Improving Productivity of Hospitality Establishments through Human Relations Skills

This study examines the effect of Human Relations Skills on the productivity of hospitality establishments some hotels in South-Eastern States of Nigeria. The study has six independent variables namely: communication skills, cooperation team work, employee social awareness skills, democratic leadership skills and employee participation skills as the human relations skills and the dependent variable is profitability. The study has six specific objectives and was guided by six research questions and six hypotheses. In carrying out this study, a sample size of 286 was used. The data collected were analyzed using simple percentages and frequency distribution tables. The stated hypotheses were tested using Ordinal Logit Regression. The study showed that employee social awareness skills in hospitality establishment significantly affect the profitability of the organizations. The study also showed that cooperative team work, participation in decision making and democratic leadership style affect the profitability of the establishment but not significantly as observed. It was therefore, recommended that every hospitality establishment should train their employees on: proper communication skills, social awareness skills and should have good policy on conflict management skill. Cooperative team work skills, participation in decision making and democratic leadership style should be revisited and improved upon so that the positive effect will be significantly felt.

Fisher and Berstein (1991) opined that various levels of management in most organizations now have representatives involved in management decision making. This has reduced conflicts that come through nonparticipation in decision making. Mann (2009) argue that application of human relations skills is expensive because every staff has to be involved. Moreover the cost of staff training, motivations, meeting the needs of staff which invariably affect organization and human behavior are expensive. Bruno (1985) opined that the application of human relations skills in hospitality organizations has led to reduction in job turnover, reduction in accidents, improved production, ensured harmony, increased respect and improved sales. Maclean, Peterson and Martin (1985) said that recreation and leisure sites have been improved through human relations and this has prevented spoilage of physical equipment either by staff or guests since each person is taught how to use it before using such equipment. It also makes everybody to be security personnel in his own unit since every person monitors what another person is doing or about to do.
However, in Nigeria most hospitality establishments do not have any organizational programmes for improving good human relations. Many attributes that contribute to good human relations have been neglected .These include: staff training on communication and leadership styles, social awareness controls, teamwork building, motivation and non involvement of staff in decision making. Others are good supervision by management; recruitment, selection and placement styles, negligence of individuals personality and methods of conflict management ( Doubra ,2010). These have invariably affected the workers and customers through rampant and increasing complaints about staff/products, accidents, poor morale of staff, services formulations and shortages, dwindling rate of room occupancy, high staff turnover and increased number of argument between staff and customers. It is worthy therefore to note that the independent variables or Human relations skills for this study are streamlined to: communications skills, co-operative teamwork, conflict management, employee social awareness skills, employee participation in decision making, and democratic style of leadership which are most common in all the researches. "Performance of hospitality establishments" or dependent variables are measured here using 'Productivity', This is why the hypotheses and test of hypotheses focused on "Productivity which will aid us to ascertain the effects on performance .
Hence, this work will examine whether these establishments have been applying human relations skills and how they have affected the productivity of the establishment. The study will discuss the various ways which human relations skills can be applied and finally the impact they have on productivity of hospitality establishments.

1.2
Statement of Problem Hospitality establishment is a labour intensive project, which people embark upon to provide home away services from peoples home. It is meant to provide food, beverages and accommodation to customers/patronizers so that they feel at home. The patronizers are expected to receive very good services/products from people who serve them and are expected to pay a fair price for the products they receive. Employees are expected to have a sense of identity and loyalty to the organization coupled with feeling of being valued as important members. Equitable system of reward based on positive recognition, good appraisal, good quality of work life, and job design, healthy organizational climate, integration of organization and personal goal of employees are all expected to be done by management through the instrumentality of human relations skills.
In Nigeria today, it is believed that most management of hospitality establishments do not care much about their customers and staff. They are said to be interested in the short-run benefits with respect to how much they gain on daily basis. The customers, who are expected to be treated as kings and queens by the hotels so as to generate patronage and profit, do not seem to be getting the right treatment and respect. Argument between employees and customers always occur as well as increased rate of accidents. Other problems occasionally observed are as follows: tables laid with dirty items, poor morale of staff, mistakes of staff in order takings, customers waiting too long for service, dropping and dwindling number of customers and room occupancies. Also lack of courtesy and professional smile on the faces of service providers and non observance of essential service formalities have always been observed.
These problems are as a result of the ways the employees interact and relate with the customers and their management staff. Research done by Green (2010) at Rocio Forte Hotel London and Palace Hotel Babbacombe Rid Torguay indicated that lack of application of human relations skills had led to these problems mentioned above. Hotels which boom when they were newly built seem to lose their patronage once the problems of poor human relations emerge.
Therefore, this research examined how hospitality establishments (which are service oriented establishments) apply human relations skills and the impact of these skills on the profitability of hotels establishment's performance

1.3
Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to ascertain the effect of human relations skills on the profitability of hospitality establishments. The specific objectives of the study are to: Ascertain the effects of cooperative team work on the productivity of hospitality establishments. (iii) Ascertain the link between conflict management skills and the productivity of hospitality establishments. (iv).
Ascertain the impact of employees' social awareness skills on productivity of hospitality establishments.
Asses if there is a significant relationship between the democratic styles of leadership in organization and the productivity of hospitality establishments. (vi) Ascertain the effect of employee's participation in decision making on productivity of hospitality establishments.

Research Questions
Based on the problems and objectives stated above, we posed the following research questions: (i) How do communication skills affect the productivity of hospitality establishments? (ii) How do cooperative teamwork skills affect the productivity of hospitality establishments? (iii) How do conflict management skills affect the productivity of hospitality organizations? (iv) How do staff social awareness skills affect the productivity of hospitality establishments?
What is the relationship between the democratic styles of leadership in the organization and the productivity of hospitality establishments? (vi) What are the effects of employee participation in decision making on the productivity of hospitality establishments?

Research Hypotheses
To facilitate the conduct of this study, the following null hypotheses were derived from the above research questions.

Ho1:
Communication skills do not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.

Ho2:
Cooperative teamwork does not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.

Ho3:
Conflict management skills involved in human relations do not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.

Ho4:
Employees social awareness skills do not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.

Ho5:
Democratic style of leadership does not affect significantly the productivity of hospitality establishments. Ho6: Employee participation in decision making does not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.

1.6
Significance of the Study This research will be most meaningful to management consultants, hotel owners, researchers and employees in hotels. It will help management consultants to know the proper way to recruit, place and train their staff on how to retain and maintain their customers. It will be beneficial to them to note that making profit is determined by the number of customers they have obtained, satisfied and retained.
Hotel owners should also note that it is through good human relations that customers can maintain their patronage and inform other customers about the establishment. Various ways of attaining to this include training people on the application of human relations interpersonal skills.
Researchers who are looking for ways of improving the hospitality establishments' performance will now have material for reference. Employees will also benefit from the study by knowing how human relations skills are required to maintain customers and ensure their continuous patronage, reap profit from the sales made and ensures the sustainability of their business. Hence, once the organization maintains its sales volume and profits, the staff salaries, wages and allowances will be paid. Tips and other service charges will be received from guests.
This study will teach the workers the procedures on how and where to apply human relations skills by creating environment of social interactions, treating others as equals, communication warmth, listening intently; sensitivity to others, treating people fairly, dealing effectively with conflicts and avoiding stereotyping people to improve profitability and sustainability of the organization

1.7
Scope of the Study It is not possible to study all hospitality establishments in Nigeria or Eastern States of Nigeria in a research of this nature. Such an approach will not only amount to a bold claim, but will also end up ignoring specific issues and details required in the impact assessment. This explains why we chose ten different hotels in Nigeria. Two hotels each are from five South Eastern States and they are expected to be applying human relations skills in their day to day operations to obtain profit and ensure sustainability of their of their organization. They are selected to represent hotels in Eastern states of Nigeria. Each provides food, beverages and accommodations that made them to be seen as hospitality havens. Non probability method was applied in the selection of these hotels .In other words, they were purposively selected.

Research methodology 3.0. Population of Study
The research population consists of all workers of the ten selected hotels under study. In statistical analysis, the term population refers to the whole, and the part used for references or generalization is called sample (Freud and Williams 1984:33) The population size of the various hotels under investigation is 998 as supplied by the research assistants in the various hotels.

3.2
Sampling Procedure Two sampling schemes were adopted in this study. They are the non-probability and probability sampling techniques. The non-probability sampling technique is the purposive sampling method which was applied in selecting ten hotels out of all the hotels in the Eastern States of Nigeria. They were selected because of their track records and the belief that they are applying human relation skills in their day to day operations. Also purposive sampling technique was used in distributing some of the copies of the questionnaires especially to the specialized areas of the organization. The probability sampling technique adopted for the research was the stratified random sampling technique with proportional allocation because we were studying different hotels and each hotel should be represented in our sample in accordance with their population sizes. Again, while applying judgement in distributing the copies of the questionnaire to some specialized areas, we used stratified random sampling with proportional allocation to ensure that both sexes were represented in the samples.

Sample Size
The sample size was determined using the following Taro Yamene's formula as opined by Yamene (1967)

3.4.
Methods of Data Analysis Two methods of data analyses were employed in this research. They were: Frequency Distribution and Ordinal Logit Regression (Ologit) Analyses. These analyses were carried out using statistical software called STATA 14.0.

Frequency Distribution
Frequency Distribution is simply a table that shows the number or percentage of items falling into each class or value of a given set of data. For instance, a table that shows the number or percentage of respondents who indicate their educational qualification is a frequency distribution. The essence of using frequency distribution is to have a general idea of the distribution of the responses on the various items of the questionnaire.

Ordinal Logit Regression Analysis:
The ordered logit model in its modern form was proposed by McElvey and Zavoina (1969, 1971, 1975 for the analysis of ordered, categorical, non quantitative choices, outcomes and responses. The model is used to describe the data generating process for a random outcome that takes one of a set of discrete, ordered outcome. Ordered Since the dependent variable for this study is based on the ordered Likert scale of "Very Low", "Low", "Neutral", "High" and "Very High", the ordinal logit regression model is appropriate in analyzing and testing the hypotheses of the study. Model:The logit regression is based on the logistic model given by: The model platform is an underlying random utility model or latent regression model: 1, 2,..., in which the continuous latent utility or "measure", yi * is observed in discrete form through a censoring mechanism: (3,6) The vector xi is a set of K covariates that are assumed to be strictly independent of i ε ; β is a vector of K parameters that is the object of estimation and inference [Greene and Hensher, 2009]. Logit coefficients are in log-odds units and cannot be read as regular S coefficients. To interpret, you need partial effects. Analysts are occassionally interested in odds ratio rather than probabilities, so changes in the odds ratio can also be computed.
All the hypotheses were tested at 5% level of significance. The computer output gives its significance level in terms of p-values. If α is greater than the p-value, Ho is accepted; otherwise, it will be rejected. Y5=βo+β1x1+β2X2+β3x3 +β4x4 + β5x5 +β6 x6 Y =0.98X1 + 018X2 -0.229X3+0.210X4 +0.04X5 -0.029 X6 Table 4.1 above shows that the data analysis indicated that productivity growth is affected thus: communication skills (X1) has p -value of 0.014 ,Cooperative teamwork (X2) has a p-value of 0.495 ,Conflict management Styles(X3) has a p-value of 0.001, Social Awareness Skills (X4) has p-value 0.013 ,participation in decision making (X5) has a p-value of 0.539 and finally democratic leadership style (X6) has a p-value of 0.352 Therefore:

ANALYSIS
1. We reject null hypotheses: Ho7, Ho9 and Ho10 and conclude that 'Communication skills', 'Conflict Management' and Social-Awareness Skills' significantly affect the "Productivity Growth" of hospitality establishments since their p-values i. e. P > |z| were less than 5%. 2. We accept null of Hypotheses Ho8, Ho11 and Ho12 since their p-values were all greater than 5%. and conclude that cooperative teamwork, democratic leadership style and employee participation in decision making do not significantly affect the "Productivity Growth" of hospitality establishments. Table 4.1 also shows that the coefficients of X1 and X4 are positive which means that "Productivity Growth" increases with the increase in "Communication Skills" and "Social-Awareness Skills" while the coefficient of X3 is negative which suggests that "Productivity Growth" decreases with increase in "Conflict Management".
The analysis in Table 4.1 is also very adequate in that the model chi-square statistic is significant even at 1%. The Pseudo R 2 value = 2.9%; but, as we noted earlier, Pseudo R 2 is not very important in interpreting Democratic leadership style was found to have been affected (negatively) but not significantly observed. This does not tally with the study carried out by Bright and Comfort in (2009) at Sofitel -Paris Le Fanbourge and Sofitel Paris Arc de Triomple in France, where democratic leadership style was significantly found to have impact on the performance of the hotel. But this study points out that the impact is negative, suggesting that democratic leadership style is not the best for Nigerians. They prefer that "carrot and stick" is the best method to achieve success in hotel business.
Social awareness skills were also seen to have positive and significant impact on all the performance variables earlier stated on the hospitality establishments

Summary of Findings:
(1) Communication skills significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.
Cooperative team work does not significantly affect the productivity of hospitality establishments.
Conflict management skills of humans significantly affect the productivity (4) Social awareness skills significantly affect the productivity growth, of hospitality establishment.
Democratic leadership style does not significantly affect productivity of hospitality establishments.
Employees participation in decision making affect does not significantly the productivity of hospitality establishments.

Conclusion
Human relations skills were seen as major factors affecting the productivity growth of the hospitality establishments and the major problem of poor productivity of the organizations was linked with poor and wrong application of these skills thereby affecting the patronage of such organizations. Therefore, the study reveals that: (1) The social awareness skills are improves productivity hospitality establishments.
No single skill solely contributes to productivity without the help of the other.
Based on the study and discussion of this study, it was concluded that human relations skills have both negative and positive impact on the productivity of hospitality establishments. 4) The study also confirmed that training of workers in different sections of the hotels particularly on the areas of proper ways of communications, being aware of different social skills and when to exhibit them to achieve efficient service, participate in decision making, encourages teamwork and having best parameter for handling conflict in the organizations improve productivity of the organization., The study also showed that all the skills mentioned above have effect on the productivity but not all are have significant effect 5.3 Recommendations On the basis of the findings of this study, and the discussions and conclusions thereof, it was recommended that; Organizations that want to improve their Productivity should: a) emphasis more on improving communication and social awareness skills b) Reduce conflicts to barest minimum c) Encourage democratic leadership style d) Encourage teamwork e) Improve on cooperative teamwork

Contribution to Knowledge
This study made us to know that human relations skills are very essential to the performance of hospitality establishments. The study pointed out social awareness, communication and conflict management skills are very vital and significant to productivity in organization. The researchers also noted that democratic leadership skills, employee participation in decision making and communication skills should not be neglected because they all hasve either positive or negative impact on performance of hotels. Productivity in hotel organizations can be increased if we must put in more effort in communication skills and social awareness skills and less conflict management. The researcher also contributed these formulae below which is mathematically put thus Y5 = 0.09 X1 -0.0229X3 + 0.210X4 Where; Y5 = productivity, X1 = communication skills, X3 = Conflict Management skill X4 = Social awareness skills NB: Conflict has a negative sign indicating that we must try to reduce occurrence of conflict to avoid spending much time on its management. Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Sports www.iiste.org ISSN (Paper) 2312-5187 ISSN (Online) 2312-5179 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol. 13,2015