Sustainable human resource management as a driver in tourism policy and planning: a serious sin of omission?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the neglect of an employment or workforce focus in policy engagement and planning for sustainable tourism. Tourism is of interest here because there is an established role for government and the private sector in policy engagement and strategic planning with respect to product development, infrastructure, marketing and human resource capacity and the focus has increasingly emphasised sustainable goals within this process. The discussion addresses the central role of people and work within concepts of sustainability and sustainable communities and questions why this has been, substantially, ignored in tourism. The paper starts by recognising the interconnectedness of employment in tourism and its workforce concerns with a wide range of inter-linked policy and operational considerations. This, in turn, points to the utility of the sustainable HRM model as a means by which to frame tourism work. Thereafter, this paper introduces new approaches through the proposal of sustainability indicators that have both theoretical and practical policy formation value in relation to the workforce. These sustainable employment capacity, service delivery capacity and service quality capacity with which policy-makers can gauge their readiness for sustainable growth in tourism employment. The research and application implications for this approach are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism work
• sustainable tourism
• sustainable HRM
• workforce planning
• tourism policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom Baum

Tom Baum is a professor and head of the Department of Human Resource Management in the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Tom received the BA (Hons) and MA degrees in education from the University of Wales, the MPhil degree in educational development from Nottingham Trent University and holds two doctorates (PhD and DLitt) in tourism/hospitality employment studies from the University of Strathclyde. He has researched and published extensively in the workforce/HRM/HRD policy area relating to tourism and consulted for a wide range of international organisations in this field.