In this episode, Vikram Sharma, Director of Human Resources at Marriott International talks to Springworks' Head of Marketing, Abhash Kumar. They discuss major challenges that the hospitality industry, one of the worst hit by the pandemic, had to tackle and how the industry revamped its strategies to bounce back.
Vikram is a self-motivated and vibrant leader who started his expedition in hospitality career after graduating from The Institute of Hotel Management Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition and lucratively completing a prestigious degree of Masters in Leadership from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He started his career with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts and later got associated with Marriott International.
Hospitality industry is driven more by emotions.
Vikram shares that the simplest way to distinguish the hospitality industry from the tech industry is that tech is driven by data and hospitality by emotions. People in this industry need to work with a lot of guidelines. There are processes in place, but ultimately, the goal is to satisfy guests. and organizations in this industry consider their employees to be equivalent to their guests, and they call them the internal guests.
Seeing his friends working in different industries( FMCG, technology, banking and more), he realizes that every industry has its own norms. However, he explains how the hospitality industry demands a lot of collaboration between the teams. He does not negate the fact that it's not relevant in other industries. But, in hospitality, it is certainly a notch up.
Patience is one skill that is required at the workplace post-pandemic
Vikram shares that through an HR leader’s perspective, he has learned the significance of being patient over the years. With tech grabbing its place in almost all the industries, workspaces have started moving faster. Patience is one competency that will be required to deal with the younger generation.
He also added that the industries are constantly changing. There is a remarkable change in the way things were operating a decade back and the way we operate now. While the basics have still managed to remain intact, the way we do things have certainly changed. Hence, industries should be open to that change, and probably, that is the reason they are now open to do things digitally.
Virtual training is the new way
Vikram mentions that the whole idea is that all training, which was done in person, has been shifted to virtual platforms. This has increased participation as it requires no travel and is extremely convenient for people. for the person. So the core training programmes have moved on to a virtual platform. That's a very significant change that he observed in the training field.
To cover his second point, he highlighted a comparison between the virtual training calls that took place in April 2020 with the ones that take place now.. Previously they had to repeatedly request people to switch on the cameras and interact. Nowadays, people are much more comfortable switching their cameras on and being a part of it.
Virtual platforms for hospitality have changed from a process perspective. However, their workflow still cannot work from home because guests still need to be checked in to the hotel, food is still required to be cooked and served to them, etc.
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar