CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1       BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The subject matter of the research focuses on the roles of human resources management in the hospitality industry performance. Managing human resources in the hospitality industry presents special challenges, including highly diverse employee backgrounds and roles, or ever-present focus on guest services, and organizational structures that often diverge from generic corporate models. Human resource management in the Hospitality Industry provides the definitive guide to successfully employing people in a hospitality organization.
Human Resources Dilemmas faced by Managers in the Hospitality Industry, include the under listed:
1.                 Understanding the needs of a broad employee group, from hourly workers with tip credit eligibility questions to high level accountants ensuring Sar banes-oxley compliance.
2.                 How hospitality managers who must act as one-person HR department can make effective decision and understand the consequences to themselves, their workers and employers.
3.                 Working with Labour Unions in the hospitality industry using the labour-related legislation that affects the industry.
4.                 Managing employees in a global hospitality enterprise.
Effective human resource management is pivotal in any business or non-business organization where people are grouped collectively for the purpose of achieving organizational goals and objectives. It is true that some people adhere to the fact that finance is the life wire of any organization but without human resource, finance cannot combine other factors of production to achieve the desired goal of the organization. Human resource is so important and should be seen as invaluable assets of a firm as asserts by Agbato (1980:27) that a company’s most important resource is human resources. The human resource is the personnel and personnel department who staff the firm with the desired workers or managers. Their importance cannot be over-emphasized. Any company’s success, on the final analysis, depends mostly on the quality of the people who work for it, that is personnel or human resource. This, of course, includes workers and managers at all levels in the organization from top to bottom. It is a common business fact that a financed firm or even the best equipped plant will not function properly or make good profit if its workers and managers are incompetent.
This, then, is the reason why the human resource must be well managed in any type of organizational set up.
It is however, regrettable that although most managers recognize the value of company personnel, only very few of such managers put value or high premium on the firm or company’s human assets. To illustrate this assumption, take an example of a company whose balance sheet lists a typewriter saw as an asset.
Today, as the business world progresses, it is being gradually recognized that the personnel department has a distinct role to play. Its traditional functions include recruitment of new employees, training, development and appraisal of employees, motivation, industrial relations (Labour Union, organization, Collective bargaining, development in labour relations), services and advisory relationship.
The hospitality industry cannot succeed without organizational performance of her human resources. It is truism according to Efuk (1993:243) organization effectiveness, the capacity of an organization to adopt, maintain itself, survive, and grow in the face of changing conditions, depends to a considerable degree upon how effectively its work-force can be managed and utilized. This is so because the human resource of an organization which comprises all individuals, regardless of their role and status, who are engaged in any of the organizational activities are its most important and valuable assets. Industries generally and business organizations in particular have been slow to realize and accept that their personnel are usually more important than machines. This is why the history of Labour Unions is replete with stories of conflict between management and employment. But the growth of powerful labour unions and scarcity of qualified personnel have jointly forced management to change their attitude by showing that they are interested in each employee as an individual and by developing the spirit of co-operation.
The specialized responsibilities for employee relations are now generally recognized as primary staff function performed by the personnel manager who is the specialist in charge of the personnel department.
Lack of effective management of human resources is a constraint facing Nigeria as a developing country. The limitation is not only restricted to one sector of the economy, the hospitality industry as a service oriented business suffer more in terms of the adverse effect. The cumulative effect and evidential impact could be cited for low service delivery and the dearth of excellent services in the hospitality industry. According to Onwuchekwa (1995:7) personnel management has become very important in the achievement of the objectives of any business organization. It helps the business firm to maintain an effective work force. The personnel manager understands the expectations of the workers and society in human resources development. So, through the activities of personnel management, the organization, the individual, and society can satisfy their objectives.