Mapping The Contract: An Exploration Of The Comparative Expectations Of Graduate Employees And Human Resource Managers Within The Hospitality, Leisure And Tourism Industries In The United Kingdom | Deirdre Kelley-Patterson & Christeen George

This research begins the process of mapping out Human Resource strategies appropriate to the needs of graduate employees. The perceptions and attitudes of recent graduates working in the Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure(HTL) sector and managers with responsibility for graduate development were explored. This study looks at the elements that make up the initial psychological contract of graduate employees on first encounter with the sector and the types of organisational Human Resource (HR) practices that are seen as meeting the needs of employees. It was found that, underlying the surface impression of the contract as essentially relational, there were important differences between graduate employees and management/organisational contract expectations. Graduate recruits had contractual expectations that can, generally, be described as transactional but employers have expectations that are both relational and transactional. A number of areas of misunderstanding are identified as are Human Resource practices which are seen as breaching the contract.