During the onslaught of COVID 19 the Hospitality staff was at the mercy of avaricious owners who were the likes of ‘Shylock’ in famous Shakespeare’s play 'The Merchant of Venice' , for a long span of 18 months the service industry primary asset was subjected to hardships beyond comprehension.
I joined Indian Hospitality Industry in Mid 1974, as a management trainee, since then I have worked or have been associated with about 50 Hotels , including 60/70 catering and food outlets, not taking into account my earlier experience in Lebanon, Cypress, Sweden and United Kingdom. I have worked with thousands of Hospitality workers, managers and have interacted with large number of owners in India. One thing which I will always remember as a Hospitality Manager that, the most important person for me and the owner is not the ‘Guest’, but the staff who serves those Guests , it’s the staff which brings tall the facets of the hospitality to life as they are responsible to provide various services and including food. But surprisingly enough the owners have conveniently ignored their basics when Covid-19 crisis stuck the world. They also forgot that these are the same people who worked hard and earned for them their millions, and unique position in the society.
I dedicate this blog those millions of Indian Hospitality workers, who had suffered during last 18 months of catastrophe of mind-boggling proportions. Although - seemingly we are at the fag-end of the pandemic, but the damage and agony it has caused, will take long time to heal and restore the confidence in the owner/staff relationship – for those who are not familiar with what happened to the staff of Hotels and restaurants, let me try and recreate their plight;
· The Hotel Industry started experiencing the Impact of COVID 19 during mid-February 2020, which was the peak of season and Hotels, restaurants were booming with clients and business - just two months short of the ‘off season’.
· Everyone thought this crisis will be over before end of summer and we will be back in business with bang September /October. But majority of owner found great ‘opportunity in calamity ‘and in addition the 26th March lockdown came as a boon, as though ‘shylocks’ / owners were waiting for this, majority of the staff was not paid salary till August/ September, when they started opening the Hotels for domestic / Government business even then staff was not paid full salary. Some Hotels paid 50% of salary and some paid one third. In some cases senior staff including GMs’ were either paid pittance or were offered ‘handshakes’ of the sorts.
· Management became mean and selfish to a level where the staff was not paid even their ESI, PF and other dues. Consequently the greed of the top management brought about mild to intense exodus of approximately 32 million wage earners involved with the Hospitality Industry, as they helplessly decided to migrate to their villages /small towns for survival and a square meal.
· I have been in the Indian hospitality industry for over five decades; I have never seen such a cruel joke played by our Industry of which we were so proud. All our lives as young manager, we were told by management pundits that most valuable asset we have is the manpower. They are the real earners; they are responsible for our success and failure and so on. We forgot all about the billions/billions of Rupees we made in last few years was the result of their hard work. We forgot as Hoteliers that once upon a time we devised many systems of staff welfare e.g. PF health Insurance, welfare funds and so on, but when these poor people needed our support in the most critical times we turn a Nelson’s Eye towards their plight and backed out. Even majority of Management companies chose to keep their eyes closed and let the ownership go ahead and do what they want with the staff. Sadly more International chains were part this ruthless design.
· I had an opportunity to talk to over a dozen of prominent HR Directors and they all confirmed of this dreadful act. They also confirmed that all the suggestions for these actions were brain child of senior managers’ - who wanted to save their job. Alas! Interestingly enough nearly all of them had to bear the brunt of their own design, as many lost their jobs or their feathers were clipped and those who survived were asked to work on 35% of the wages as a condition.
· Important question is where was the Tourism Ministry? Labor Officers? Well they were there but totally ineffective and were a liability to the business. What about the so called welfare associations? Unfortunately, in India all association, government bodies are more for their own welfare - not the Industry. Even today the high handedness of individual owners continues, with no relief to those hard working employees. I fear millions of Rupees belonging to hundreds and thousands of employees are not only forgotten by owners but also those welfare agencies as well, whose job is to make sure that the Hotels are taking care of all the aspects of Industry and employees in good faith and due-diligence Being part of glamorous industry we all had to pay the price for total neglect.
· Most important part of this episode is that ‘what impact will be there on our future’ - if any? Or whether this action will help our Hotels/Restaurants to recover sooner than later.
· No and not really. If you had read my earlier Blogs on Covid-19, you must have noticed that, I predicted a massive boom in our industry – at that point in time this inference was empirical and today that is happening even when country has not opened up to international traffic. Today Hotels are doing well in domestic tourism a reality will hit hotels after 15 November when International travel opens up. At present with only domestic travel open, the hotels are nearly full and F&B is booming. But each Hotel and even restaurants are suffering due to shortage of trained/ skilled manpower. These days – not surprisingly the hotel chains like The Oberoi /Hyatt/ ITC / Taj Mahal / Marriott’s who never entertained walk-in candidates are accepting them willingly with open arms. All brands of Hotels are advertising on LinkedIn, and this is just start of boom time. Just imagine what will happen when Hospitality industry blooms once again and economy prospers.
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With Industry needing more Hotels, F&B outlets, we
all will feel the heat of the dearth of qualified staff. The greed of
individual ownership has already created insecurity and unfaithfulness among
the staff. In addition this is likely to result in the rise wage bills and establishment cost under various
heads, not ignoring the labor troubles as a domino effect of the strategic ‘faux pas’ by high & mighty.
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