Time for new benchmarks for productivity

THE Australian hotel sector is on its way to enhancing its level of productivity.

That is according to new research I have been working on with colleagues from Southern Cross University School of Business and Tourism and around the world.

We worked with a major Australian hotel chain to measure the organisation’s Organisational Social Capital (OSC), which is an increasingly recognised driver of productivity. The research provided every employee within the hotel chain the opportunity to complete a questionnaire that measured employee perceptions of commitment, communication, trust and influence within their hotel.

The aggregated results provided a score of 3.7 out of a possible five, suggesting that the hotel chain has room to lift productivity. It was noted that these results are favourable when compared to similar research recently completed in Dubai and New Zealand.

It is worth noting that increasing productivity does not always mean people have to ‘work harder’; often, it is about working smarter and working together with others. While there is a maximum level of productivity that a hotel can achieve from ‘each’ employee, the ‘total sum’ of possible productivity increase is potentially unlimited, especially when employees work as a team.

Hotels already use many productivity enhancement tools through technology, training, organising work, and measuring activities. However, this research highlights the potential for further improvements in hotel productivity by being open to exploring the ‘softer’, people-oriented productivity enhancement tools such as OSC. The first step is to measure the existing level of OSC and then to develop strategies to increase it.

There is no fast-fix or oneway to increase OSC and/or productivity in any organisation. The path to increased productivity takes time and resources, including time to gather data, analyse and report it, which then allows for improvement strategies to be developed

THE PATH TO INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY TAKES TIME AND RESOURCES, INCLUDING TIME TO GATHER DATA, ANALYSE AND REPORT IT

and action to be taken. The results of this survey demonstrate how ‘soft’ productivity enhancement aspects can be measured and provide participating hotels with the opportunity to benchmark themselves against the industry, both here in Australia, and overseas.

Now the Australian hotel industry has a benchmark to work from; and we are inviting all hotels to participate in this research in 2018. I can be contacted at silvia.nelson@scu.edu.au.

DR SILVIA NELSON IS A LECTURER AND RESEARCHER AT SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY