Pushkar Hotels and the Employment Flexibility Conundrum

Animesh Bahadur; Happy; Amol S. Dhaigude

Animesh Bahadur

T A Pai Management Institute, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru, India

Happy Paul

Indian Institute of Management Vishakhapatnam, Visakhapatnam, India

Amol S. Dhaigude

S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai, India

Volume 16: 2023, pp. 69-84; ABSTRACT

The case highlights the dilemma Mr. Aravind, VP-HR at Pushkar Hotels, which runs a chain of hotels under the "Atithi" brand all across India. He had been asked to reduce the number of on-roll staff even in critical positions. Along with some of his managers, they were looking for increased flexibility in the wake of major losses that the hotel chain had faced post pandemic. While Arvind well understood and appreciated the "need for survival", what worried him the most was what this would imply for the "brand" Pushkar, especially in terms of service quality and employee commitment. The case traces the challenges of implementing employment flexibility within the service sector, and in the process, highlights how the system of low cost and efficiency based on flexibility created new issues while balancing the interests of various stakeholders.
Keywords: service quality, contract workers, COVID 19, travel and tourism, human resource planning