On June 16, 2019, forty undergraduate and graduate students from the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management Department of Hotel and Tourism Management participated in the HRnnovation hackathon contest. The topic of the hackathon was how to deal with employment recruitment and retention, one of the most complex challenges facing the hotel industry in Israel.
The event was created as part of the cooperation between the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management, the Bengis Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, and the Isrotel Hotel Chain, held at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem.
The hotel industry is a labor-intensive industry based on inter-personal service, and hence its dependence on the quality of human capital. Employees have a great influence on the nature and level of hotel services, with implications on demand and business performance.
Today, the hotel industry in Israel is characterized by a high turnover of employees, which creates a serious problem for hotels: the costs of hiring workers, training them, impairing the quality of service, and more. The HRnnovation event gathered academic students to assess the current situation and come up with management solutions to recruiting and retaining quality employees in the industry.
The teams were required to create projects by performing the following processes: 1) Analyzing the results of a study conducted among hundreds of participants in the industry, and identifying target audiences that have potential for recruitment, branding and positioning in the industry as an influencing factor. (2) Defining opportunities or challenges 3) Formulating directions of action to solve the problem of manpower recruitment.
"It was quite anexperience," explains Dr. Galia Fuchs who led this hackathon event within the framework of her course Marketing for Hotels and Tourism. "We experienced the process our students go through in coming up with creative ideas when faced with a challenge; from the gamification of an existing application to rebranding the jobs and work environment, to the use of marketing strategies for recruiting employees."
Dr. Galia Fuchs with the students in action, at the Isrotel Orient Hotel
The winning solutions included technological tools such as applications, information sites and more, recommendations on work methods and management, and advice on positioning changes. The winning criteria included: 1) data analysis and argumentation, 2) innovation, 3) applicability, 4) marketing presentation. The prizes were: first place - one night for two (for each of the group participants) in an Isrotel hotel; second place: dinner for 2 (for each of the group participants) at a restaurant in the Isrotel chain.
The second-place team offered Job Title Rebranding, as opposed to just more employer/company branding. The group's members - Shaked Hambar, Maayan Marciano, Manuel Elbaum and Itai Stream - claim that it is of utmost importance to understand how hotel positions are perceived by employees and by potential employees. They assert that the recruitment marketing focus should be shifted from how the employer or company are perceived, to how the job is perceived. As such, they advise changing terminology of job positions to enhance their prestige and thus improve workers' motivation, and gave such examples as: desk clerk to hotel host, cleaner or chambermaid to ménage, guard to security officer.
Eyal Ben Efraim, Gabriel Tene, Ariel Cohen, Rotem Sampson and Ayelet Fish formed the group that won first place. The solution they devised is a ladder rewards application for employees based on competitive parameters, an application tailored to each employee to induce motivation. The ladder presents the employee, in a clear and visual manner, the incentives (vacations, perks, etc.) that will be received over the course of months and days, thus increasing their motivation to persevere in the workplace, while the goal is in front of them. In addition, to increase the quality of work, the manager will be able to give positive reviews to employees who demonstrate initiative, which they will receive in advance to bring them up the ladder to their goals. At the marketing level, every vacation and perk will be recorded in Instagram and will attract new employees through word-of-mouth marketing. In addition, the group recommended that the Isrotel Chain market The Ladder on the company's HR jobs site.
The winning groups will present their ideas in a wider forum of the Isrotel Chain to discuss ways of implementing them within the chain. "We can't wait to continue the cooperation with Isrotel in order to advance our ideas and see them prove themselves," says Eyal Ben Efraim.
