The hotel management as a field of techno activity scientific, must begin, sign a holistic, systemic and social approach, whereby the hotel, despite being an organization for profit, need and should contribute to developing society and continuous progress.
The challenge is to sensitize, disseminate and make hotel companies begin to develop corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, including managing the protection of the psychosocial well-being of its members, which in cascade results in positive effects for their family and for society as a whole.
Introduction
Tourism is one of the most important economic and social phenomena today. From being an activity that only a small group of relatively well-off people enjoyed at the beginning of this century, it became a mass phenomenon in the most developed countries in the 1970s and has now become accessible to larger groups of people. in most countries.
The management of tourism organizations, as a field of social activity, must start from the fact that society is a multidimensional continuum where each phenomenon, including the elaboration and implementation of management knowledge, makes sense if it is related to the whole.
Since 1990 and to date, the tourism sector in Cuba has been experiencing impressive growth rates, and is the one that contributes the most to the growth dynamics of the macro indicators of the country's economy.
In Cuba there are very few research studies published in scientific journals on the subject and, as in other countries, the prevention of psychosocial occupational risks in organizations in the tourism sector continues to focus on the individual and their coping strategies rather than on the organizational environment.
The success of the management of Cuban tourism organizations will not depend on natural resources, nor on financial resources, nor even on the technology available to them, but will be conditioned by human resources, and by the quality with which they are managed., understanding that they constitute one of the sources of sustainable competitive advantage, which everyone recognizes as a leading role for the favorable positioning of organizations operating in the sector, one of the most competitive internationally.
It is that people “are the only resource that differentiates the company that is successful from the one that does not. Everything else can be bought, learned or copied, ”according to (Vermont-Gaud, C, 1986).
Human resource management is a product of science and technology, one of the many that invade society today, so artificial and so built, as others of a material nature, that are seen every day and at all hours: the microwave oven, cell phone, television, Internet, spaceships, medications, cars, etc.
Development
The social study of human resource management is gaining ground against the traditional point of view, as a way of approaching the study of the products of science and technology.
The perspective of the social studies of science and technology is summarized by JA López Cerezo in a syllogism that is based on three main assumptions or premises from which a practical consequence is derived:
1. Technoscientific development is a social process like others.
2. Technoscientific change has important effects on social life and nature.
3. We share a basic democratic commitment.
The quality of human resource management means that as a component of it, the prevention of risks that affect the health and safety of workers is comprehensively treated.
The most prestigious international organizations in occupational health, such as the European Union Occupational Health Agency (ASLUE), International Labor Organization (ILO), World Health Organization (WHO), have been insisting on the need to adopt new approaches in the study of occupational risks and dealing with "new", or rather "emerging" risks, such as those of an ergonomic and psychosocial nature.
The significance of psychosocial risks becomes apparent and emerges strongly today.
Psychosocial risks are associated with those conditions:
• who are present in a work situation,
• who are directly related to the organization, content of the job and the performance of the task,
• who have the capacity to affect both the worker's well-being and the development of the job.
Thus, unfavorable psychosocial conditions are at the origin of the appearance both of certain inappropriate behaviors and attitudes in the development of work and of certain harmful consequences for the health and well-being of the worker.
Tourism is considered among the sectors most affected by the impacts of psychosocial risks, largely due to intense work rates, multiplicity of tasks, job instability, etc. The deployment of this management should be endowed with a process approach, which presupposes the realization of a sequence of phases and tasks to be carried out, so that the negative impacts derived from the presence of the agents are eliminated, mitigated and / or controlled. psychosocial risks in the professional family, this makes the exposure of workers high and the health disorders that result from it are severe.
New emerging risks are increasingly significant in the world of work. Some factors that help explain the emergence of these new risks are:
• Changes in the way of work: work is evolving from a predominantly physical activity to a mental activity.
• The growth of the services sector - one of the most representative sectors in the national panorama. In it, there are new forms of subcontracting, outsourcing or organization in the form of a network that limits the hierarchy and increases the complexity of labor relations.
• They are risks with a hidden incidence: they have always existed but they do not have direct significance in the accident figures, so they have not been considered a priority.
This means including in the design and monitoring of the processes that produce impacts. Only in this way can the hotel's management be optimized, and ensure protection against the risks that are generated in it:
• to the environment (not only natural, but heritage and cultural).
• to people who work.
• to people who consume the services offered.
In summary, the management of psychosocial occupational risks in a hotel from a social perspective means assuming the complexity, multi-causality and diversity of the impacts of the phenomenon under study, and it translates into:
• A better attitude of workers towards factors that put their health at risk; greater and more responsible participation of workers in management to preserve their health; an improvement in the quality of life of workers; and an improvement in the performance of the organization.
Hotel companies should begin to develop corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, including managing the protection of the psychosocial well-being of their members, to obtain positive effects for the worker, the family, the hotel and for society. as a whole.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as "a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being, and not just the absence of disease or illness."
According to Almirall (in Noack and Kaznachev, 1996), it is necessary to retake the systemic approach to conceptualize the phenomenon of health and they propose that this is a state where there is a balanced productive balance between this state and other systems or subsystems, such as an organ, another person, social group or community. Furthermore, it is a process of conservation and development of man's biological and psychological, physiological and psychological capacities, his optimal working capacity and adequate social activity during the maximum prolongation of life.
The systemic approach requires considering mental health, and in relation to it, the obligation that work facilitates the development of the realization of human potential, which characterizes us as human beings and influences the achievement of the objectives of the organization.
Why are these risks and the harm they cause to workers called psychosocial?
In the first place, they are psycho, because they manifest themselves in the first instance as alterations of behavior, or cognitive, or mood of workers, which are usually followed by dysfunctions, anomalies or injuries of a physiological nature.
Secondly, they are social, because their origin, as has already been explained, is in certain work conditions that are the interactions with other people themselves, or are the consequence of said interactions (all the circumstances that were mentioned in the previous section, such as work organization, management model, consideration for workers, etc., are in one way or another because someone - usually the company management - has defined them, or at least consented to them). They are also social, not only in their origin, but also in their consequences, since they affect workers, as well as individually, as a whole, as a social structure that constitutes all workforce.
The treatment, for a few years, of psychosocial risks within labor legislation and more specifically within the prevention of occupational risks, has taken a turn. It is no longer about events and phenomena that occur sporadically and accidentally and that affect only the individual who suffers from them, but rather problems about which there is an obligation of prevention on the part of the company, examining the factors that may have caused them, and to the extent possible, considering measures that can help protect the health of affected people and the organization.
The ILO / WHO Occupational Medicine in 1984 defines psychosocial risk factors as: “Those interactions between work, the environment, job satisfaction, organizational conditions and worker capabilities, needs, culture, considerations personal outside work that through perceptions and experiences can influence health, and performance and job satisfaction.
These interactions could exert a harmful influence on the health of workers through their perceptions and experience ”(Velásquez, M., 2008), as argued by Torres, I. (2009) in the following figure:
When present, negative organizational factors can generate high levels of stress that lead to worker illness.
Affected people may present psychic manifestations such as fatigue, anxiety, depression and / or physiological disturbances of different systems, physical fatigue, or somatization symptoms.
Psychosocial risk factors are summarized in three main groups, according to their origin:
1. The group of factors related to the general organization.
2. The group of factors related to the specific task of the worker.
3. The group of factors related to the aspects related to social interactions.
The concept of psychosocial factors also extends to the environment outside the organization (for example, domestic demands and for access to basic resources, such as income, housing, food, transportation, etc.), and to aspects of the individual (for example, personality and attitudes) that can influence the appearance of stress at work.
Although exposure to psychosocial risk factors at work is associated with multiple health disorders, its prevention continues to be a pending issue, particularly in Cuban theory and practice, since derived disorders that other laws consider as occupational diseases have not yet they are recognized as such in Cuba.
In Cuba, as in other countries, prevention continues to focus on the individual and their coping strategies rather than on the psychosocial environment of work.
In social studies of science and technology, occupational risks of a psychosocial type in the organization are aspects to consider:
• Human resource management, as a product of technoscience, which is an artifact, as built and as artificial as other gadgets that can be seen and touched. The distribution of hierarchies, the organization of functions among the different actors (employees, professionals, supervisors and managers), the distribution and evaluation of work, etc., are effects of technoscience that produce notable impacts on the forms of life of human beings.
Managing psychosocial risks in waitresses in tourist facilities from a social perspective is doing it:
From the position expressed by López Cerezo, José A and Luján, José L (2000), in which they are distinguished:
- the technical dimension of risk: The classic one that explains that risk is the product of the probability of damage due to its magnitude. For example, the probability that the chambermaid is the victim of organizational measures intentionally aimed at causing her harm, due to the severity of the impact of these measures on her psychosocial health.
- the psychological dimension of risk: The distortion in perceptions about risk, which accounts for biases in risk attitudes and that generate inappropriate - insufficient or excessive - reactions to evaluate or prevent them. For example, the underestimation of the effects that repeated verbal aggressions and invasions of the “private life” of the chambermaids of a tourist facility can lead to their behavior.
- the sociological dimension of risk: The concrete historical and cultural dimension of risks. For example, the consumption of alcohol by the waitresses of a tourist facility, as effects of exposure at work to psychosocial factors, which they cannot handle assertively, has ceased to be a vice and a scourge to constitute a disease.
Running the risk factors:
- in the integrity of its typology, that is, those of a biological, chemical, physical and psychosocial type.
- in the integrity and multidimensionality of the impacts that the housekeeping work practices generate (on the different dimensions of management, among which are: ethics, the environment, quality, health and safety at work, hygiene and food safety, corporate social responsibility, psychosocial, etc.
Considering the “conflict approach”, that is, there is no space where the conflict does not manifest itself, and the management of psychosocial risks in the activity of the waitresses of the tourist facility.
Assuming the "actors' approach", that is, of the interaction:
- between the chambermaids,
- between the chambermaids, their supervisors, housekeeper and other actors in the hotel accommodation process,
- between the chambermaids and the groups working in the other processes of the hotel,
- between the maids and the hotel,
- between the hotel and its surroundings.
Based on the fact that when talking about damage to the “well-being” of workers in tourist facilities, all dimensions of this category are covered, within the specific historical manifestation that it has in each society.
Contributing through education so that the workers of the tourist facilities are able to participate in a critical, active and conscious way in the identification of the psychosocial risks that endanger their well-being, and in the adoption of measures to reduce their impacts, incorporating as own resources, appropriate reactions and behaviors against risk factors.
Subscribing to the process approach for the management of an organization, which requires that the hotel be represented as a map of interrelated processes, and that it be managed considering all the components of the Management System.
It is clear that in the housekeeper department, as it is a place of customer service, its direct borrowers must involve a good part of their time in problems and concerns of tourists (complaints and dissatisfactions with the experience they are living, anxieties that move from their countries of origin, etc.), and tourists come loaded with very different feelings. Therefore, as can be seen, a considerable part of the demands imposed on workers are of a psychosocial nature.
There are also a series of factors, related to work organization, that can significantly influence the appearance of work stress, among which are: excessive work rate, work overload, monotony, repetitiveness, stiffness workforce, leadership and supervisory style, gender-specific roles at work, and demands for sexual favors.
Conclusions
Unfavorable psychosocial conditions are at the origin of the appearance of both certain inappropriate behaviors and attitudes in the development of work, as well as certain harmful consequences for the health and well-being of waitresses in tourist facilities.
The transformation of the psychosocial reality in the work of the waitresses in the hotel facilities, requires that the subjects that make up the labor group, participate actively, responsibly and critically in the management of occupational risks of a psychosocial type, as a particular scenario of application of science and technology to human resource management.
Bibliography
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3. Kaznachev, Noacky. Psychosocial factors related to mental health. Taken from: http://www.cienciaytrabajo.cl, 1996.
4. López Cerezo, José Antonio. Risk science and politics / José Antonio López Cerezo, José Luís Luján. -Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000. -213 p.
5. Torres Guerra, Idier. Psychosocial risk management at work… Taken from: http://www.saludocupacional.com.co, noviembre2009.
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