The performance evaluation model for reception clerks in the hospitality industry

• Main Authors: Su-ching Chen, 陳素卿
• Other Authors: Chin-Ming Ho
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/24648221668329940384

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 人力資源管理研究所 === 94 === The hospitality industry is a service industry of multiple arts. Despite the various scales of hotels, they all aim at the same goal – to provide various services to satisfy the demands of the public in the aspects of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and entertainment. “Human” is the most important resource of the hospitality industry, and the master of utilizing and manipulating other resources in this industry. But in practice, the performance of “human” is volatile and unstable, so it is hard for managers to persistently maintain the service standard for a long term. In other words, in the service industries such as hotels, the improvement of service quality hinges on the management of employees’ behaviors before they interact with clients. Thus, if performance management can be properly implemented, the employees can understand the correct service indices and provide satisfactory services to the clients. However, whether an enterprise has reasonable performance management indices and systems, the evaluation result and effectiveness are closely correlated. Therefore, this study aimed to provide a reference standard that the hospitality industry could use to evaluate their reception clerks and the clerks could use the evaluation model as a goal they work for, in hope of enhancing the competitiveness of the both parties. In the procedure of the research, the first stage was based on literature reviews to organize and analyze the performance indices for evaluating reception clerks in the hospitality industry. In the second stage, an interview with professional managers of the industry was conducted to verify the indices and hierarchy levels. At last, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to derive the weight of indices for evaluating the reception clerks and establish a performance evaluation model for reception clerks in the hospitality industry. In terms of the derived weights, among the 3 constructs, “work achievement” had the highest weight ratio, taking up as high as 42%. As a result, the property of a hotel reception clerk’s work heavily relied on work achievement. According to the service characteristics of the hospitality industry, as the reception clerks were the most front personnel to contact and serve clients, their service quality, professional ability, problem-solving ability, and etc. would be promptly presented to the clients and represent the company in clients’ first impression. So they were of high importance. This study also verified the application of the study results to the practice. Thus, in addition to building a “Reception Clerk Performance Evaluation Scale” with derived indices and weights, the researcher also sought the assistance of managers of a hotel to conduct the empirical study. The results also showed that the study was in accordance with the current situation and could be practically applied to the industry. And in the survey, it was found that performance evaluation systems were not prevalent among the surveyed hotels. Less than 30% of the hotels implemented the evaluation system. Thus, if performance appraisal operations could be effectively implemented in the industry to reinforce management and motivate employees, it was believed that the overall business performance could be enhanced and the competitiveness of the industry could be strengthened too.