Within the service sector, focusing on the hotel industry how can work related stress and attitudes affect performance and commitment?
Within the service sector, focusing on the hotel industry how can work related stress and attitudes affect performance and commitment?
INTRODUCTION
The subject of stress is drawing the attention of scientists, managers and industrial workers all over the world today. In fact it has become one of the most important concerns to the social government, business and union leaders. The reason for this concern is due to increasing stress related absenteeism, work incapacity and also by rising associated costs.
The following will review why stress levels are continuing to rise within the workplace, the effect this has on individuals and the organisation as a whole and what measures could be used to control or prevent these situations from arising. The main focus will be hospitality, however stress is a major issue affecting workers in all sectors, regardless of
company size. Although stress is difficult to define and in order to examine the exact effects of stress it is necessary to hold a number of other aspects of jobs and tasks constant, for these purposes stress will be defined in the sense of distress, which people
experience from too many pressures and strains or too few challenges and stimuli.
There are various causes of stress, including lack of role definition, and related to this a lack of control over decision making, and the carrying out of such plans, these two main stressors in the workplace amongst others will be elaborated upon. The effects of
such stressors is a critical issue for every organisation in the present day, absenteeism for
example can be a major concern for businesses, particularly in the hospitality industry where a high percentage of the workforce are part time or students. The impact that stress can have at an individual and organisational level will be examined to greater lengths.
ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT
Hotel management structures, depending on the size of the hotel, consist of a range of managers for different sections of the organisation. For these purposes larger hotels will be focused on, concentrating mainly on restaurant managers, often known as food and beverage managers, within such hotels. According to research conducted on growing
occupations, hotel and accommodation managers were positioned second from the top, with 40% having high stress scores, and 30% obtaining low 'feel good' factors.
Taken from Peter Knipp's hospitality management design concepts and guidelines, there are specific main areas a restaurant manager has to be concerned with; beginning with an essential part of the continual successful and efficient managing of a restaurant, the consumers, the manager has to look at them from the aspects of target market and expectations with respect to food price, service and design. Secondly the restaurant should have a general ambience with relevance to colour schemes, indoor and outdoor areas, and also important for frequency of business is that a formal or family/ communal feel must be created. A third major consideration of a restaurant manager is staffing, including factors such as their general demeanor and product knowledge. There are obviously various other aspects which a manager has to deal with within the restaurant, such as stock control, table settings, operating hours, related to times of different menus, pricing, which must be realistic but ensure profitability, and other less major things such as staff uniforms and types of entertainment.
As shown their are variety of important tasks and decisions with regard to the smooth and efficient operation of a restaurant, these decisions it would appear are left almost solely in the hands of one individual. An ex restaurant manager in the Glasgow Hilton Hotel demonstrates the pressures which this can create, in his comments 'although I myself was responsible for all aspects within and around the restaurant, there were too many other people trying to make decisions and voice their opinions at the same time' In his opinion this resulted in important day to day things taking ...
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As shown their are variety of important tasks and decisions with regard to the smooth and efficient operation of a restaurant, these decisions it would appear are left almost solely in the hands of one individual. An ex restaurant manager in the Glasgow Hilton Hotel demonstrates the pressures which this can create, in his comments 'although I myself was responsible for all aspects within and around the restaurant, there were too many other people trying to make decisions and voice their opinions at the same time' In his opinion this resulted in important day to day things taking increasing time and effort to be completed.
The other people mentioned above by Mr. Kelly (ex restaurant manager, Glasgow Hilton), are the general manager, catering managers and head chefs among others. The individuals in these positions are all critical for the effective running of the organization, and tension and disagreement between such people can lead to feelings of unease, which can initiate the beginning of a succession of 'bad service and creates bad work attitudes with junior staff.' It is very difficult to work in a situation where there is a feeling of animosity between managerial staff, as hospitality employees work exceptionally long hours, with Mr. Kelly mentioning that he worked between a 12 and 15 hour shift at least three times a week. Working long hours can lead to a number of problems at an individual and organisational level, in the latter condition overwork can cause fatigue and very often attributes to mood changes, and as this spiral effect continues this can cause problems out with work in his or her personal life due to work taking over their whole life. In an organisational context, tiredness can lead to high levels of anxiety and stress, this nervous tension present within managers can be clearly visible in front of staff members, as the managers attitude and levels of commitment begin to fade. This, in turn leads to a gradual decline in respect for the management, as he or she is caught up in their own problems, and a general air of ill feeling surrounding the staff and workplace, this of course generates on to customers causing no end of problems on that level.
The latter relates to a further pressure which is laid upon restaurant managers; the staff. Levels of staff turnover are very high in the hospitality industry, with one restaurant interviewed, claiming to have gone through seventy bar and waiting staff, since it opened in December 1999 (Littlejohns ltd), the restaurant currently only has fifteen members of front staff ( bar and waiting staff), the majority of which have been their for less than four months. The main reasons for such high turnover is due to the fact that the majority of the staff are part time or students, therefore their job is very often not their main priority. This in turn can lead to high levels of absenteeism, with on average four people calling in 'sick' each week, according to the survey conducted. This causes stress for managers as it affects the true potential of the restaurant due to poor service, leading to complaints from customers, which are again the responsibility of the manager.
Stock control can also affect the smooth and effective running of the restaurant, as if it si not controlled effectively enough and stock begins to 'disappear' or run short, this would add to grievances from customers once again, and additionally insinuate to members of staff that the organisation was not being run proficiently enough, again resulting in a lack of respect.
Evidently then, managers in this line of work have high levels of responsibility, and there are clearly numerous factors, which contribute to the high stress levels amongst managerial staff in hospitality. The various effects of the above stressors are outlined below, according to the EAP jobs values survey and job stress survey, first off stress, as mentioned previously, can lead to a high degree of absenteeism, as employees are more likely to miss work as a coping mechanism and also in some cases due to health related problems. Lost productivity and replacement costs can make absenteeism a costly consequence.
High stress levels can also lead to grievances from staff, which should demonstrate to the management definite organizational problems. An example out with hospitality directly, taken from the EAP jobs value survey and job stress survey, shows that a Safeway bakery managers specific department averaged 75 to 80 grievances from his staff members a year, and by openly addressing his managerial style and 'cultivating' a very different workplace environment, due to this the grievances dropped to just one in a five year period.
Stress within an employee can lead to preoccupation and fatigue at work, as mentioned previously, collectively this can lead to accidents, as Jonathon Torres, M.D of workmed occupational Health services states that workers who report high stress are 30% more likely to have accidents than those with low stress. Within the hospitality industry this can prove very dangerous, as HSE figures released showed that the injury rate in hospitality ahs doubled over the last decade. Tiredness of this level can also lead to negative errors of judgment and action, as a stressed out employee may begin to miss environmental cues and information required to make both effective and safe decisions, in a kitchen environment this could be hazardous for staff safety.
A common factor in large organizations is that, they are subject to change their structure and methods of management and development within the company, for example, one restaurant mentioned that they had recently decided to change from having a Manger, assistant manager and one supervisor, to having simply a Manager and three supervisors. (Littlejohns, Ltd). However many attempts at organizational change and improvement fail because of employees resistance to change, this is due to a association between existing stress and fear of change, the reason behind this according to the EAP surveys is that human beings revert to familiar routines and behavioral patterns when under stress. Out with the above mentioned there are various other effects, such as workers compensation claims, litigation and sometimes in extreme cases violence.
Therefore outlined above is the depth and breadth to which employee productivity and well-being is being compromised by stress in the workplace.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In human-performance theory 'stress' is usually termed as a collective noun for various environmental and motivational conditions affecting performance. (Broadbent 1971, Hockey 1979). The process model of stress has been extracted from various theoretical models and pragmatic studies related to job stress and health.
Personal resources
?
Job Demands ---------------------------------------------------> Stress reactions
?
Situational resources
This is a diagram demonstrating the process model, it concludes that different types of job demands lead to various stress reactions, the correlation between the demands of a job and the reactions which it can output are supposed to be attempted to be controlled by different styles of coping (personal resources) and/ or social support within the workplace (situational resources). ( Chmiel, 2000). With respect to hospitality mangers, the job demands and stress reactions have been outlined above, and the personal resources which they may have, are certain genetic characteristics, such as a calm outlook when placed under pressure and also acquired characteristics such as skills in how to deal with such a situation, and lastly dispositional characteristics, for example preferential ways of coping. These three variables of individual difference between employees in different situations were stated by (Warr, 1987; Payne, 1988; Parkes, 1994). (chmiel, 1999).
The main job stress models were developed at the Institute for Social Research (ISR), at the university of Michigan. We can relate the organisational context discussed above to the basic Michigan model, whereby firstly organizational characteristics, such as hierarchal structure and job description may lead to stressors, within hospitality management this can lead to role conflict between different areas of management, and in contrast very often results in role overload, whereby the restaurant manager full decision making power and responsibility.( Hingley and Cooper, 1986; Brunk et al., 1998)
(Chmiel, 1999) .There are however some basic criticisms of this model as it is taken from various categories rather than a specific theoretical perspective.
A second model is an elaboration of the Michigan model, and is known as the (P-E) fit model, ( French, Caplan and Harrison,1982). This can be related to hospitality management as taken from research on work related stress, conducted by the European agency for Safety and Health at work there are two main aspects of this theory of stress;
(i) The degree to which an employers attitudes and abilities meet the demands of the job.
(ii) The extent to which the job environment meets the employers needs and in particular the extent to which the individual is permitted and encouraged to use their knowledge and skills in the job setting.
Two very commonly used terms within this model are objective and subjective. The latter refers to the workers view of himself and his view off he current working environment, the objective misfit entails the actual state or condition the worker is in and the objective characteristics of the work situation. Related to managerial stress levels within hospitality, this model indicates that if a manager does not have the commitment and correct attitude, then working long hours, having a less active social life and dealing with internal and external grievances every day would not be suitable and would lead to high levels of strain and tension, causing the effects of stress to accelerate as the (P-E) fit is incorrect.
These are only two of many models of stress, which have been studied, however both of these can be related to stress within the hospitality industry. Lastly there are types of interventions, which can be used in order to prevent or curtail job stress. These can be imposed on three levels;
(i) The organisation: intervening in the structure of the organization and therefore changing the work situation
(ii) The individual-organisation interface: increasing employee's resistance to specific job stressors, decreasing vulnerability
(iii) The individual: developing various coping styles in general.
(Cmiel,1999, p169)
IMPLICATIONS
It has been demonstrated that work related stress and attitudes can affect performance and commitment in a number of ways. Firstly through absenteeism, which relates to the (P-E) fit, as the individual is using hiding away from work as a coping mechanism due to not being a suitable candidate for the position in hand. Secondly through lack of definition of roles within hospitality leading to role ambiguity or role over load (Michigan Model), and this can have drastic effects in a restaurant environment, related to efficiency of productivity. In order to begin to reduce the high levels of stress in these types of workplace, individual members of staff have to be addressed on their views of what they think their role in the organization consists of . Within large scale hotels the hierarchal structure of management should be re examined, in order to examine levels of effectiveness, and 'in house' help should be available to members of staff who feel they are under a great deal of pressure.
Bibliography
Work and organisational psychology, a European perspective, Nik Chmiel, Blackwell publishers, 2000.
Machine Pacing and Occupational Stress, G. Salvendy & M.J. Smith Taylor & Francis, Ltd 1981.
Job stress help, online consultation, JSH Consultants Links Newsletter Press Releases, Virtual EAP jobs values survey jobs stress survey.
The journal of applied hospitality Management, Vol 11 no.1 p 36-47
Http://stats.bls.gov/locos015.htm
Neutralizing workplace stress: The physiology of human performance and organisational effectiveness, Bruce A. Cryer, VP, global Business Development, Heartmath LLC
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