STUDY OF SKILLS REQUIRED POST PANDEMIC IN HOSPITALITY SECTOR

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of disturbance throughout the world. The global economy had come to standstill for few months. There were lot of changes taking place in the corporate sector, IT sector, manufacturing sector, service sector, travel industry, education sector, in-short, the pandemic had hit all the sectors and changed the style of working of every sector and industry. It was natural that with so many drastic changes taking place at work front, there will be lot of changes in the style of working. Also, the skills that are needed also would be different. It was noted that the skills listed the study have always been in the bundle of required or essential skills, but with changes due to pandemic, certain skills from the bundle have taken a front seat and have gained more importance in the post COVID scenario. A structured questionnaire was designed in order to collect responses from the stakeholders in hospitality sector. The questionnaire in Google Form was circulated to the employees of hospitality industry, the academicians involved in training the students and the students pursuing hospitality management courses. Total 40 responses were collected. Analysis of received responses was done with the help of graphs and charts. And the findings and conclusion was derived from the same. The author had listed down few important skills from various articles and published research literature, surveys and reports. But the responses did not completely match with the earlier literature published by other authors. The findings reveal that Use of Technology for Presentations, Critical Thinking ability, Problem Solving skill and Collaboration or Teamwork are highly significant and important skills to be possessed by the candidates employed in hospitality sector. Skills like Ease with using Software, Using different applications at POS, willingness to Accept Extra Responsibility at Workplace and Empathy towards customers or guests as well as colleagues in the organization are rated as fairly important for the employees. There are few skills where equal number of respondents has rated it as highly crucial as well as fairly important, these skills are being Flexible with Duty Timings, Accepting Change in Work Profile and Accepting Changes in Routine or Schedules at workplace. It can be concluded that the stakeholders who are associated with the hospitality industry, have a different perspective towards the requirement of skills in post pandemic scenario. It can be an indication that the wave of anxiety and uncertainty is on the decreasing mode. And now, the entire scene is moving from New Normal to Back to Normal in almost every aspect of life as well as workplace.