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Hospitality job descriptions

Determine the purpose of Job descriptions

Job descriptions are not a document drawn up to satisfy a need to 'tick the box' of requirements of an HR system. They are there for a purpose. What is your purpose for your job descriptions?

In the hospitality industry there is often high turnover of staff. casuals, temporaries and permanent part time staff are the norm. The 2005/2006 Salary Survey from Pinnacle Hospitality and Travel People revealed average national turnover for the industry in Australia was 53% in 2005/2006 compared to just 30.1% the previous year.

In those circumstances the job description purpose should be primarily to advise new employees and potential prospects of what the job is really about and the key tasks and responsibilities they will be measured on. It should provide supervisors and managers along with their subordinates the basic building block from which to appraise people. It should also for the basic building block for training needs analysis.

If the hospitality industry had low turnover, say 5%, then other purposes may become as or more important, particularly in larger organisations with employee numbers in the high hundreds or thousands. The "management" side of human resource management assumes more importance.

Maintaining a database of information becomes more important requiring commonality of definitions of words and phrases. The result is use of more generic terms and restrictions in the way in which key data is represented. The task of writing a job description becomes more prescriptive. The purpose of the job description becomes more about managing a workforce than providing individuals with clarity about the job they have to do.

Your organisation may be an hotel or a golf course or a day spa which is part of a chain. At the local level, you may have less than 200 employees and want to use job descriptions as a tool for informing employees as to what their job is about. However, at head office level, you may want the job description to be a tool for managing resources and like jobs across the country, or indeed, the globe.

The important action is to THINK. Think about what purpose you want your job descriptions to serve. If you need it to serve two purposes, build it for one purpose. Build it well for that purpose and put in place other tools to make up for its shortfalls. Do not design a job description to try o suit every purpose there is. It will surely sit on the shelf having satisfied no-one's needs of a job description.

Job descriptions that suit employees

Given that our main interest is serving hospitality organisations at the local or small chain level, we concentrate on writing job descriptions that work for employees

Read our article on Writing a job description that works for your employees to see what we believe is required in a job description in a high turnover industry like the hospitality industry.

To see how we would create a job description that works for employees , download the Bus Driver Job Description

We can write job descriptions which work for your employees quickly and cheaply. It requires you to provide people for interviews and challenging our drafts. Our average turnaround time is two to three weeks dependent on your staff availability. Contact us now to discuss your needs on +61 3 98138198 or email us.

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