Consider this stark fact: In a COVID-19 environment, you are even more likely to crash into the ranks of the unemployed with no safety net, and it could happen repeatedly. The impact of COVID-19 has been swift, widespread, and lasting for global hospitality.

More specifically, candour about career issues is in short supply at many hospitality companies in 2020. Bottom line: career survival is up to you – not the company. Re-consider yourself to be “self-employed”, responsible for your own career development, CEO of YOU, Inc.

This proven career marketing approach is based on an underlying assumption that would have been considered heresy 10 years ago. Key to sound career management and success in a post COVID-19 period is grounded in self-reliance.

In a distant paternalistic past, hospitality companies assumed responsibility for the career paths and growth of their employees. The company determined to what position, and at what speed, people would advance. That approach worked reasonably well in the corporate climate of the last three decades. However, the industry disruptions of 2001, 2007, and 2020 have rendered this approach often unworkable and even dangerous for the employee and their personal career path.

Acquisitions, rapid growth, and downsizing have left many companies unable to deliver on the implicit career promises made to their employees. Hospitality organisations find themselves in the painful position of having to renege on career mobility opportunities, employees had come to expect.

Although the primary and final responsibility for career development rests with employees, the company has complementary responsibilities. The company is responsible for communicating to employees where it wants to go and how it plans to get there (corporate strategy), providing employees with as much information about the business as possible, and responding to the career initiatives of the employees with candid, complete information.

I would suggest that this approach to career management is best summed up as follows: assign employees the responsibility for managing their own careers; then provide the career plan support they need to do it. This support takes different forms in different companies but usually contains several core components. The company and the employee become partners in career development.

So, what is a career? The word “career” can be viewed from a number of different perspectives. From one perspective a career is a sequence of positions occupied by a person during the course of a lifetime. This is the objective career.

From another perspective, a career consists of a sense of where you aim to be in your work life. This is the subjective career. This is held together by a self-concept that consists of (1) perceive talents and abilities, (2) basic values, and (3) career motives and needs.

Both of these perspectives, objective and subjective, focus on the individual. Both assume that people have some degree of control over their career paths and they can manipulate opportunities in order to maximise the success and satisfaction derived from their careers.

They assume further that HR departments should recognise career stages and assist people with the development tasks they face at each stage. Career planning is important because the consequences of career success or failure are linked closely to each individual’s self-concept, identity, and satisfaction with career and life.

Given the downsizing mentality that has characterized most hospitality organisations over the past few years, career development and planning have been deemphasised, as employees wondered if they would even have jobs, much less careers. Companies that ignore career issues are mistaken if they think those issues will somehow go away. They won’t. Here are some reasons why:

1.     Rising concerns for quality of work life and for the personal life planning.

2.     Pressures to expand workforce diversity throughout all levels of an organisation.

3.     Rising educational levels and occupational aspirations.

4.     Post COVID-19, a slow economic growth and reduced opportunities for advancement.

A career is not something that should be left to chance. Instead, in the evolving world of work, it should be shaped and managed more by you rather than the organisation. 

How does “career success” in a post COVID-19 world look like? Adopting a self-reliance approach, I will explore how to market effectively for hospitality professionals. I will discuss this next week in my follow-up article to self-reliance for career management in global hospitality.

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