing how well people respond to socio-cultural environments, as well how they can adapt. Staff should be empowered to use their multi-linguistic skills to build rapport wherever possible. These service industries must attempt to blend their own globally adapted unitarianist values with the wider environment's, without ignoring significant and desirable host cultural factors. The challenge therefore lies in staff being able to effortlessly manage expectations, to a mutually agreeable conclusion - at the earliest opportunity. Many enquiries may in fact be perceived by consumers as being hygiene factors, and potentially the root cause of a catalogue of resulting and seemingly unconnected dissatisfyers if ignored. Grumpy consumers have often been dismissed as unnecessarily needy individuals. The majority of customers would argue conversely, that this has been the result of not enough of their rather simple and basic needs being considered soon enough. There are amusing tales of customers switching to their mother tongue, when playfully looking to try their hand for those added benefits. For example, cultures which seek to engage in barter-based relationships may do so equally upon an initiation from either staff or customers. Staff should be encouraged to entertain these interactions, if at all possible, as they may serve as an opportunity to delight, or at worst avoid future complaints. Sales theory would argue that these touch points suggest potential buying signals, if understood correctly and acted upon. Following Thwaites' (1999) review of consumer differences, in connection with sports tourism - ranging from culture, languages, attitudes, preferences and behavioural norms suggests that, 'it is incumbent on management to check for variations that may contribute to friction. Emphasis can then be given to encouraging some segments and discouraging others.' Therefore as a starting point, tools available should also allow for empowerment in these situations, by adding leverage. They can be agreed beforehand by staff consensus and held back - to be applied where deemed appropriate. 168
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Examples of vehicles and tools for empowerment:
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small free gifts; tokens of appreciation; upgrades; discounts; compensation (financial, tangible and intangible); ?exibility in service ofering (e.g. extended hours for breakfast in Ramadan for Muslims); and freedom to use multi-linguistic approaches; with no suspicion.
Staf should be encouraged to use these to: protect prices and money already taken; ? actively win the 'lion's share' of business; ? reward or encourage customer loyalty, leading to an increase in the: recency, frequency or monetary value of an individual; number of recommendations and referrals made; ? speed up customer decision making; ? humanize a service ofering; and ? buy customer trust and compliance.
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In CRM and key account management an 80/20 rule has been stated as quantifying many interactions with customers. The thinking is that 80% of problems, complaints and enquires will arise when dealing with 20% of customers. If addressed, these challenges can be converted to encourage the marshalling of customers up the loyalty pyramid. This may result in customers assuming the role of willing ambassadors. The reciprocal benefit of this successful execution, may also lead to increased employee motivation and job satisfaction.
HUMAN EMPOWERMENT AND MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM
Having considered key aspects of empowerment as a management practice, we will now turn our attention to its implications to management of tourism. As discussed earlier, characteristics of tourism as a service industry do have implications for the practice of empowerment. As tourism is an amalgam of subsectors such as transport, accommodation, attractions, services and tourism facilitation and each of these, in turn, consists of a number of different groups, virtually all the challenges faced by the sector are a consequence of its structure. For example, the accommodation subsector includes organizations that operate five-star and luxury accommodations, budget hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfast (B&B) units, and owner-operated home stays. In addition to this diversity within each subsector, tourism organizations vary according to size (ranging in size from major multi-nationals to micro, one-person businesses), ownership (public, private, joint venture), location (rural, urban), scale (craft, small and medium, and large), and scope (local, national, international). Tourism organizations belong within the service sector of the economy (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). They are, therefore, very different in the way that they operate and how they are organized from organizations which focus on the processing and production of 169
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manufactured goods. There are particular features of service organizations and the services that they provide for their customers which differentiate them from the manufacturing sector. These features establish the parameters within which people can work and are managed in tourism. The characteristics of tourism service operations include the following features.
Intangibility
Most services are intangible in that customers do not receive something physical or tangible in return for your money. Customers purchase experiences and the evaluation of these experiences may include strong subjective elements along with aspects that can be judged objectively. Punctuality of an airline's service can, generally, be measured objectively while the quality of the service offered on board is much more subjective. The human contribution to the delivery of both tangible and intangible aspects of tourism services is core to customer satisfaction and competitiveness.
Perishability
The sales opportunity of an unsold service is lost forever. An unsold airline seat or an empty hotel room is lost revenue and an opportunity that can never be recouped. In others words, services cannot be stored the way that many non-perishable manufactured goods can be held in a warehouse until trading conditions become more favourable. This reality has a major impact on how service organizations, especially those in the tourism sector, organize themselves, particularly with respect to sales and marketing. This feature induces a constant level of stress into tourism operations and this impacts upon employees in that they are constantly required to respond to short-term sales requirements. The operation of effective yield management systems by, for example, the low-cost airlines can reduce this pressure on the individual to a considerable extent.
Tourism services are time and place dependent
Tourism services are frequently prepared/produced, served and consumed almost simultaneously, frequently within sight and with the participation of the customer in a way that is infrequent in manufacturing. The human contribution within this process is critical. Many tourism services must be offered to the customer where they require its delivery and production cannot take place remotely or in a centralized location. Hotels must be located where people want to stay and not where it suits the hotel company to locate its operations. Place dependency impacts on the recruitment and welfare of tourism employees in that frequently they are recruited within the local host community of the tourism operation. This local dimension has implications for skills and training within the workforce and, in some cases, the ability of tourism organizations to deliver some of its services.
Simultaneity and customer involvement in service production
While manufactured goods are produced before they are sold and consumed, services are sold first and then produced and consumed simultaneously (Kandampully, 1997). Simultaneous production and consumption inevitably involves the customer in aspects of the production process, overtly in the case of self-service facilities or restaurants. Fellow customers are also part of the atmosphere or ambiance that we buy into when we go to a restaurant or attend a cultural or musical event. 170
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Tourism services cannot be quality controlled at the factory gate
Tourism services are difficult to standardize because they generally require a high level of human intervention for their delivery and are, thus, subject to variability because of the human element. As a result, you cannot return or substitute a service which has been unsatisfactory in the way that you can seek to exchange a faulty good such as an umbrella or personal stereo. Once your experience of a service is concluded, the provider can seek to compensate you for a bad experience but cannot replace the experience.
The human element in tourism service delivery
Human behaviour, whether staff or customer, is unpredictable although good management and effective training should minimize this unpredictability among employees in good organizations. Human interaction at the point of production and service, inevitably, produces an element of uncertainty that is not faced on the factory ?oor in manufacturing or, at worst, can be eliminated through effective quality control. These characteristics of services in general apply within the tourism sector in particular and contribute to the manner in which tourism organizations are structured and operate. They in?uence the operational culture of organizations and also how they market their services, how their finances are structured and, in particular, the management of people within organizations.
Skills issue in tourism
Baum (2002) has explored the nature of skills in tourism and concluded that the nature and relative level of skills in the sector is determined by the social, economic, political and technological context within which they operate. To talk of tourism as a low skills sector has some validity in the developed world but is meaningless in many developing countries. Likewise, to talk about absolute skills shortages in tourism is something which has relevance in the developed world. In most developing countries, there is no absolute shortage of labour but the skills base that exists in the economy may not be tuned to effective tourism work. In developed countries, skills shortages exist as a result of image problems that the sector may have, as a consequence of demand factors such as seasonality and as a result of changes within the technical focus in education and training programmes within the college system.
Recruitment, retention and turnover
The mobility of staff within tourism is a direct factor of the wider environment, structural and sector-operating characteristics that we have addressed above. Sectors of tourism in some, particularly developed, countries face ongoing challenges to recruit appropriate staff to key positions in the industry, skilled and unskilled. They also face challenges with respect to retaining these staff once they are recruited and reducing what can be very high rates of labour turnover. The impact of variable demand (seasonality), issues of remunera- tion (see below), unsociable working conditions and generally negative perceptions of the sector for employment contribute to be problems faced in this regard. Tourism is also an industry that is seen to be highly reactive to short-term local and international events in terms of its willingness to retrench staff in order to meet short-term financial require- ments. The impact on travel and transport sectors in the immediate aftermath of events on 11 September, 2001 is a major case in point. Within this environment, potential employ- ees may not wish to risk their long-term security in an employment environment that is perceived to be unstable.
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At the same time, the small business environment within tourism means that the recruitment process may not always be conducted in such a way as to ensure the selection of the best and most suitable employees for the job. Limited credence is given to the outcomes of formal education and training while opportunities for workplace development are limited. As a consequence, the recruitment technique of internal promotion is not as widely used in tourism as it could be.
Rewards, benefits and compensation
The popular perception of the tourism industry in many developed countries is that of relatively poor pay (Wood, 1997; Baum, 2006). This is a re?ection of a number of factors:
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perceptions of tourism work as synonymous with the large but not necessarily typical hotel and catering subsector; the low skills environment of many jobs within tourism; limited workplace organization in some tourism businesses although this is not true of, for example, the traditional airline sector; seasonal and part-time work; the grey or 'tipping' economy within many tourism operations, undermining core remuneration; trends to de-skill work in tourism through technology substitution; and accessible employment for the majority of the population through seasonal and other temporary work.
At the same time, tourism can offer highly remunerated and high-status employment within, for example, airlines. In the developing world, tourism employment may be highly prized and its remuneration, relative to local conditions, competitive with other opportunities in the economy. The experience of newly industrialized states such as Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, however, is that as the economy develops, the attractiveness and competitiveness of remuneration in tourism declines, presenting a real challenge to the sector in meeting its employment needs. These characteristics of tourism as an industry and employer have major implications to introducing empowerment in the sector.
EMPOWERMENT IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
Given the human dimensions of service (Baum, 2006), the competence of human resource is an important variable in determining not only service quality, but the quality of overall visitor experience. Quality management in tourism is about ensuring that tourism businesses can offer distinctive, authentic, and higher value holiday experiences (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). Quality is also dependent upon value added through a range of human skills during the service encounter, recognition of which have resulted in the adoption of concepts such as managing 'moments of truth' (Carlzon, 1987; Sharpley, 2005) and developing 'spirit of service' (Albrecht, 1992) by the tourism industry. Carlzon describes, a 'moment of truth' as the point of contact between the customer and employee of the company, and these are the critical occasions, which determine a customer's satisfaction in a service encounter. Although relatively minor and transient occurrences, 'moments of truth' are make-or-break occasions in service encounters in tourism (Baum, 2002). The visitor-employee encounter 172
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in tourism can be mapped with the help of Leiper's tourism system (1995). Leiper (1995) in his geographical system brings out the interaction between tourism demand (travellers in the generating regions) and tourism supply (tourism destinations), tracing the jour- ney through the transit region. Baum (2002) uses this system to scale the intensity of the 'moments of truth' during each stage of the holiday process, starting with the traveller- generating regions and moving through the transit route towards the tourist destination regions and back (Fig. 8.2). As Fig. 8.2 indicates, a typical holiday travel entails a complex range of interactions between the tourist and service providers with varying levels of interaction. Managing this complicated range of interactions requires employees who can think on their feet and are innovative and ?exible. The 'spirit of service', according to Albrecht (1992: 154), is an 'attitude based on certain values and beliefs about people, life and work, that leads a person to willingly serve others and take pride in his or her work'. The spirit of service is about an employee going beyond the normal level of service and making efforts to understand customers and meet their emotional, psychological and physical needs that create the original demand for the service or product. Buissink-Smith and McIntosh (2001) have identified five characteristics that are essen- tial to demonstrate the 'spirit of service' by employees of tourism organizations. These are: (i) the individual spirit; (ii) the mindfulness spirit; (iii) the energy spirit; (iv) the communication spirit; and (v) the orientation spirit (Table. 8.1).
High Travel retailer (online and High street) Airline (charter, scheduled, budget) Hospitality (resorts, hotels, B&B) Tour operator, visitor attractions, restaurants, tour guides, shops Intensity of interaction Airport (checkin, shops, currency)
Medium Destination web sites
Airport (immigration, shops) Local transport
Low
Departing travellers
Tourist generating region
Transit route
Returning travellers Location of tourists and tourism industry
Tourist destination region
Fig. 8.2. The tourism experiences and encounters (adapted from Baum, 2002). 173
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Table 8.1. The characteristics and skills for the 'spirit of service' (Source: Buissink-Smith and McIntosh, 2001: 83).
Characteristic
1. Individualism
Skills
Being yourself - being physically, emotionally and psychologically 'in' the service encounter. Being able to use your own style, talents and personality and remaining true to yourself Feeling good about yourself and others - positive basic feelings about self, work and other people (self-confidence, self-respect, friendly, interested in others, empathy, resilience, self-control and optimism) To be mindful - being alert and ?exible Feeling empowered - as a state of mind - to be creative, take risks, express personal power, exercise initiative outside the conventional norm Proactive and willing - motivated, innovative, organized, ?exible and open to change - willing to give extra energy and continuously improve and learn Having fun - being a star with the customer is fun - motivated by the intrinsic rewards of the service role Customer contact skills - active listening, problem solving, complaint handling and analysis of verbal intake Comfortable with all visitors - diferent cultural perspectives and values A customer service-orientation - a commitment to service quality - service-centred and commitment of energies to quality Knowing the big picture - being involved, feeling committed and an awareness of importance of role, job and product knowledge
2. Mindfulness
3. Energy
4. Communication
5. Orientation
The foundation of the 'spirit of service' and effective management of 'moments of truth', thus will be a sense of freedom and a range of skills and attitudes that result from and con- tribute to a belief on the part of the employees that they are empowered to manage customer experiences. Even if an organization is able to recruit skilled and competent employees, their ability to contribute to service quality will depend greatly upon the autonomy and choice avail- able to them to deal with practical aspects of their job without having to look for directions from their superiors (Hocutt and Stone, 1998; Chua and Iyengar, 2006). Empowering the employees to provide higher quality moments of truth by inculcating the spirit of service seems to be a major strategy towards achieving service quality in the tourism industry (see for example Fig. 8.3 adapted from a publication produced by Fáilte Ireland). As Berry (1995: 89) observes, 'Customers may not give extra credit to businesses for doing what they are supposed to do, rather they attach higher value to those that surprise with unusual caring, commitment, and resourcefulness during the service encounter.' Thus the skills and competencies of the employees could be a major variable in facilitating a higher quality customer experience in tourism. Given the variable nature of service experiences and consumer 174
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Competitiveness
... and this sets apart a competitive business ... which enables a premium quality service ... and empowers them giving autonomy to function
Competitive ness
Service quality
HRM practices support people development Empowerment
HRD
HRM
Employee empowerment
Fig. 8.3. Employee empowerment for competitiveness in tourism (adapted from Fáilte Ireland, 2005). HRD, human resource development; HRM, human resource management.
heterogeneity, it is highly unlikely that a uniform standard set of competencies will be sufficient to meet the ever-increasing needs of more discerning and demanding customers. Flexibility, ability to think and decide on one's feet, and innovation are thus the essential attributes required of employees in the tourism industry. The criteria of good perceived service quality identified by Gronroos (1988) further underline the important role of human empowerment in delivering service quality (Table 8.2). These criteria are: (i) professionalism and skills; (ii) attitudes and behaviour; (iii) access and ?exibility; (iv) reliability and trustworthiness; (v) recovery; and (vi) reputation and credibility. These elements strictly belong to the human resource domain. And an empowered set of employees alone are likely to be able to meet these criteria. 175
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Table 8.2. Criteria of good perceived service quality (Source: Gronroos, 1988 adapted by Johns, 1996: 15).
Number
1
Designation
Professionalism and skills
Description
Customers see the service provider as knowledgeable and able to solve their problems in a professional way Customers perceive a genuine, friendly concern for them and their problems Customers feel that they have easy, timely access and that the service provider is prepared to adjust to their needs Customers can trust the service provider to keep promises and act in their best interests Customers know that immediate corrective action will be taken if anything goes wrong Customers believe that the brand image stands for good performance and accepted values
2
Attitudes and behaviour
3
Access and ?exibility
4
Reliability and trustworthiness
5
Recovery
6
Reputation and credibility
The competitive tourism industry as a service sector largely depends on excellence of service and delivery of an intangible product. The nature of this industry and the satisfaction of customers depend critically on the human factor (Gabriel, 1988) and therefore the way in which tourism and hospitality employees are managed is of critical importance to the employer and customer alike. In this respect many employers have utilized employee empowerment, trusting it will improve responsiveness to customer needs and thereby become more efficient and effective (Rapp et al., 2006). Empowerment certainly in?uences the competitiveness of tourism organizations, in that it prepares a platform for better customer relations. Brymer (1991) believes that empowerment is a customer-driven leadership strategy that can separate organizations that really provide a personalized and high quality customer treatment from those who merely talk about providing quality service. Empowerment of employees is an important compo- nent of total quality management (TQM) (Sigler and Pearson, 2000). Advocates of TQM believe that to achieve customer satisfaction, top management should be committed to creating an organizational climate that empowers employees and focuses their efforts on customer satisfaction (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000). These authors maintain that a positive relationship between leadership and commitment, and employee empowerment (leading to job satisfaction) with customer satisfaction exist. They maintain that empowerment can hugely contribute to job satisfaction and that employees who do not enjoy the latter, can- not provide the required high quality service to customers. In some respects one can refer to this as a circular relationship whereby the organization (top management) can apply 176
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empowerment as a means to achieve job satisfaction among front-line staff in order to improve customer satisfaction which in turn will benefit the organization's objectives. For example, a hotel owner might empower the reception staff to allow tourists early access to their rooms even if the official check-in time is much later. With this responsibility, the staff members experience a sense of added value and their friendly demeanour together with the fact that they could add value to the guests' enjoyment could lead to an increase in guest satisfaction. This in turn, could lead to repeat visitors which will benefit the original objectives of the hotel owner. Lashley (1996) lists a range of potential benefits to organizations which apply empowerment as a human resource strategy: empowered employees do better work, take responsibility for their own performance, produce more satisfied customers, greater profits and help produce a more competitive organization. There are of course also limitations to empowerment, strengthening the belief that empowerment does not grant employees free reign. Empowerment does not allow for employees to alter prices, product specifications, décor of their workplaces (Eccles, 1993) and gives them virtually no say in the company targets and objectives. For example, an airline employee at check-in might be empowered to allow a customer free excess baggage, but will not be empowered to delay a ?ight if clients had difficulty in reaching the airport on time. A waiter in a restaurant might be empowered to offer regular customers a complimentary drink, but will not have the power to rearrange the furniture to suit these clients. The success of the potential benefits of empowerment hinge also on managers and supervisors' approach towards empowered employees. Employees at all levels should be trained in aspects such as teamwork, problem recognition and problem solving (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000) in order to make good decisions (Sternberg, 1992). It is believed that empowerment recognizes employee feelings of personal effectiveness and worth (Lashley, 1996) and therefore enhances job satisfaction and overall relationships between employees, customers and managers (Littrell, 2007). Eccles (1993) warns that not all employees are naturally ready for empowerment - many cannot count or read and others may have challenges with honesty and integrity. Empowerment in this sense becomes a rather personal consideration, starting with the existing abilities, skills and attributes of the employee and assessing to what extent, in view of the organization's culture and vision, the employee should or could be empowered. Most authors on the subject of empowerment agree that in order to apply empowerment as a human resource strategy, a fundamental shift in managerial power and working practices, as well as attitudes of senior management, is required (Brymer, 1991; Sternberg, 1992; Eccles, 1993; Ugboro and Obeng, 2000; Baum, 2002). Empowerment as a human resource strategy will lead to a more ?attened organizational chart than before (Brymer, 1991). As a natural consequence of empowering employees, managers are required to give up some extent of control, although not their accountability. Sternberg (1992), concerned about supervisors' and manag- ers' resistance to empowerment, believes successful empowerment rests with a great relation- ship of trust between manager and employee. An empowered group of employees on the other hand, can also benefit many managers in terms of time saved, developing a better understanding of the customers' needs through feedback from the employee and mutual problem solving. Lashley (2001), one of the leading authors in the field of empowerment in the service industries, identified four forms of empowerment, the first three mainly directed towards front-line or operational personnel, and the last one aimed at managers: 177
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1. Empowerment through participation - this concerns giving employees some decisionmaking authority which previously rested with management, such as dealing with complaints, organizing work schedules or meeting unpredictable service requests without reference to managers. 2. Empowerment through involvement - this relates to managers gaining from the experiences and expertise of employees and involves techniques such as team briefings, consultation with staff and joint problem solving. 3. Empowerment through commitment - employees are encouraged to accept responsibility for the service encounter without necessarily having more authority. 4. Empowerment through delayering - here the organizational chart is ?attened and layers of management are reduced. The form of empowerment chosen by the organization will depend on the job at hand, the culture of the company as well as the cooperation of both management and employees. As a general rule, Lashley (1996) stresses that the more unpredictable the demands and needs of the customer (as often perceived in the service industry), the more likely that empowerment of staff will make a positive contribution to the organization. Eccles (1993: 18) states:
Effective empowerment is thus delivered through a combination of power release and responsibility, with measurable performance criteria to gauge effects. Empowered employees need managerial support rather than being offered fine phrases and then being left to get on with it.
Empowerment should therefore always be applied with great skill and awareness of the management and not merely as a buzzword to keep staff satisfied or to gain competitive advantage. Empowerment also requires the front-line staff to be equipped with the knowledge and abilities and human resource development (HRD) policies and programmes that provide employees with the skills, attitudes and competence to do their jobs independently (Hoccut and Stone, 1998; Baum, 2002; Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). Further, empowerment can only happen where there is trust in the positive side of human nature, based on the belief that human beings are capable of being noble and well meaning (Mahesh, 1994). Needless to say, in service industries such as tourism, employee empowerment has been driven by consumer satisfaction that allows staff to take a leadership role. It also has to be an ongoing process, which requires continuous investment in HRD to update employee skills and knowledge and also to develop a culture of continuous development and life-long learning (Brymer, 1991; Kokkranikal, 2004).
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, an attempt has been made to examine the strategic role of employee empowerment in enhancing quality and competitiveness within the tourism industry. It started with an analysis of the basic concepts of empowerment and moved on to consider aspects of empowering staff and customers and its practical implications for service industries such as tourism. The following are a summary of key factors, resulting from the consideration of empowerment as a strategic management function in tourism. 178
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Advantages associated with empowerment
Empowerment: ? is a short- and long-term cost-efective approach; ? is an ofensive and defensive technique resulting in: retention of profit centres; and increased profitability; ? optimizes strategy; ? is a long-term strategic diferentiating factor; ? is an internal and external marketing tool to attract and retain staf; ? results in the humanization of the work environment; ? reduces gaps between employee and consumer; and ? assists in the movement towards exploring new approaches and markets. Potential benefit to employees:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
more motivating; more interesting; a better way to work; increased ?exibility; increased fulfilment; easier way to fulfil obligations; job enrichment; chance to develop new skills; opportunity to shape future activities; opportunity to demonstrate additional skills; and formal recognition of added value contributions. better experience; added value; increased feeling of personal worth; requests addressed more promptly; requests addressed with more relevance; and increased personalization of services.
Potential benefit to customers:
? ? ? ? ? ?
If empowerment is seen as being central to an organization looking to improve both an employee's and a customer's experiences, the challenge lies in coordinating and formalizing an approach which:
? ? ? ? ? ?
encourages ?uid decision making; decentralizes management responsibilities; relies more heavily on tacit knowledge; requires a wider skill set; allows for more than one solution to a situation; necessitates higher levels of trust among peers; and ? increases individual accountability. 179
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To conclude, there is a strong argument in favour of introducing employee empowerment in the tourism industry, if it has to be consumer and quality driven. And, adequately skilled, confident and well-supported and customer-driven employees are essential for the tourism industry, in which the workforce has the autonomy to take a leadership role in delivering higher quality tourist experiences.
REFERENCES
Airey, D. and Tribe, J. (2005) An International Handbook of Tourism Education, Elsevier, London. Albrecht, K. (1992) The Only Thing that Matters. Harper Business, New York. Barbee, C. and Bott, V. (1991) Customer treatment as a mirror of employee treatment. Advanced Management Journal 5, 27. Baum, T. (2002) Making or breaking the tourist experience: the role of human resource management. In: Ryan, C. (ed.) The Tourist Experience. International Thomson, London, pp. 94-111. Baum, T. (2006) Human Resource Management for the Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Industries. Thompson, London. Baum, T. and Kokkranikal, J. (2003) Human resource development for competitiveness and sustainability: a case study of Indian tourism. In: Kushluvan, S. (ed.) Managing Employee Attitudes and Behaviors in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Nova Science Publishers, New York, pp. 805-832. Berry, L. (1995) On Great Service: a Framework for Action. The Free Press, New York. Bolton, S. and Houlihan, M. (2007) Beginning the search for the H in HRM. In: Bolton, S. and Houlihan, M. (eds) Searching for Human in Human Resource Management: Theory, Practice and Workplace Contexts. Palgrave, Basingstoke, Hants, UK, pp. 1-28. Bowen, D.E. and Lawler, E.E. III (1992) The empowerment of service workers: what, why, how and when. Sloan Management Review 33(3), 31-39. Bowen, D.E. and Lawler, E.E. (1995) Empowering service employees. Sloan Management Review 53, 9-16. Brymer, R.A. (1991) Employee empowerment: a guest-driven leadership strategy. The Cornell H.R.A. Quarterly 32, 58-68. Buissink-Smith, N. and McIntosh, A.J. (2001) Conceptualising the'spirit of service'in tourism education and training. Journal of Teaching in Travel and Tourism 1(1), 79-96. Carlzon, J. (1987) Moments of Truth. Ballinger, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chang, L.C. and Liu, C.H. (2008) Employee empowerment, innovative behaviour and job productivity of public health nurses: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. International Journal of Nursing Studies 45(10), 1442-1448. Chua, R.Y. and Iyengar, S.S. (2006) Empowerment through choice? A critical analysis of the efects of choice in organisations. Research in Organisational Behaviour 27, 41-79. Collins, D. (1995) Rooting for empowerment? Empowerment in Organizations 3(2), 25-33. de Jong, J.P.J. and Hartog, D.N.D. (2007) How leaders in?uence employees' innovative behaviour. European Journal of Innovation Management 10(1), 41-64. Eccles, T. (1993) The deceptive allure of empowerment. Long Range Planning 26(6),13-21. Fáilte Ireland (2005) A Human Resource Development Strategy for Irish Tourism. Competing through People, 2005-2012. Fáilte Ireland, Dublin. Gabriel, Y. (1988) Working Lives in Catering. Routledge, London. Gronroos, C. (1988) Service quality: the six criteria of good perceived service quality. Review of Business 9(3), 10-13. Hammuda, I. and Dulaimi, M.F. (1997) The theory and application of empowerment in construction: a comparative study of the diferent approaches to empowerment in construction, service and manufacturing industries. International Journal of Project Management 15(5), 289-296.
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Harris, P.R. (2004) European leadership in cultural synergy. European Business Review 16(4), 358-380. Hocutt, M.A. and Stone, T.H. (1998) The impact of employee empowerment on the quality of a service recovery efort. Journal of Quality Management 3(1), 117-132. Johns, N. (1996) The developing role of quality in the hospitality industry. In: Oslen, M.D., Teare, R. and Gummerson, E. (eds) Service Quality in Hospitality Organisations. Cassel, London, pp. 9-26. Jones, P. and Davies, A. (1991) Empowerment: a study of general managers of four star hotel properties in the UK. International Journal of Hospitality Management 10(3), 211-217. Kandampully, J. (1997) Quality management in retailing through a concept of'service-product'design. Total Quality Management Journal 8(1), 41-53. Kappelman, L.A. and Richards, T.C. (1996) Training, empowerment, and creating a culture for change. Empowerment in Organizations 4(3), 26-29. Kokkranikal, J. (2004) Tourism human resource development and sustainability in developing countries. Paper presented at 'Tourism State of the Art - II' organized by The Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 27-30 June. Lashley, C. (1996) Research issues for employee empowerment in hospitality organisations. International Journal of Hospitality Management 15(4), 333-346. Lashley, C. (2001) Empowerment, HR Strategies for Service Excellence. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Leiper, N. (1995) Tourism Management. TAFE Publications, Collingwood, Melbourne, Australia. Littrell, R.F. (2007) In?uences on employee preferences for empowerment practices by the 'ideal manager' in China. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 31, 87-110. Mahesh, V.S. (1994) Thresholds of Motivation. McGraw-Hill, New York. Pastor, J. (1996) Empowerment: what it is and what it is not. Empowerment in Organizations 4(2), 5-7. Rapp, A., Ahearne, M., Mathieu, J. and Schillewaert, N. (2006) The impact of knowledge and empowerment on working smart and working hard: the moderating role of experience. International Journal of Research in Marketing 23, 279-293. Riley, M., Szivas, E. and Ladkin, A. (2002) Tourism Employment: Analysis and Planning. Channel View Publications, Clevedon, Somerset, UK. Schlesinger, L. and Heskett, J. (1991) The service-driven service company. Harvard Business Review 69(5), 71-81. Sharpley, R (2005) Accommodation sector: managing for quality. In: Pender, L. and Sharpley, R. (eds) Tourism Management. Sage, London, pp. 14-27. Sigler, T.H. and Pearson, C.M. (2000) Creating an empowering culture: examining the relationship between organizational culture and perceptions of empowerment. Journal of Quality Management 5, 27-52. Smith, B. (1997) Empowerment - the challenge is now. Empowerment in Organizations 5(3), 120-122. Spreitzer, G.M. (1995) Psychological empowerment in the workplace: dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of Management Journal 38(11), 1442-1465. Sternberg, L.E. (1992) Empowerment: trust vs. control. The Cornell H.R.A. Quarterly 33, 69-72. Thomas, K.W. and Velthouse, B.A. (1990) Cognitive elements of empowerment: an interpretive model of intrinsic task motivation. Academic of Management Review 15, 666-681. Thwaites, D. (1999) Closing the gaps: service quality in sport tourism. Journal of Services Marketing 13(6), 511. Ugboro, I.O. and Obeng, K. (2000) Top management leadership, employee empowerment, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction in TQM organizations: an empirical study. Journal of Quality Management 5, 247-272. Wood, R. (1997) Working in Hotels and Catering. Routledge, London.
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doc_403514705.docx
Sociological empowerment often addresses members of groups that social discrimination processes have excluded from decision-making processes through - for example - discrimination based on disability, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Empowerment as a methodology is often associated with feminism: see consciousness-raising.
Case Study on Human Empowerment, Management and Tourism
that reviews some current definitions of empowerment, the aim is to arrive at a practical understanding of what empowerment means within the service industry and what this entails. The chapter will also explore supporting disciplines, in the interests of looking towards the future of empowerment and its potential to become a core strategic driving force.
EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment is a strategic approach which has been covered within the fields of generalist management, human resource management (HRM) and organization behaviour. As Smith (1997: 121) states:
To empower is to give power, to open up, to release potential of people. In these terms it can be viewed as a commonsense activity. Typically, it embraces job involvement, job enrichment, participation in various forms, including suggestions schemes. Essentially the main thrust of empowerment is through having greater autonomy over 'how' jobs are done, carrying with it immense potential for improving productivity.
Empowerment has been variously described:
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
'The act of vesting substantial responsibility in the people nearest the problem'(Barbee and Bott, 1991). 'Pushing responsibility and decision-making down the organization to those employees closest to the customer' ( Jones and Davies, 1991). 'The process of decentralizing decision-making in an organization, whereby managers give more discretion and autonomy to the front-line employees' (Brymer, 1991). 'Giving employees the authority to make everyday decisions is the most straightforward aspect of empowerment' (Sternberg, 1992). 'Giving employees the power to make decisions that in?uence organizational direction and performance' (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). 'Strategies that strengthen employees' self-efficacy or confidence in accomplishing the objectives of their tasks as set out by managers' (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000). 'A cognitive state,a psychologically empowered experience with power-sharing,competence and value internalisation in organisations' (Chang and Liu, 2008).
Thomas and Velthouse (1990) and Spreitzer (1995) describe four dimensions of empowerment: (i) meaningfulness; (ii) competence; (iii) self-determination; and (iv) impact.
?
?
Meaningfulness relates to the perception of congruence between a task and the employee's values, attitudes and beliefs. Such task meaningfulness is a major factor in determining job satisfaction. Competence is about self-efficacy and capability to perform a task successfully. Employees who are confident about their efficacy and competence are likely to perform their tasks well. ? Self-determination allows employees to choose the course of action in various task situations and is closely related to a sense of autonomy that they need to feel in organizations. ?
Impact refers to the degree to which employees can in?uence events in an organization. In other words, impact is about the level of control an employee has over his or her working environment. A sense of control is important in creating ownership and job satisfaction. These psychological components of empowerment are closely in?uenced by the social and structural aspects 159
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of the workplace which include organizational structure, organizational support, access to strategic information, access to organizational resources and organizational culture. Bowen and Lawler (1995) include personal control over job performance, awareness of business strategies, and higher accountability for performance outcomes as the major facets of empowerment. Examining the role of empowerment in service recovery, Hocutt and Stone (1998) describe autonomy and training as two important components of employee empowerment. Autonomy is about allowing employees absolute freedom to do the job, so that when exceptional incidents occur, they can take decisions without looking for guidance elsewhere. Training is an essential aspect of skills and competence development, without which autonomy will have no meaning. Probably one of the simplest ways of employee empowerment is giving them the choice in how to approach their work (Chua and Iyengar, 2006). The underlying idea in this approach is that choice gives employees a sense of personal control, which can enhance their intrinsic motivation towards their work, resulting in higher morale, creativity and innovation, better performance, greater organizational commitment, and lower turnover (Chua and Iyengar, 2006). The rationale behind encouraging empowerment within business organizations can be summarized as attempts to:
? ? ? ? ? ?
retain work interests; increase employee motivation; assist employee development; encourage fresh thinking; increase job satisfaction; and reduce labour turnover.
Given these benefits, empowerment could probably be a key strategy to overcome some of the innate human resource issues in tourism, which include: (i) its poor image as an employer; (ii) poor rewards, benefits and compensation; (iii) skills shortages; (iv) concerns about ?exibility and innovation; and (v) recruitment, retention and high attrition rate (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). These are discussed later in the chapter. Also, empowerment could be a useful tactic to bring out the best in the stars within organizations: the unsung heroes, who manage to make their mark when dealing with customers. However, few are able to share this learning experience among all employees, and bring thesepractices within the formal confines of customer policies. Some argue that their documentation could loose the essence of what actually happened, how it worked and why. The challenge there- fore lies in finding a way to faithfully address such rich facets of working life and spread these pockets of tacit learning more widely. Empowerment attempts to provide a positive reinforce- ment of 'best practice' which encourages staff members to become more active stakeholders.
Points for consideration:
?
?
Why does empowerment even warrant a separate mention - when in our private lives, we wouldn't even give it a second thought? We just do what we can to make our guests happy and we don't even get paid! Are we at risk of inheriting many of 'our' management procedures from other disciplines, almost like 'hand-me-downs' - which are ill-fitting, or even worn out? ? If we do make a concerted efort to empower staf: who, where, when, how and, most importantly, what are we letting them do?
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EMPOWERING STAFF AND CUSTOMERS
Interestingly, when looking towards the discipline of consumer behaviour, the term empowerment is often replaced, or compounded, with the word choice. The suggestion is that empowerment carries with it the connotation that this choice is restricted by a management function. This being the case, such an overt use of the word may be coun- terproductive to customer relationship management (CRM) philosophies, which encour- age a consumer to consider themselves as being central to decisions. However, within the realms of employment, these connotations may serve towards offering necessary structural guidance. As a cursory note:
We must also acknowledge that this definition of empowerment hinges more on some notion of accountability than on any wider change in the processes of work and decision making which might be implied by a more active modelling of empowerment. Thus, workers are empowered only in the sense that they have a greater responsibility to act within a narrow sphere directly related to production, and then held to be accountable for their action or indeed their inaction. (Collins, 1995)
When things go wrong
For failing or stagnant organizations, empowerment is often produced as a cost-effective panacea for the ills that they are currently suffering. However, as with any approach rooted in subjective ad hoc decisions, the propensity for discontentment and disagreements may conversely increase. Once empowerment is adopted as a strategic method there inevitably comes with it the call to justify actions in definable terms. While empowering employees to have more control over their duties may yield short-term benefits, the focus should nevertheless by on implementing such a philosophy over the long term. Within successful organizations, empowerment is a word which may in fact never be considered as employees are simply performing their tasks, the best way that they know how. Therefore the overall objective of empowerment is to refine and optimize existing strategic decisions for competitive gains.
Barriers to implementation:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
organizational and consumer cultures; skill bases; management styles; hierarchy and management structures; information technology (IT) infrastructures; health and safety concerns; legislation; and experience.
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Potential problems resulting from empowering staf:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
lack of willingness to participate; self-imposed customer distances; turf and ego battles; fear or suspicion; departure from a standardized and streamlined strategic approach; applicability in too few areas to warrant time spent; potential to favour some staf over others, leading to discontentment; over-customization; over-emphasis on empowerment, leading to distraction from core duties; a mask for lazy management and lax procedures; lack of significance in increasing motivation and interest within employees; too much control taken away from management; and too time consuming.
As organizations have created departments such as finance, human resources and marketing, their individual focuses will inevitably interpret empowerment in different ways - taking into account their immediate and respective accountabilities. Cross-functional management styles, which look to integrate responsibilities, act as agents for addressing these issues. The following of processes take time and have to be robust enough to overcome any preconceptions that upper management may have, even if well founded.
Class discussion: How would you handle the following objections to empowerment?
? ? ? ? ? ?
'It's just an excuse for people to chat.' 'It's a waste of time.' 'Our staf can't be trusted.' 'They don't have what it takes.' 'We're encouraging people to do what they want, rather than do what we want.' 'Staf just use it to make themselves look good.'
The recent exodus and almost prodigal-son-like return of many call centres to their native countries are testament to the fact that purely financial and resource-based calculations may be short sighted in attempting to increase customer satisfaction. These experiences have encouraged organizations, whether they have stood firm or made an about turn, to focus more of their attention on the softer skills of communication.
(re-)Humanizing services
Within the hospitality and leisure industry, the intangibility of services has been argued as being problematic when looking to ensure consistent excellence. This could be down to an overly mechanistic approach, which is often prescribed, when organizations attempt to scale up and control their operations. As hospitality, leisure and tourism are relatively new disci- plines (with regards their branding as separate business subjects) the literature at times appears 162
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to have been grafted, or at best inspired, by more tangible product management approaches. This is not to say that this approach doesn't produce praiseworthy results. However, there is a risk that an over-reliance on process and procedure may result in neglecting the naturally occurring and potent attributes within the industry. In short, hospitality, leisure and tourism aim to enact a basic facet of human nature; and their intrinsic value is enjoyed by both staff and customers alike. In addition, they are experience driven, highly emotive and have the power to beguile all in their path. Therefore, the call to implement policies that empower staff is seen as an essential activity which seeks to address not only the efficacy of an organisation's corporate strategy, but also more importantly a deficiency in employees' job satisfaction. A resulting philosophy from this approach, has suggested that employees should be viewed as an organization's internal customers. While employees have been viewed as a company's mostvalued (not to mention volatile) resource, the contributions of all employees, regardless of position, are now revered as being notable in actively providing significant and informed judgements. The standardization and mechanization of services has necessitated the formalization of every decision. With this being the case, empowerment has sought to ensure that a fan of opinions remains, in order to counteract the risks associated with an over-convergence of decision making. By and large, empowerment exists to promote understanding, in an almost yin-and-yang-like manner, across all facets of the value chain. A philosophy rooted in empowerment would be of assistance when addressing the relationship between services and products. As services and products extend their offerings, their very nature and terms of engagement are in turn being redefined. Rather than being seen as separate disciplines, each are progressing towards a more convergent, symbiotic state. This carries with it added pressures on employees and management procedures to in turn deliver on increasingly more complicated activities. In addition, the usage of hospitality, leisure and tourism often play a pivotal role in affording other industries attractive 'sweeteners', rewards, incentives and differentiators, for both consumers and employees. After all, how else can a manager or marketer make the mundane or insignificant seem less so when attempting to attract the masses? As remits expand, so does the appetite for creating bespoke solutions to all of the challenges faced, and some would argue the call to share the burden across several broad shoulders.
Methods of engagement
If empowerment is to be used as an approach that optimizes the differentiating factors in service offerings, the key questions which still remain are, where and how? This has posed challenges when attempting to coordinate coherent management practices which look to implement more innovative approaches:
most studies on the connection between leadership and individual innovation have explored the role of theory-based leadership styles, originally developed for other purposes such as the assessment of leaders' impact on performance or effectiveness rather than innovation-related outcomes. They did not attempt to develop models aimed specifically at finding out how leader behaviour could stimulate the innovative behaviour of employees. (de Jong and Hartog, 2007)
With regards to decision making there are various methods of engagement: (i) a staffcentric approach with either decentralized or centralized decision making (Fig. 8.1a); (ii) a customer-centric approach with either decentralized/centralized or centralized/decen- tralized decision making (Fig. 8.1b); and (iii) an holistic customer/staff-centric approach involving integrated decision making (Fig. 8.1c). 163
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(a) Staff-centric approach
Staff (trouble-shooter)
Staff (front desk)
Staff (concierge)
Staff (laundry)
Staff (room service)
Customer Decentralised decision making All employees attempt to engage with customers, when appropriate, and are empowered to make decisions. Objection handling and problem solving is centralized and remains largely under the control of management.
Staff (trouble-shooter)
Staff (front desk)
Staff (concierge)
Staff (laundry)
Staff (room service)
Customer Centralised decision making All employees attempt to engage with customers, when appropriate, and are empowered to make decisions. They work closely with their colleagues, sharing information and duties. Objection handling and problem solving is largely distributed among subordinates.
Fig. 8.1. Methods of engagement with regards to decision making. 164
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(b) Customer-centric approach Staff (front desk) Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Staff (customer-advocate)
Customer Decentralised/centralised decision making A key accounts approach is taken here, where the customer is shepherded by a member of staff, allocated to see to most of their needs. This method is largely used when dealing with major customers, or those with specific objections or problems. The benefit to staff is that it shields them from any difficulties of queries, which may over-burden them, or risk affecting the level of output on their core duties. Staff (front desk) Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Staff (customer-advocate)
Customer Decentralised/centralised decision making Following the same rationale from the example above, queries and objections are more similar in their nature across functions. In addition the sharing of knowledge and decision making is present to a higher degree. (c) Holistic customer/staff-centric approach Staff (customer-advocate trouble-shooter) Staff (front desk) Customer This is the highest quality level of interaction for both the employee and customer. Knowledge and responsibility is shared equally amongst staff. In addition the customer feels confident that any member of staff can attend to their every need. Staff (concierge) Staff (laundry) Staff (room service)
Fig. 8.1. Continued. 165
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Clearly the holistic customer/staff-centric approach involving integrated decision making is the best option. However, it is perhaps unrealistic and chaotic to assume that everyone can be empowered to the same degree; so following the decision to move to a holistic customer/ staffcentric approach to decision making, empowering staff, a screening process is necessary.
Screening approach:
? ? ?
? ? ? ?
Where are we lacking? Where would it have the most impact? Are we in a position to formalize and document these activities (e.g. IT contact management systems, team meetings)? Are our staf willing to take part? Do our staf have sufcient training and support? Do we recognize and reward staf and team achievements; if so how? How much will all of this cost, or save? ? Are we ready to take the plunge? Isolate empowerment activities to specific areas of service. Define the scope for innovation and entrepreneurship. Monitor, feedback and review.
Strategic planning:
? ? ?
Mini case study: 'Firefighting'
The fire service ofers an interesting source of reference; which goes beyond the often glibly used business term 'firefighting' - which in fact only paints a partial picture. Staf undergo rigorous training, which equips them with an ability to adopt a ?uid approach to a variety of tasks. Firefighters are encouraged to tackle both problems and tasks, based on their proximity to a given situation. Once they are called into action, there is a culture of doing what needs to be done, as soon as possible. This requires:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ?
thorough preparation beforehand; high levels of trust; little consultation between staf during a task; swift decision making; conformity in risk taking; Plan 'A' and at least a Plan 'B'; a style of management which deals with the fundamental during a situation; management to focus on the bigger picture during a situation and re?ect upon the detail afterwards; documented post-preparation; and comprehensive debriefing.
Of course hospitality, leisure and tourism roles do not exact such high levels of risk or intensity, but many have seen their stress levels rise when large numbers of customers suddenly engulf them. The essence of this example is in encouraging the:
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? ? ?
? ? ?
?
pursuit of calculated evolutionary processes; galvanization of staf through their activities; suggestion that to optimize performance clear instructions should be given away from the site where the task is to be conducted; reduction of stress, confusion and risk during tasks; mindset that customers pose little threat to staf; rather they are the raison d'être; understanding that customers are a necessary, yet sometimes unpredictable, component to the successful completion of a task; and desire to achieve through empowerment, rather than simply historical procedure.
In order to manage people, it is essential to consider their psychological dimensions. We found that providing employees with an empowering experience in conjunction with their training, significantly improved the outcomes of that training, as well as increasing their motivation and satisfaction. (Kappelman and Richards, 1996)
IDENTIFYING THE KEY CUSTOMERS
'how to communicate with those customers to be clear of their needs and expectations ?' and how to make sure employees 'will meet those needs'. (Pastor, 1996)
As a comparator, key account management within the field of media may serve towards offering a fresh approach. As with leisure, hospitality and tourism, their dealings are largely concerned with the sale of intangibles. With such large amounts of money changing hands, for highly substitutable and perishable packages, aggressive marketing and price elasticity have always played a vital part. Behind this are account handlers, who are often thrown in at the deep end, but who are encouraged to find creative ways to delight the customer using their own initiatives. Account handlers spend a considerable amount of their time trend spotting and recording details about a customer's habits, likes and dislikes. The rationale is that these pieces of information can be used:
? ? ? ?
when crafting effective communication; to speculate on future business; to avoid potential customer discontentment; and to document tacit information which may also be of use to others.
The key to documenting all of this lies in having a contact management system which has the facility to hold this added information in a format that is readily accessible to many. Account managers are trained in the art of unobtrusive open-ended questioning. The questions appear as part of natural conversation and the collection of resulting information is undertaken in a casual manner. Account managers have often recorded anecdotal snippets of information and trivia such as 'doesn't drink alcohol', 'likes going to the opera', 'nut allergy', 'has come down with the ?u'. These pieces of information are then used as ice-breakers, possible topics of communication or even opportunities to offer additional desirable commercial services. The worthiness of this pursuit hinges on the following:
? ?
an understanding that this information plays a necessary part in optimizing services; a culture existing among staff, that encourages, celebrates and rewards such practices; 167
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? ? ? ?
a willingness of staff to think laterally; a desire to delight the customer; a fear of misunderstanding customers; and a commitment towards looking to convert this information into a commercial gain.
Managing customer expectations
The hospitality, leisure and tourism sectors face an interesting puzzle when addressing aspects surrounding culture. On the one hand, environmental factors steeped in culture, are the lifeblood of many service offerings to customers. But on the other, cultures often need to be packaged and restricted in such ways that they conform to neutral universal ideals of optimal service. For example, once a precedent has been set for a consumer (or for that matter an employee) to experience a certain level of service, there exists a pull to make this the norm - or face potential future problems. The global marketplace ensures that employees and custom- ers are becoming more savvy and discerning; which brings with it increased expectations. In addition, staff are faced with consumers who bring with them their own cultural norms and expectations which they may feel no desire to let go of. After all, the world has been informed of the fact that the customer is there to be served! Harris (2004) states that:
It is critical to understand the importance of synergy when working or managing within multinational organizations, their subsidiaries, divisions, and teams. Within such a context, global leaders who promote cultural synergy in?uence social change in human behaviour and improve system effectiveness.
Language plays a pivotal role in addressing how well people respond to socio-cultural environments, as well how they can adapt. Staff should be empowered to use their multi-linguistic skills to build rapport wherever possible. These service industries must attempt to blend their own globally adapted unitarianist values with the wider environment's, without ignoring significant and desirable host cultural factors. The challenge therefore lies in staff being able to effortlessly manage expectations, to a mutually agreeable conclusion - at the earliest opportunity. Many enquiries may in fact be perceived by consumers as being hygiene factors, and potentially the root cause of a catalogue of resulting and seemingly unconnected dissatisfyers if ignored. Grumpy consumers have often been dismissed as unnecessarily needy individuals. The majority of customers would argue conversely, that this has been the result of not enough of their rather simple and basic needs being considered soon enough. There are amusing tales of customers switching to their mother tongue, when playfully looking to try their hand for those added benefits. For example, cultures which seek to engage in barter-based relationships may do so equally upon an initiation from either staff or customers. Staff should be encouraged to entertain these interactions, if at all possible, as they may serve as an opportunity to delight, or at worst avoid future complaints. Sales theory would argue that these touch points suggest potential buying signals, if understood correctly and acted upon. Following Thwaites' (1999) review of consumer differences, in connection with sports tourism - ranging from culture, languages, attitudes, preferences and behavioural norms suggests that, 'it is incumbent on management to check for variations that may contribute to friction. Emphasis can then be given to encouraging some segments and discouraging others.' Therefore as a starting point, tools available should also allow for empowerment in these situations, by adding leverage. They can be agreed beforehand by staff consensus and held back - to be applied where deemed appropriate. 168
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Examples of vehicles and tools for empowerment:
? ? ? ? ? ?
?
small free gifts; tokens of appreciation; upgrades; discounts; compensation (financial, tangible and intangible); ?exibility in service ofering (e.g. extended hours for breakfast in Ramadan for Muslims); and freedom to use multi-linguistic approaches; with no suspicion.
Staf should be encouraged to use these to: protect prices and money already taken; ? actively win the 'lion's share' of business; ? reward or encourage customer loyalty, leading to an increase in the: recency, frequency or monetary value of an individual; number of recommendations and referrals made; ? speed up customer decision making; ? humanize a service ofering; and ? buy customer trust and compliance.
?
In CRM and key account management an 80/20 rule has been stated as quantifying many interactions with customers. The thinking is that 80% of problems, complaints and enquires will arise when dealing with 20% of customers. If addressed, these challenges can be converted to encourage the marshalling of customers up the loyalty pyramid. This may result in customers assuming the role of willing ambassadors. The reciprocal benefit of this successful execution, may also lead to increased employee motivation and job satisfaction.
HUMAN EMPOWERMENT AND MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM
Having considered key aspects of empowerment as a management practice, we will now turn our attention to its implications to management of tourism. As discussed earlier, characteristics of tourism as a service industry do have implications for the practice of empowerment. As tourism is an amalgam of subsectors such as transport, accommodation, attractions, services and tourism facilitation and each of these, in turn, consists of a number of different groups, virtually all the challenges faced by the sector are a consequence of its structure. For example, the accommodation subsector includes organizations that operate five-star and luxury accommodations, budget hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfast (B&B) units, and owner-operated home stays. In addition to this diversity within each subsector, tourism organizations vary according to size (ranging in size from major multi-nationals to micro, one-person businesses), ownership (public, private, joint venture), location (rural, urban), scale (craft, small and medium, and large), and scope (local, national, international). Tourism organizations belong within the service sector of the economy (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). They are, therefore, very different in the way that they operate and how they are organized from organizations which focus on the processing and production of 169
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manufactured goods. There are particular features of service organizations and the services that they provide for their customers which differentiate them from the manufacturing sector. These features establish the parameters within which people can work and are managed in tourism. The characteristics of tourism service operations include the following features.
Intangibility
Most services are intangible in that customers do not receive something physical or tangible in return for your money. Customers purchase experiences and the evaluation of these experiences may include strong subjective elements along with aspects that can be judged objectively. Punctuality of an airline's service can, generally, be measured objectively while the quality of the service offered on board is much more subjective. The human contribution to the delivery of both tangible and intangible aspects of tourism services is core to customer satisfaction and competitiveness.
Perishability
The sales opportunity of an unsold service is lost forever. An unsold airline seat or an empty hotel room is lost revenue and an opportunity that can never be recouped. In others words, services cannot be stored the way that many non-perishable manufactured goods can be held in a warehouse until trading conditions become more favourable. This reality has a major impact on how service organizations, especially those in the tourism sector, organize themselves, particularly with respect to sales and marketing. This feature induces a constant level of stress into tourism operations and this impacts upon employees in that they are constantly required to respond to short-term sales requirements. The operation of effective yield management systems by, for example, the low-cost airlines can reduce this pressure on the individual to a considerable extent.
Tourism services are time and place dependent
Tourism services are frequently prepared/produced, served and consumed almost simultaneously, frequently within sight and with the participation of the customer in a way that is infrequent in manufacturing. The human contribution within this process is critical. Many tourism services must be offered to the customer where they require its delivery and production cannot take place remotely or in a centralized location. Hotels must be located where people want to stay and not where it suits the hotel company to locate its operations. Place dependency impacts on the recruitment and welfare of tourism employees in that frequently they are recruited within the local host community of the tourism operation. This local dimension has implications for skills and training within the workforce and, in some cases, the ability of tourism organizations to deliver some of its services.
Simultaneity and customer involvement in service production
While manufactured goods are produced before they are sold and consumed, services are sold first and then produced and consumed simultaneously (Kandampully, 1997). Simultaneous production and consumption inevitably involves the customer in aspects of the production process, overtly in the case of self-service facilities or restaurants. Fellow customers are also part of the atmosphere or ambiance that we buy into when we go to a restaurant or attend a cultural or musical event. 170
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Tourism services cannot be quality controlled at the factory gate
Tourism services are difficult to standardize because they generally require a high level of human intervention for their delivery and are, thus, subject to variability because of the human element. As a result, you cannot return or substitute a service which has been unsatisfactory in the way that you can seek to exchange a faulty good such as an umbrella or personal stereo. Once your experience of a service is concluded, the provider can seek to compensate you for a bad experience but cannot replace the experience.
The human element in tourism service delivery
Human behaviour, whether staff or customer, is unpredictable although good management and effective training should minimize this unpredictability among employees in good organizations. Human interaction at the point of production and service, inevitably, produces an element of uncertainty that is not faced on the factory ?oor in manufacturing or, at worst, can be eliminated through effective quality control. These characteristics of services in general apply within the tourism sector in particular and contribute to the manner in which tourism organizations are structured and operate. They in?uence the operational culture of organizations and also how they market their services, how their finances are structured and, in particular, the management of people within organizations.
Skills issue in tourism
Baum (2002) has explored the nature of skills in tourism and concluded that the nature and relative level of skills in the sector is determined by the social, economic, political and technological context within which they operate. To talk of tourism as a low skills sector has some validity in the developed world but is meaningless in many developing countries. Likewise, to talk about absolute skills shortages in tourism is something which has relevance in the developed world. In most developing countries, there is no absolute shortage of labour but the skills base that exists in the economy may not be tuned to effective tourism work. In developed countries, skills shortages exist as a result of image problems that the sector may have, as a consequence of demand factors such as seasonality and as a result of changes within the technical focus in education and training programmes within the college system.
Recruitment, retention and turnover
The mobility of staff within tourism is a direct factor of the wider environment, structural and sector-operating characteristics that we have addressed above. Sectors of tourism in some, particularly developed, countries face ongoing challenges to recruit appropriate staff to key positions in the industry, skilled and unskilled. They also face challenges with respect to retaining these staff once they are recruited and reducing what can be very high rates of labour turnover. The impact of variable demand (seasonality), issues of remunera- tion (see below), unsociable working conditions and generally negative perceptions of the sector for employment contribute to be problems faced in this regard. Tourism is also an industry that is seen to be highly reactive to short-term local and international events in terms of its willingness to retrench staff in order to meet short-term financial require- ments. The impact on travel and transport sectors in the immediate aftermath of events on 11 September, 2001 is a major case in point. Within this environment, potential employ- ees may not wish to risk their long-term security in an employment environment that is perceived to be unstable.
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At the same time, the small business environment within tourism means that the recruitment process may not always be conducted in such a way as to ensure the selection of the best and most suitable employees for the job. Limited credence is given to the outcomes of formal education and training while opportunities for workplace development are limited. As a consequence, the recruitment technique of internal promotion is not as widely used in tourism as it could be.
Rewards, benefits and compensation
The popular perception of the tourism industry in many developed countries is that of relatively poor pay (Wood, 1997; Baum, 2006). This is a re?ection of a number of factors:
?
? ?
? ?
? ?
perceptions of tourism work as synonymous with the large but not necessarily typical hotel and catering subsector; the low skills environment of many jobs within tourism; limited workplace organization in some tourism businesses although this is not true of, for example, the traditional airline sector; seasonal and part-time work; the grey or 'tipping' economy within many tourism operations, undermining core remuneration; trends to de-skill work in tourism through technology substitution; and accessible employment for the majority of the population through seasonal and other temporary work.
At the same time, tourism can offer highly remunerated and high-status employment within, for example, airlines. In the developing world, tourism employment may be highly prized and its remuneration, relative to local conditions, competitive with other opportunities in the economy. The experience of newly industrialized states such as Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, however, is that as the economy develops, the attractiveness and competitiveness of remuneration in tourism declines, presenting a real challenge to the sector in meeting its employment needs. These characteristics of tourism as an industry and employer have major implications to introducing empowerment in the sector.
EMPOWERMENT IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
Given the human dimensions of service (Baum, 2006), the competence of human resource is an important variable in determining not only service quality, but the quality of overall visitor experience. Quality management in tourism is about ensuring that tourism businesses can offer distinctive, authentic, and higher value holiday experiences (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). Quality is also dependent upon value added through a range of human skills during the service encounter, recognition of which have resulted in the adoption of concepts such as managing 'moments of truth' (Carlzon, 1987; Sharpley, 2005) and developing 'spirit of service' (Albrecht, 1992) by the tourism industry. Carlzon describes, a 'moment of truth' as the point of contact between the customer and employee of the company, and these are the critical occasions, which determine a customer's satisfaction in a service encounter. Although relatively minor and transient occurrences, 'moments of truth' are make-or-break occasions in service encounters in tourism (Baum, 2002). The visitor-employee encounter 172
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in tourism can be mapped with the help of Leiper's tourism system (1995). Leiper (1995) in his geographical system brings out the interaction between tourism demand (travellers in the generating regions) and tourism supply (tourism destinations), tracing the jour- ney through the transit region. Baum (2002) uses this system to scale the intensity of the 'moments of truth' during each stage of the holiday process, starting with the traveller- generating regions and moving through the transit route towards the tourist destination regions and back (Fig. 8.2). As Fig. 8.2 indicates, a typical holiday travel entails a complex range of interactions between the tourist and service providers with varying levels of interaction. Managing this complicated range of interactions requires employees who can think on their feet and are innovative and ?exible. The 'spirit of service', according to Albrecht (1992: 154), is an 'attitude based on certain values and beliefs about people, life and work, that leads a person to willingly serve others and take pride in his or her work'. The spirit of service is about an employee going beyond the normal level of service and making efforts to understand customers and meet their emotional, psychological and physical needs that create the original demand for the service or product. Buissink-Smith and McIntosh (2001) have identified five characteristics that are essen- tial to demonstrate the 'spirit of service' by employees of tourism organizations. These are: (i) the individual spirit; (ii) the mindfulness spirit; (iii) the energy spirit; (iv) the communication spirit; and (v) the orientation spirit (Table. 8.1).
High Travel retailer (online and High street) Airline (charter, scheduled, budget) Hospitality (resorts, hotels, B&B) Tour operator, visitor attractions, restaurants, tour guides, shops Intensity of interaction Airport (checkin, shops, currency)
Medium Destination web sites
Airport (immigration, shops) Local transport
Low
Departing travellers
Tourist generating region
Transit route
Returning travellers Location of tourists and tourism industry
Tourist destination region
Fig. 8.2. The tourism experiences and encounters (adapted from Baum, 2002). 173
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Table 8.1. The characteristics and skills for the 'spirit of service' (Source: Buissink-Smith and McIntosh, 2001: 83).
Characteristic
1. Individualism
Skills
Being yourself - being physically, emotionally and psychologically 'in' the service encounter. Being able to use your own style, talents and personality and remaining true to yourself Feeling good about yourself and others - positive basic feelings about self, work and other people (self-confidence, self-respect, friendly, interested in others, empathy, resilience, self-control and optimism) To be mindful - being alert and ?exible Feeling empowered - as a state of mind - to be creative, take risks, express personal power, exercise initiative outside the conventional norm Proactive and willing - motivated, innovative, organized, ?exible and open to change - willing to give extra energy and continuously improve and learn Having fun - being a star with the customer is fun - motivated by the intrinsic rewards of the service role Customer contact skills - active listening, problem solving, complaint handling and analysis of verbal intake Comfortable with all visitors - diferent cultural perspectives and values A customer service-orientation - a commitment to service quality - service-centred and commitment of energies to quality Knowing the big picture - being involved, feeling committed and an awareness of importance of role, job and product knowledge
2. Mindfulness
3. Energy
4. Communication
5. Orientation
The foundation of the 'spirit of service' and effective management of 'moments of truth', thus will be a sense of freedom and a range of skills and attitudes that result from and con- tribute to a belief on the part of the employees that they are empowered to manage customer experiences. Even if an organization is able to recruit skilled and competent employees, their ability to contribute to service quality will depend greatly upon the autonomy and choice avail- able to them to deal with practical aspects of their job without having to look for directions from their superiors (Hocutt and Stone, 1998; Chua and Iyengar, 2006). Empowering the employees to provide higher quality moments of truth by inculcating the spirit of service seems to be a major strategy towards achieving service quality in the tourism industry (see for example Fig. 8.3 adapted from a publication produced by Fáilte Ireland). As Berry (1995: 89) observes, 'Customers may not give extra credit to businesses for doing what they are supposed to do, rather they attach higher value to those that surprise with unusual caring, commitment, and resourcefulness during the service encounter.' Thus the skills and competencies of the employees could be a major variable in facilitating a higher quality customer experience in tourism. Given the variable nature of service experiences and consumer 174
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Competitiveness
... and this sets apart a competitive business ... which enables a premium quality service ... and empowers them giving autonomy to function
Competitive ness
Service quality
HRM practices support people development Empowerment
HRD
HRM
Employee empowerment
Fig. 8.3. Employee empowerment for competitiveness in tourism (adapted from Fáilte Ireland, 2005). HRD, human resource development; HRM, human resource management.
heterogeneity, it is highly unlikely that a uniform standard set of competencies will be sufficient to meet the ever-increasing needs of more discerning and demanding customers. Flexibility, ability to think and decide on one's feet, and innovation are thus the essential attributes required of employees in the tourism industry. The criteria of good perceived service quality identified by Gronroos (1988) further underline the important role of human empowerment in delivering service quality (Table 8.2). These criteria are: (i) professionalism and skills; (ii) attitudes and behaviour; (iii) access and ?exibility; (iv) reliability and trustworthiness; (v) recovery; and (vi) reputation and credibility. These elements strictly belong to the human resource domain. And an empowered set of employees alone are likely to be able to meet these criteria. 175
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Table 8.2. Criteria of good perceived service quality (Source: Gronroos, 1988 adapted by Johns, 1996: 15).
Number
1
Designation
Professionalism and skills
Description
Customers see the service provider as knowledgeable and able to solve their problems in a professional way Customers perceive a genuine, friendly concern for them and their problems Customers feel that they have easy, timely access and that the service provider is prepared to adjust to their needs Customers can trust the service provider to keep promises and act in their best interests Customers know that immediate corrective action will be taken if anything goes wrong Customers believe that the brand image stands for good performance and accepted values
2
Attitudes and behaviour
3
Access and ?exibility
4
Reliability and trustworthiness
5
Recovery
6
Reputation and credibility
The competitive tourism industry as a service sector largely depends on excellence of service and delivery of an intangible product. The nature of this industry and the satisfaction of customers depend critically on the human factor (Gabriel, 1988) and therefore the way in which tourism and hospitality employees are managed is of critical importance to the employer and customer alike. In this respect many employers have utilized employee empowerment, trusting it will improve responsiveness to customer needs and thereby become more efficient and effective (Rapp et al., 2006). Empowerment certainly in?uences the competitiveness of tourism organizations, in that it prepares a platform for better customer relations. Brymer (1991) believes that empowerment is a customer-driven leadership strategy that can separate organizations that really provide a personalized and high quality customer treatment from those who merely talk about providing quality service. Empowerment of employees is an important compo- nent of total quality management (TQM) (Sigler and Pearson, 2000). Advocates of TQM believe that to achieve customer satisfaction, top management should be committed to creating an organizational climate that empowers employees and focuses their efforts on customer satisfaction (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000). These authors maintain that a positive relationship between leadership and commitment, and employee empowerment (leading to job satisfaction) with customer satisfaction exist. They maintain that empowerment can hugely contribute to job satisfaction and that employees who do not enjoy the latter, can- not provide the required high quality service to customers. In some respects one can refer to this as a circular relationship whereby the organization (top management) can apply 176
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empowerment as a means to achieve job satisfaction among front-line staff in order to improve customer satisfaction which in turn will benefit the organization's objectives. For example, a hotel owner might empower the reception staff to allow tourists early access to their rooms even if the official check-in time is much later. With this responsibility, the staff members experience a sense of added value and their friendly demeanour together with the fact that they could add value to the guests' enjoyment could lead to an increase in guest satisfaction. This in turn, could lead to repeat visitors which will benefit the original objectives of the hotel owner. Lashley (1996) lists a range of potential benefits to organizations which apply empowerment as a human resource strategy: empowered employees do better work, take responsibility for their own performance, produce more satisfied customers, greater profits and help produce a more competitive organization. There are of course also limitations to empowerment, strengthening the belief that empowerment does not grant employees free reign. Empowerment does not allow for employees to alter prices, product specifications, décor of their workplaces (Eccles, 1993) and gives them virtually no say in the company targets and objectives. For example, an airline employee at check-in might be empowered to allow a customer free excess baggage, but will not be empowered to delay a ?ight if clients had difficulty in reaching the airport on time. A waiter in a restaurant might be empowered to offer regular customers a complimentary drink, but will not have the power to rearrange the furniture to suit these clients. The success of the potential benefits of empowerment hinge also on managers and supervisors' approach towards empowered employees. Employees at all levels should be trained in aspects such as teamwork, problem recognition and problem solving (Ugboro and Obeng, 2000) in order to make good decisions (Sternberg, 1992). It is believed that empowerment recognizes employee feelings of personal effectiveness and worth (Lashley, 1996) and therefore enhances job satisfaction and overall relationships between employees, customers and managers (Littrell, 2007). Eccles (1993) warns that not all employees are naturally ready for empowerment - many cannot count or read and others may have challenges with honesty and integrity. Empowerment in this sense becomes a rather personal consideration, starting with the existing abilities, skills and attributes of the employee and assessing to what extent, in view of the organization's culture and vision, the employee should or could be empowered. Most authors on the subject of empowerment agree that in order to apply empowerment as a human resource strategy, a fundamental shift in managerial power and working practices, as well as attitudes of senior management, is required (Brymer, 1991; Sternberg, 1992; Eccles, 1993; Ugboro and Obeng, 2000; Baum, 2002). Empowerment as a human resource strategy will lead to a more ?attened organizational chart than before (Brymer, 1991). As a natural consequence of empowering employees, managers are required to give up some extent of control, although not their accountability. Sternberg (1992), concerned about supervisors' and manag- ers' resistance to empowerment, believes successful empowerment rests with a great relation- ship of trust between manager and employee. An empowered group of employees on the other hand, can also benefit many managers in terms of time saved, developing a better understanding of the customers' needs through feedback from the employee and mutual problem solving. Lashley (2001), one of the leading authors in the field of empowerment in the service industries, identified four forms of empowerment, the first three mainly directed towards front-line or operational personnel, and the last one aimed at managers: 177
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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM
1. Empowerment through participation - this concerns giving employees some decisionmaking authority which previously rested with management, such as dealing with complaints, organizing work schedules or meeting unpredictable service requests without reference to managers. 2. Empowerment through involvement - this relates to managers gaining from the experiences and expertise of employees and involves techniques such as team briefings, consultation with staff and joint problem solving. 3. Empowerment through commitment - employees are encouraged to accept responsibility for the service encounter without necessarily having more authority. 4. Empowerment through delayering - here the organizational chart is ?attened and layers of management are reduced. The form of empowerment chosen by the organization will depend on the job at hand, the culture of the company as well as the cooperation of both management and employees. As a general rule, Lashley (1996) stresses that the more unpredictable the demands and needs of the customer (as often perceived in the service industry), the more likely that empowerment of staff will make a positive contribution to the organization. Eccles (1993: 18) states:
Effective empowerment is thus delivered through a combination of power release and responsibility, with measurable performance criteria to gauge effects. Empowered employees need managerial support rather than being offered fine phrases and then being left to get on with it.
Empowerment should therefore always be applied with great skill and awareness of the management and not merely as a buzzword to keep staff satisfied or to gain competitive advantage. Empowerment also requires the front-line staff to be equipped with the knowledge and abilities and human resource development (HRD) policies and programmes that provide employees with the skills, attitudes and competence to do their jobs independently (Hoccut and Stone, 1998; Baum, 2002; Baum and Kokkranikal, 2003). Further, empowerment can only happen where there is trust in the positive side of human nature, based on the belief that human beings are capable of being noble and well meaning (Mahesh, 1994). Needless to say, in service industries such as tourism, employee empowerment has been driven by consumer satisfaction that allows staff to take a leadership role. It also has to be an ongoing process, which requires continuous investment in HRD to update employee skills and knowledge and also to develop a culture of continuous development and life-long learning (Brymer, 1991; Kokkranikal, 2004).
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, an attempt has been made to examine the strategic role of employee empowerment in enhancing quality and competitiveness within the tourism industry. It started with an analysis of the basic concepts of empowerment and moved on to consider aspects of empowering staff and customers and its practical implications for service industries such as tourism. The following are a summary of key factors, resulting from the consideration of empowerment as a strategic management function in tourism. 178
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Advantages associated with empowerment
Empowerment: ? is a short- and long-term cost-efective approach; ? is an ofensive and defensive technique resulting in: retention of profit centres; and increased profitability; ? optimizes strategy; ? is a long-term strategic diferentiating factor; ? is an internal and external marketing tool to attract and retain staf; ? results in the humanization of the work environment; ? reduces gaps between employee and consumer; and ? assists in the movement towards exploring new approaches and markets. Potential benefit to employees:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
more motivating; more interesting; a better way to work; increased ?exibility; increased fulfilment; easier way to fulfil obligations; job enrichment; chance to develop new skills; opportunity to shape future activities; opportunity to demonstrate additional skills; and formal recognition of added value contributions. better experience; added value; increased feeling of personal worth; requests addressed more promptly; requests addressed with more relevance; and increased personalization of services.
Potential benefit to customers:
? ? ? ? ? ?
If empowerment is seen as being central to an organization looking to improve both an employee's and a customer's experiences, the challenge lies in coordinating and formalizing an approach which:
? ? ? ? ? ?
encourages ?uid decision making; decentralizes management responsibilities; relies more heavily on tacit knowledge; requires a wider skill set; allows for more than one solution to a situation; necessitates higher levels of trust among peers; and ? increases individual accountability. 179
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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM
To conclude, there is a strong argument in favour of introducing employee empowerment in the tourism industry, if it has to be consumer and quality driven. And, adequately skilled, confident and well-supported and customer-driven employees are essential for the tourism industry, in which the workforce has the autonomy to take a leadership role in delivering higher quality tourist experiences.
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