Christina M. Scott-Young

The post-pandemic ‘Great Resignation’ has produced a heightened war for talent, especially in the hospitality industry, which historically has been challenged by unattractive working conditions, high staff turnover, and long-standing skills shortages. This chapter proposes employer branding, a strategic talent management practice, as a promising solution to enable hospitality organizations to attract both a larger and a more diversified pool of talent that is well-aligned with their mission and core values. Hospitality employers can win the war for talent by creating compelling employee value propositions that not only attract more people from their traditional sources but also meet the needs and values of more diverse non-traditional talent segments. A conceptual framework of employer branding and its theoretical underpinnings is presented in this chapter to unpack the concept and its related processes. Key content and stages of employer brand development, communication, and outcomes are specified in the framework, along with potential demographic identity moderators (e.g., age, gender, race, and carer status) of perceived brand attractiveness. An agenda for future research into the application and benefits of employer branding in hospitality talent attraction and recruitment is provided, along with a set of practical recommendations on employer branding for implementation by hospitality organizations.

The emergence of COVID-19 unleashed a series of shocks and stressors across industries and workplaces globally. The study outlined in this chapter explores the early impacts of the pandemic on the wellbeing of project management (PM) practitioners in the context of the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) construction industry. Drawing on the job demands and resources (JD-R) theory, this research utilises data gathered from open-ended responses to an online survey of 148 PM practitioners affiliated with two peak project management bodies: the Project Management Institute and the Australian Institute of Project Management. Contextualized thematic analysis revealed that most PM practitioners (61%) reported high levels of personal resilience during COVID-19, resulting from maintaining a positive mindset, improved work-life balance, and strong support networks. Many attributed their personal resilience to key organisational support mechanisms such as an intensified focus on health and wellbeing, maintaining connections with work teams, training and development opportunities, and job security. The reduced level of resilience in some respondents is attributed to the experience of lack of organisational support. Recommendations are made to assist organisations with crisis responsiveness, including providing increased support and flexible work arrangements to foster personal and career resilience.

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the talent challenges faced by hospitality organisations. This paper aims to propose a new concept – industry talent branding – which, is argued, offers industry stakeholders the opportunity to reduce such issues through working more collaboratively and strategically to magnify the pool in which individual organisations compete for talent.Design/methodology/approach: This paper proposes a conceptual framework of industry talent branding, based on brand equity theory, signalling theory and the employer branding literature.Findings: Industry talent branding opens a potentially new stream of research on how talent attraction and retention issues may be addressed. The authors propose that there is merit in moving beyond the organisational-level phenomenon of employer branding to industry talent branding through articulating a broader collaborative and strategic agenda to increase and widen the talent pool available to organisations.Research limitations/implications: The proposed framework offers the hospitality industry and its encompassing stakeholders a means to adopt a more proactive, collective and strategic approach to address long-standing talent challenges.Originality/value: This paper combines brand equity and signalling theories to develop the concept of industry talent branding, defined as a strategically curated, yet realistic impression of the employee value proposition (i.e. the benefits and rewards received by employees in return for their work performance) available within the industry, that by design will sustainably attract new employees into the industry and retain existing talent.

Purpose: As the youngest generation – Generation Z (Gen Z) – enters the workplace, there is a growing interest in this cohort's career needs and expectations. This paper explores the under-researched topic of Gen Z project management (Gen Z PM) professionals. In addition to shedding light on the factors that positively affect Gen Z PM professionals' early career-development phase, this research aims to identify specific organization-led practices that can foster sustainable early PM careers and so achieve greater workforce sustainability.Design/methodology/approach: Through the lens of the resource-based view (RBV), Gen Z PM professionals are considered critical resources that can help ensure workforce sustainability in project-based organizations (PBOs). Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 Gen Z PM professionals in Australia to explore the professionals' early career experiences and the organizational-support initiatives that facilitate positive experiences. The results were analyzed using thematic analysis.Findings: The results revealed that most Gen Z PMs experienced many challenges and a lack of support during their early career phase: Gen Z value (1) mentoring, (2) time for training and development, (3) showing support and guidance, (4) understand skill-gaps and (5) reasonable workloads. Through catering to these needs, PBOs can ensure better career sustainability for their young Gen Z talent and, therefore, greater workforce sustainability for the project profession.Originality/value: According to the career sustainability lens, PBOs play a significant role in ensuring that their valuable young PM talent are supported and retained in the profession. This research sheds light on what Gen Z PM professionals value in their early careers, which guided recommendations to better support this new generation of project professionals.

The construction industry is facing global skills shortages, with demand for certain roles (such as project managers) projected to outstrip supply over the next decade. With the industry serving as the backbone of the economy in many countries, this projected lack of skilled construction professionals poses dire consequences. This qualitative study investigated the early career transition of project management (PM) professionals into the construction industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 employer representatives and 20 early career professionals to ascertain the factors affecting the turnover intentions of early career PM professionals in construction. From the perspective of the early participants in this study, the major factors affecting their intentions to leave were related to workplace culture: (i) bad workplace behaviour; (ii) high levels of work-related stress; and (iii) poor work-life balance. While employers also noted that bullying and long working hours contributed to early career PM professionals’ intentions to leave the industry, they believed that the key contributing factor was that young employees were seeking higher salaries. These findings on the need to improve workplace culture have the potential to positively influence the issue of early career retention within the construction industry.

This study aimed to explore the personal and career resilience of project management practitioners working in the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries and their organizational support in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global pandemic offered a unique opportunity to explore resilience both as a state (using quantitative scales) and as a process (using qualitative responses) in the context of a shared transboundary disturbance in normal routines. A mixed methods approach was used to triangulate quantitative and qualitative data from an online survey which included established scales and open-ended questions. Informed by a total of 121 valid survey responses, hierarchical regression analysis of the scales provided insights into the relationship between career and personal resilience and how personal resilience contributed to greater career resilience and the ability to positively adapt to the pandemic’s consequences. The quantitative analysis was complemented by a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses to identify the forms of organizational support that were important for resilience building during the pandemic. Organizational resources, such as training, mentoring, increased communication, and greater management support fostered employee adaptation to the pandemic shock. Evidence-based recommendations are made for AEC organizations to facilitate better workforce preparation for future adversities through providing effective resilience-promoting support mechanisms. The findings add to the body of knowledge by providing a better understanding of the importance of personal and career resilience and the role of organizational support in the process of resilience-building during adversities.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the support that project managers receive from construction project-based organisations (PBOs) in their early careers.Design/methodology/approach: Fifty-seven semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with four key stakeholder groups including early career project managers (ECPMs) and employers from Australian construction PBOs, project management professional bodies, and university educators to ascertain (1) what organizations are currently doing and (2) what organizations can do better to support project managers in their early careers.Findings: Thematic analysis revealed that construction PBOs' responsibilities to ECPMs entailed: (1) providing mentoring, (2) offering training, (3) collaborating with universities, (4) giving time and feedback and (5) assigning manageable workloads. However, the findings revealed inconsistencies in companies enacting these responsibilities.Research limitations/implications: This research is limited to the context of the Australian construction industry, yet the findings shed valuable insights into the current practices of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs. From a strategic resource-based view perspective, ECPMs have the potential to serve as long-term valuable organizational resources. Failure to invest in new professional entrants constitutes an area of untapped competitive advantage.Practical implications: Construction PBOs looking to better support their ECPMs may use the results of this research as a guide to tailor their early career professional development initiatives.Originality/value: The study adopts a holistic, multi-vocal approach by interviewing four key stakeholder groups. The findings contribute new insights into the role of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs and the implications this has on the sustainability of their project management talent pool.