Chapter 9: Leadership and HRM Strategies in Hotel Industry for Building Organizational Commitment and Emotional Well-being of Employees in the COVID-19 Crisis

This chapter aims to evaluate the impact of COVID- 19 on the emotional well-being and organizational commitment of employees in the hotel industry. The chapter also analyses whether the employees are satisfied with the leadership and human resource management strategies of their management to combat the challenges posed by the pandemic. Further, an attempt has been made to assess the changes brought about by the hotels in their health and safety policies to meet the risks of the crisis. A structured questionnaire based on Likert’s 5-point scale was used to assess the impact of COVID- 19 on the jobs, salary, employee commitment, health, hygiene, and safety policies of the hotels together with the mental and emotional well-being and work performance of the employees in this sector. Data was collected from 300 employees working in four and five-star hotels. One sample t-test was applied to test the hypothesis of the study.  Cronbach's Alpha was applied on 30 items to check the reliability of the questionnaire. Analysis revealed that employees of the hotel industry are satisfied with leadership strategy and the HRM practices adopted by the hotel for managing the COVID-19 crisis. It has been found that hotels have adopted appropriate safety measures to safeguard against the threats of COVID-19. Employees in the hotel industry are significantly affected by the threats caused by the coronavirus, as the mean score for the emotional well-being factor was significantly low. The organizational commitment of employees has been impacted due to apprehensions about job security and uncertainty associated with their compensation. The sample mean for organizational commitment was significantly low, which shows employees’ commitment was not very high. This chapter is confined to four-star and five-star hotels in India. Hence, the results cannot be generalized to hotels outside the selected category. Moreover, this research is based on a quantitative methodology. The validity of the results can be increased by adopting qualitative tools such as in-depth interviews and focus groups. This chapter has contributed a novel perspective to the literature as it seeks to analyze the changes incorporated in the leadership and human resource strategies of the hotel industry in the wake of COVID-19. Additionally, the study has focussed on assessing the emotional health and organizational commitment of hotel employees during the pandemic and the strategies designed to combat the adverse effect of the present crisis.