The Christian humanization of work: job satisfaction in the hospitality industry.

Introduction

In the year 2000, the tourism sector will be the largest industry in the world. Today it is estimated to provide about 255 million jobs and amounts to 10 percent of world employment. It has now grown into a modern, mature industry where workers are forming their professional identity. These "hospitality professionals" are primarily concerned with customer satisfaction. But that's not always easy to achieve and many problems can -- and do -- arise.

The restructuring of work today has important consequences. Unlike their agricultural or industrial counterparts, workers in the service sector find the fruits of their labor are frequently intangible. In some cases, their emotions are involved. One can easily broaden management guru Peter Drucker's concept of "the knowledge worker" to include "the emotion worker," who must deal with people on a more interpersonal level. In our modem, service-oriented society, there is a need for literature devoted to the special needs of this kind of worker, especially in the area of "spirituality of work"

By its very nature, hospitality work has a spiritual dimension. Of all industries, it is the most intensely interactive, with people serving people and providing comfort, sustenance, conviviality, transport, amusement, enlightenment, employment and much more. Given the complexity of human behavior, concerns about the work's spiritual dimension can be neither ignored nor hidden. For this reason, perhaps the most challenging of all hospitality industry problems today is not so much job satisfaction as a proper spirituality of work.

In short, the challenge is to help hospitality professionals find genuine meaningfulness in their work so they experience the peace and joy that God has prepared for them. As Pope John Paul II reminds us in his Encyclical entitled Laborem Exercens, "Work is a good thing for man -- a good thing for his humanity -- because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed in a sense becomes 'more a human being."' This is certainly true in the hospitality industry.

The Importance of Service in Modern Society

The growth of services is nothing new. As early as 1900, both America and Britain had more jobs in services than in industry. By 1950, services employed half of all American workers. And in 1993, America had the biggest service sector, accounting for 72 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Services are also the fastest growing part of international trade, accounting for 20 percent of total world trade and 30 percent of American exports.

Tourism is one of these services. By the year 2000, it is likely to be the world's most important economic activity. According to a report of the World Travel and Tourism Council, there were 255 million jobs in tourism in 1996. This amounts to 10.2 percent of all world employment.

The Special Nature of Work in the Service Sector. Work in the service sector is quite different from that in agriculture or manufacturing. A service has been described as a "deed, act, or performance" [1:24]. Two functional issues are: at whom (or what) is the act directed, and is this act tangible or intangible in nature?

These two questions result in Lovelock's four-way classification scheme involving: (1) tangible actions to people's bodies, such as hair cutting and surgery; (2) tangible actions to goods and other physical possessions, such as air freight, lawn mowing and janitorial services; (3) tangible actions directed at people's minds, such as broadcasting and education; and (4) intangible actions directed at people's intangible assets, such as insurance, investment banking and consulting (13).

This categorization scheme is useful in answering questions like the following, having to do with analyzing and marketing services. Does the customer need to be physically present: throughout service delivery? only to initiate or terminate the service transaction? or not at all? Does the customer need to be mentally present during the service delivery? Can mental presence be maintained across physical distances through mail or electronic communications? In what ways is the target of the service act "modified" by the receipt of the service? And how does the customer benefit from these modifications?

Work in the Hospitality Industry. Especially in the tourism sector--where services are created as they are consumed and the customer is often involved in the production process--there are many different ways to tailor the service to meet the needs of individual customers. Customization can proceed along at least two dimensions. First of all, you have to consider whether the characteristics of the service and its delivery system lend themselves to customization. Second, you have to determine how much judgment customer contact personnel can exercise in defining the nature of the service received by individual customers. Some service concepts are quite standardized, while other services offer customers a wide range of options.

There is a class of services that not only involves a high degree of customization, but also requires customer contact personnel to exercise judgment about the characteristics of the service and how it is delivered to each customer. This type of service is called "prescriptive" and the focus of control shifts from the user to the supplier. Professional services such as law, medicine, accounting, architecture and tour guiding fall within this category. They are all white-collar, "knowledge industries," requiring extensive training to develop the requisite skills and judgment needed for satisfactory service delivery. As a result, much of the literature on the service industry refers to the encounter between the customer and the service contact personnel as "the moment of truth," because it determines the level of customer satisfaction. This is especially true in the hospitality industry.

Alienation in Marxist Understanding of Work. Karl Marx was undoubtedly the harshest and most influential critic of the inequalities that private property institutions and free markets are accused of creating. In his writings, he detailed the suffering and misery capitalism placed upon its workers. The living conditions that capitalism imposed on the lower working classes contrasted sharply with Marx's view of how human beings should live. According to Marx, human beings should be enabled to realize their human nature by freely developing their potential for self-expression and by satisfying their real human needs. People should develop their productive potential and have control over what they produce. They know what their real needs are, and are able to form satisfying social relationships. Capitalism "alienated" the lower working classes by neither allowing them to develop their productive potential nor satisfy their real human needs. The service sector is one area where this alienation can be overcome if w orkers are truly empowered in their work situations.

Spirituality of Work

Today people are less and less sure about what "work" really means. Their expectations of work, especially getting it and enjoying it, are now matters of both deep anxiety and mundane reality. There are several reasons for this. First, there are high unemployment rates in industrialized societies. For many people in modern society, work is no longer something that happens in a fixed place during a fixed unit of time, producing a fixed output and reward (5). Come points out how societies frequently define human beings in terms of the work they perform (7). The question "what do you do?" is a central one in many people's lives.

Religion teaches that work is its own reward, and that it will lead a person toward the virtuous life, if not salvation. Work is the natural course of action a human follows to find his or her role, niche, position, and the shape of his or her soul. Therefore, steady employment, a life in which one's lot continually improves, sits as the cornerstone of rational and calculable human action. It may well be the cornerstone of physical and mental health as well. How can it not shape the nature of spirituality?

It is in the work and working that a person's consciousness takes shape and life reveals its meaning. For it is in working that a person believes he or she has made sense of life's mystery and has found reasonable ways to avoid vexing metaphysical questions. For the content and structure of a person's consciousness, story and spirit remain his or her work, or lack of it.

Faith and the World of Work. Wright points out that many contemporary Christians experience some discomfort when they seek to relate their faith to the world of work, especially the work of wealth creation in industry, commerce and other services (27). The workplace is perceived as a Godless and even immoral part of their human condition. As a result, many people feel the need to find consistency between their work and the rest of their life.

Christians should be affirmed in their work as a central part of the human condition for the very reasons that it involves wealth creation and the provision of services. The problem is that written materials do not offer enough concrete guidance regarding a comprehensive theology and spirituality of the modern world of work. a few notable exceptions include the core teaching of the series of Papal Encyclicals that have followed Rerum Novarem in 1891, Laborem Exercens in 1981, as well as Centesimus Annus in 1991, all of which contain much profound thinking about human work.