Diverse Workforce in Hotel Industry: A Preliminary Study of What and Why

Abstract

At present, Diversity Management plays an important role in the organization. Diversity in the workforce can be a competitive advantage because different viewpoints can facilitate unique and creative approaches to product development, problem-solving and innovation. For Thailand, the topic of diversity is quite new and many organizations overlook the important of this issue. As hotel business is one of a key business in the tourism industry and considers as labor intensive business which the co-existence of employees from various social-cultural backgrounds. The purposes of this research were 1) to identify major sources of diversity in hotel business in Bangkok and 2) to examine diversity management practices of hotels in Bangkok. This study used qualitative approach. Semi-structure interviews were used to collect data from key informants. For data analysis, coding analysis technique was used. Relationships among codes and themes were then examined. The results showed all ten workforce diversity issues were encountered in hotel business in Bangkok. The challenge issues in diversity management were including marital status/family structure, educational level, cultural/value difference and experience. Interestingly, none of the diversity practice that initiate from the corporate strategic plan or diversity policy were implemented in the sample hotels. Four diversity initiatives were mentioned to use as a tool to manage diversify workforce; training and development, recruitment and selection, labor relation and employee relations, and corporate culture. The suggestions to manage workforce diversity are 1) bringing diversity to be a part of the strategy to lead the organization to success 2) formulating a range of HRM diversity initiative activities to support management strategy and 3) improving communication within organization for better understanding and acceptant of individual differences.