Competencies of Staff in Hospitality Service Units in University of Cape Coast and University of Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the profile of staff and identify the competencies perceived to be relevant for hospitality operations, in order to ascertain human resource factors that need improvement for successful service operations. The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional survey by recruiting staff working in various hospitality units owned and operated by the University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the University of Ghana (UG) to explore the required competencies and identify the potential gaps between the two universities. The convenience sampling was used to draw a total of 157 hospitality employees (response rate of 69.0%, made up 63 from UCC and 94 from UG) for the study. A survey questionnaire was designed and used to collect data for the research. The quantitative data were analysed using frequencies, percentages, means of means, standard deviations, Kruskal-Wallis H test and Mann- Whitney U test. The findings revealed that by proportion, the majority (43.3%) were aged 26-30 years and were mostly female (71.3%). Overall, the findings indicate that the employees considered knowledge in hospitality operations as most important, followed by conceptual and human resource knowledge. In terms of skills, respondents considered “soft skills” (human resource, conceptual, social and organisational skills) as more important than “hard skills” (administrative and technical skills). For attitude, there was strong inclination towards positive attitude to work, with only three significant differences between the two universities (p< .05). It is recommended that the background of employees being engaged to run hospitality service units in public universities should be critical looked at before posting or recruiting, as well as engaging these unit staff in future training and development