Hoteliers, key players in the country's tourism industry, are back with their old lament: shortage of staff. And they come with a ready-made but an old plea: permit them to employ foreigners.
Hoteliers must realise by now that employing foreigners is neither a cure for them nor the country. At best, importing foreign labour is a stop-gap measure. It is time for Malaysian hoteliers to give the issue of persistent staff shortage a deep think, beginning with the business model.
Doing what everybody in the sector has been doing isn't going to lure the local labour force. What it does, though, is make the hoteliers prisoners to their business model. They must break free from being trapped in such mind-forged manacles.
But how? Take housekeeping jobs. As highlighted by the New Sunday Times, the monthly pay for beginners is between RM1,200 and RM1,500. The starting salary doesn't even meet the mandated minimum wage. Would foreign workers be attracted to work for hotels that pay such low wages? If they do come, they aren't going to stay for long.
To be blunt, hoteliers who pay their workers such a low salary don't have the licence to noisily lament about housekeepers moving to Singapore for three times the pay.
Malaysian Tourist Guides Council president Jimmy Leong put it best to the New Sunday Times: "If wages continue to lag, it's only natural that workers will seek-out higher paying opportunities elsewhere, especially in Singapore." Do not get us wrong. We are not suggesting that Malaysian hoteliers, especially those in Johor, at least match what the hoteliers in Singapore are paying. Not at all.
What we are saying is for hoteliers to drop the one-size-fits-all approach to what the human resource-types call the 3Rs: recruitment, reward and retention. Somewhere along the chain of the 3Rs lies the creative distinction with a difference for our Malaysian hoteliers.
Keeping to our example of housekeeping jobs, not all housekeepers are looking to be paid RM6,000, with Singapore's exchange rate thrown in. They are certainly looking for less than that but more elsewhere in the reward to warrant their retention.
To seek to locate the "more" is how our hoteliers can help themselves rather than hollering for help from the government everytime they face a business problem.
Yes, there are circumstances which warrant Putrajaya's help. One such was during the Covid-19 epidemic. We do not want to belittle the role played by foreign labour in our economy.
For several years, they have moved certain industries such as the oil palm plantation forward, even on low wages. But at what cost to the industries and the country?
Low wages for long are detrimental to the hotel business, with its domino effect eventually impacting Malaysia's tourism industry. Hoteliers may not want to admit this, but there is a link between how hoteliers compensate their staff and what hospitality industry-types call guest experience.
We say it again. The hotel sector is badly in need of competitive compensation packages. What is on offer now is pushing its staff to go elsewhere. There is no need for the hoteliers to be employers of choice. All they have to offer is what will lure those they consider employees of choice. Give it a deep think.