Drivers in Retaining Hotel Employees – A Case Study

With India capturing the attention of the world, the dynamics of India’s domestic and international markets and the implications for its hotel industry have been explored. The airline industry has paved the way for the improved infrastructure needed by India to ensure future tourism growth.

Domestic tourism explodes. To put the size of India’s gigantic domestic market into perspective, it equates to over one third of the total international arrivals received by all markets globally. While the current mid-market players have catered for domestic tourism for some time- this market has recently exploded and the demand is growing. As the domestic market continues to expand, the escalating economy provides the rising middle classes with increased disposable income. The arrivals of low-cost airlines and associated price wars have given domestic tourists more options than ever before.

Aesthetics versus individual value is a very lucrative debate in the human resource accounting. The initial phase deals with the production service life from his or her service towards the organization. A duty of person likelihood of turnover derived the second entity of the individual value corresponding with the employee’s skills and personal goals, directly related to the degree of job satisfaction that the employee feels. These are to translate manpower resources into a common denominator which may be based on organization goal and decision. These decisions pertain to individuals groups and the total human organization.

The consequence dependent variables get their reflection in the achievements of the organization or the total productive efficiency in terms of sales, cost, earnings, market performance etc, basically determining the value of people to organization.  It is an inevitable part of the organizational decision- making and the probability of the person staying on the job, directly related to the job satisfaction aspects.

Sometimes private agencies are appointed to conduct background checks on prospective employees who have access to their work profile and employment history; taking into consideration the changed conditions both inside and outside the organization to get big time into the space of valuation; an area which are well trenched, considering the fact that human assets are outside the concept of ownership and a changing definite methodology  to measure the changing characteristics of HR can be planned in a more productive manner.

Excelling at customer service provides unquestionably a competitive advantage. The dependable parameters to be exercised are product and, or service and the support services amalgamated along with each is a potential minefield if left untouched and marvelous opportunity if correctly addressed. Learn from the experience of a good service accomplished as truly satisfied customers reduce the marketing costs by happily promoting your brand product. They also repeat experience more often and tend to pay more according to statistics conducted. The customers are looking to you to provide solutions to their problems, challenges and concern, the key to identify the broad outline of the customers’ entity through well concerted efforts, focus the capability to satisfy, understand the basic requirement to be achieved through effective communication, integrity and trust. Thus the skill of good customer relationship building can accentuate the chances of making a sale. Companies have elevated their signature brand with high customer appeal to serve as a new corporate identity.

Given the diverse skill-sets available in the market, several sectors vie for the same talent pool as these people possess transferable skill-sets. Retaining critical talent is also becoming an increasing challenge for organizations as there are a vast number of organizations looking to recruit from the same talent pool. Employees are likely to leave organizations for even the slightest pay hike. Under the current economic climate of the country and the need for stabilization as well as innovation, organizations are finding it a challenge to develop potential leaders for the future; leaders who will be able to innovate and lead from the front and  spearhead a resurgence for these companies.  As one can see, the critical challenges lie within the employee talent lifecycle, signaling that increased focus and investment on talent initiatives is a necessity in order to gear up for future growth plans within all sectors

The perception of job satisfaction leads to job involvement in which employees start to involve in their work roles. Scott (2009) defines job involvement as the degree to which a person is identified psychologically with his/her work or the importance of work in his/her total self-image and the degree to which a person’s work performance affects his/her self-esteem. Job involvement creates a need for job autonomy and an employee starts to desire for empowerment. Because the perception of job satisfaction creates positive feelings/attitudes toward an organization, we should see an improvement in the perceived employee-desire for empowerment.

In addition, length of service increases work experience and expertise because CCSEs get more chances to perform different roles such as waiter/waitress, host/hostess, busboy, bar attendants, etc., in the restaurant industry. Thus, CCSEs start feeling a need for empowerment to handle customer service complaints, which in turn, enhances employee-desire for empowerment. McDermott, Laschinger, and Shamian (1995) found a positive relationship between work experience and empowerment. Therefore, employee-desire for empowerment should be positively related to job satisfaction among CCSEs and the work experience of CCSEs, regardless of level of cultural power distance. 

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 

Mitchell and colleagues ( p. 1104) describe job embeddedness as “a net or web in which an individual can become stuck”. Those who are highly embedded have many closely connected ties in both the community and the organization. These individuals are more likely to remain at a current job than those who have fewer connections, has three components.

John Meyer and Natalie Allen developed their Three Component Model of Commitment and published it in the 1991 “Human Resource Management Review.” The model explains that commitment to an organization is a psychological state, and that it has three distinct components that affect how employees feel about the organization that they work for.

The three components are:

1. Affection for your job (“affective commitment”).
2. Fear of loss (“continuance commitment”).
3. Sense of obligation to stay (“normative commitment”).

This model can be used to increase commitment and engagement in your team, while also helping people to experience a greater feeling of well-being and job satisfaction.

This sense of obligation can stem from several factors. You might feel that you should remain with your organization because it has invested money or time in your training. Or perhaps it provided a reward in advance, such as paying for your college tuition. This obligation can also result from your upbringing. For instance, your family might have stressed that you should stay loyal to your organization.

The hospitality industry suffers from a high-attrition rate at almost all levels. The attrition may cause decline in productivity, due to current economic uncertainty and corporate downsizings, when the impact of losing critical employees increases exponentially (Caplan and Teese, 1997; Ambrose, 1996; Noer, 1993). Whether hiring people at entry level or in senior management roles, there are many challenges. This increases the costs of hiring and training employees. It also presents difficulties in institutionalizing brand culture as new employees take time to adapt to brand practices. As the Indian economy is growing, there are direct foreign investments taking place that are generating more business and hence more jobs in India. In fact, there is significant expansion in all three sectors (retailing, banking and hospitality).

As a sample hotels of Gujarat were taken for study. In terms of domestic tourists, Gujarat is currently at 8th position with 3 crores tourist visiting the state every year, and in terms of international tourists it is ranked 16th in India with 2.25 lakh international tourists, averred state tourism secretary. As one of the objectives is of Gujarat tourism policy is to upgrade skills, knowledge & professionalism and promote employment opportunities for additional two million persons by 2025.

The drivers of retention/ job-embeddedness or married-to-the-job describes the personal characteristics and core job dimensions which are intrinsic in nature and how do they contribute to retention of employees (Basic model of retention of employees)

Personal Characteristics would include Gender, Education, Marital Status, Age,Tenure  >>>>>>            Retention of employees

Job dimensions would include Self-Esteem, (Organizational outcome),  Participation, Accountability, Growth Prospects, Feeling of accomplishment, Position profile internal & external, Interpersonal relationship, Working conditions, Involvement, Job Security, Amenities, Authority. The drivers would therefore reinforce the Work experience, Job Satisfaction and most importantly Employee-Desire for empowerment (EDFE) 

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 

The reasons to analyze this study are variable amongst different hotels, within departments of a hotel and within different levels of operational, executive and top management. Staying intention or married-to-the job is the sole interest of the individual to volunteer service to an organization can have a varied precision. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether the improvement in the degree of job satisfaction and work experience enhance the perceived employee-desire for empowerment of Customer-contact service employees CCSEs in the Indian hospitality industries. This was done by surveying a sample of restaurant services employees from the hotels of Gujarat. These employee perceptions and judgments are the basis of our findings.

The practical implication of this study is that employees who exhibit job satisfaction, and retain themselves within an organization or a group of hospitality institutions are more likely to heighten their desires to be empowered and resilient.

REFERENCES

• Mitchell, T.R., Holtom, B.C. & Lee, T.W. (2001a). How to keep your best employees: Developing an effective retention policy. Academy of Management Executive,15(4), 96–108
• Mitchell, T.R., Holtom, B.C., Lee, T.W., Sablynski, C.J. & Erez, M. (2001b). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1102–1121.
• Kumar, M. & Sankaran, S. (2007). Indian culture and the culture for TQM: a comparison. The TQM Magazine, 19(2), pp. 176-188.
• Locke, E.A. (1969). What is Job Satisfaction? Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 4, pp. 309-336.
• Hom, Peter W.; Terence R. Mitchell, Thomas W. Lee, Rodger W. Griffeth (2012). “Reviewing employee turnover: Focusing on proximal withdrawal states and an expanded criterion.”. Psychological Bulletin 138 (5): 831–858. doi:10.1037/a0027983. ISSN 1939-1455. Retrieved 2012-09-17.

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