Identifying Reasons For Employee Turnover In The Australian Hotel Industry

Research Problem and Justification

Human resources are probably the most vital resource of an organisation. The organisation has to invest time, effort and resources to develop them, however, if they leave the job it becomes a major concern for the employer (Shaikh & Zahid, 2016). The discussed process is called as employee turnover. One of the industry that is facing the employee turnover massively is the hotel industry. Hence, the proposed study is aimed at identifying the reasons for the employee turnover in hotel industry.

1.1 Research Problem and Justification

One of the most prominent concern that is being faced by the employers is the challenge of employee turnover. It not just impacts the organisation instantly but also affects their sustainability. The costs incurred on hiring, training and developing new skills consumes time, effort and resources. Furthermore, the employee turnover rate in the hotel industry is very high which is emerging as a global concern. There are several reasons for the turnover but a proper assessment over them is incomplete or improperly defined. Hence, it is of great prominence that attention over the employee turnover be given so that a proper framework for the mitigation of the causes of employee turnover can be developed.

1.2 Research Aim

The aim of the paper is to identify the reasons that lead to employee turnover in the hotel industry. It will be supported by certain objectives that have been listed below along with the primary aim of the paper:

RA: To identify the reasons that lead to employee turnover in Hotel Industry.

RQ1: To identify the employee turnover rate in Australian Hotel Industry.

RQ2: To identify potential measures that are capable of mitigating the employee turnover rate.

1.3 Research Questions

RQ1. What are the employee turnover rates in the Australian hotel industry?

RQ2. What are the possible reasons behind the employee turnover in the Australian hotel industry?

RQ3. What are the possible solutions and the mode of implementation of them in in the Australian hotel industry?

Employee turnover is the phenomenon that represents the employee leaving their job and moving onto other opportunities (Subramanian & Shin, 2013). The turnover is represented as percentage or number of employees leaving the job and are replaced with other employees. The identification of the discussed factor can prove to be beneficial for the employers as they will be able to understand the investments that they are spending on the hiring, training and development process (Lin et al., 2017).

The identification can help them to change their strategic plan and make it more intruding with the objective of retaining employees for a longer period of time or to reduce their cost in hiring by hiring freelancers for the organisational purpose (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). However, freelancers are not the solution in hospitality industry because here, the employees are bound to communicate with the customers directly.

The direct communication demands near perfect verbal and non-verbal communication for customer satisfaction which is very difficult without proper training and development. Furthermore, hospitality industry faces a lot of job stress and the misbehaving of the customers with employee is also a very common scenario (Kim, & Fernandez, 2017). All of these adds to a high employee turnover rate in the hospitality industry and of all the hospitality industry it is highest in the hotel industry.

Research Aim

According to Weber et al., (2013), challenges with the hotel industry are extensive and the most prominent of them is attracting skilled labour and the second is employee turnover. Both of the challenges adds to the expenditure of the industry as they have to invest in human capital and their quality and training. According to Han, Bonn & Cho, (2016), the employee turnover is dominated by underestimating of the employees in context with the customers, low wages and similar other reason.

However, on the contrary, Qiu et al., (2015), states that better job opportunity and self-humiliation are the most prominent force that leads to the high employee turnover ratio in the hotel industry. While, Santhanam et al., (2018), have stated that the employee turnover is dominated by the lack of training and chance to learn new things. Similarly, different scholars and studies have concluded their study over the employee turnover in the hospitality industry on different contexts. No similar identification has been identified (Kalidass, & Bahron, 2015). Furthermore, the focus on hotel industry is also very limited and most of the identified researches focuses on the hospitality industry or a broader aspect. An in-depth assessment of the causes that leads to the employee turnover is missing in the literature review.

2.1 Identified Gap

Hence, to summarise it would be justified to state that employee turnover is one of the most assessed topic and have been studies multiple time by different scholar or scholars and organisations. However, no conclusive reasons have been identified and furthermore, the emphasise in most of the studies and researches have been given to the hospitality industry and a proper assessment of the hotel industry is missing.

The gap in literature needs to be filled because it has been identified that hotel industry is one of the industry that is heavily suffering from the challenge posed by employee turnover and without proper assessment over the cause for the high rate, the identification of solution is not feasible. Hence, to propose potential solution it is crucial to identify the cause so that adequate and feasible solutions can be proposed.

3 Research Plan

The proposed study will adopt interpretivism research philosophy. The reason for the selection of the philosophy can be justified by the fact that there are studies available on the employee turnover as identified in the literature review. However, an in-depth analysis of the same is missing which is greatly supported by the adopted philosophy. The philosophy is also known as the qualitative research philosophy and hence, the data collected for the discussed paper will be qualitative in nature (Hom et al., 2017).

Additionally, secondary data will also be collected for the paper because of the first RQ that can be answered through the secondary sources such as government publications. The secondary data will be collected from https://lmip.gov.au/ ; https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2018/sp-so-2018-10-05.html ; https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/labour-market-and-related-payments-monthly-profile-publications along with different literary works that had been assessed in the past over the topic to support the findings. Along with the literary works blogs and articles from reliable sources will also be considered as part of the secondary data (Huang, et al., 2017). The secondary and reliable sources in discussion are the newspaper and magazine articles, company blogs and others. Government notification, policy drafts and others can also be considered as part of the secondary source.

Research Questions

3.1 Research Variables

In the Australian hotel industry, the absence of the required soft skills is a significant barrier for the employees in performing to the desired level of expectation (Weber et al., 2013). Apart from this, the organizational culture and the work environment of many of the Australian hotels are observed to be a significant reason behind the creation of the job stress for the employees (Subramanian & Shin, 2013). In response to these causes of employee turnover in the Australian hotel industry, the impact of the rewards is significant (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). Other variables will be identified in the primary literature review that will be done before data collection and analysis and will be discussed in the final report.

3.2 Data Collection and Analysis

The secondary data will be collected through online search that will most prominently involve use of Google Scholar search engine which is home for peer reviewed article and journals. The primary qualitative data will be collected through interviews that will be done with the use of VoIP (Voice over IP). The form of VoIP may be email, IM, video call or audio call depending upon the comfort of the respondents. The sample size for the qualitative data collection will be 15 and the population will be a mix of both hotel industries professional and owners. The respondents will be communicated though emails and face to face if they are known individuals (Tenopir et al., 2014). The email will consist a brief draft about the aim, purpose and scope of the study.  

Post collection of the data, the data will be analysed based on ground theory approach and critical thinking. The statistical data collected from the secondary sources will be analysed using the IBM SPSS tool. Depending upon the collected data, inferential analysis, differential analysis will be conducted. If the data will need inferential analysis then ANOVA, T Test or correlation will be adopted. In case of the descriptive data, frequency tables, cross tabulations and other descriptive formats will be adopted to summarise and conclude on the data. If additional data analysis tool or techniques adopted, then it will be mentioned in the final report.

3.3 Schedule

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Reasons for employee turnover in Hotel Industry	40 days	Wed 28-11-18	Tue 22-01-19
Starting Phase	7 days	Wed 28-11-18	Thu 06-12-18
Assessment over Topic	2 days	Wed 28-11-18	Thu 29-11-18
Assessment over Subject	1 day	Fri 30-11-18	Fri 30-11-18	2
Minor Literature Review	3 days	Mon 03-12-18	Wed 05-12-18	3
Research Objectives Development	1 day	Thu 06-12-18	Thu 06-12-18	4
Planning Phase	5 days	Thu 06-12-18	Wed 12-12-18
Budgeting	1 day	Thu 06-12-18	Thu 06-12-18	4
Risk Assessment	3 days	Fri 07-12-18	Tue 11-12-18	7
Scheduling	1 day	Wed 12-12-18	Wed 12-12-18	8
Developing Research Question	3 days	Fri 07-12-18	Tue 11-12-18	4,5
Proposal Submission	0 days	Tue 11-12-18	Tue 11-12-18	10
Execution Phase	17 days	Wed 12-12-18	Thu 03-01-19
Major Literature Review	7 days	Wed 12-12-18	Thu 20-12-18	11
Secondary Data Collection	3 days	Fri 21-12-18	Tue 25-12-18	13
Determination of Patterns from Review	3 days	Wed 26-12-18	Fri 28-12-18	13,14
Qualitative Data collection	1 day	Mon 31-12-18	Mon 31-12-18	15
Qualitative Data Analysis	3 days	Tue 01-01-19	Thu 03-01-19	16
Analysis Phase	12 days	Tue 01-01-19	Wed 16-01-19
Summarising Findings	6 days	Tue 01-01-19	Tue 08-01-19	11,16,13
Discussion	2 days	Wed 09-01-19	Thu 10-01-19	19
Concluding	1 day	Fri 11-01-19	Fri 11-01-19	20
Report Development	3 days	Mon 14-01-19	Wed 16-01-19	21
Report Completed	0 days	Fri 11-01-19	Fri 11-01-19	21
Closure	4 days	Thu 17-01-19	Tue 22-01-19
Report Submission	1 day	Thu 17-01-19	Thu 17-01-19	22
Oral Presentation	3 days	Fri 18-01-19	Tue 22-01-19	25

Han, S. J., Bonn, M. A., & Cho, M. (2016). The relationship between customer incivility, restaurant frontline service employee burnout and turnover intention. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, 97-106.

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530.

Huang, Y. H., Lee, J., McFadden, A. C., Murphy, L. A., Robertson, M. M., Cheung, J. H., & Zohar, D. (2016). Beyond safety outcomes: An investigation of the impact of safety climate on job satisfaction, employee engagement and turnover using social exchange theory as the theoretical framework. Applied ergonomics, 55, 248-257.

Kalidass, A., & Bahron, A. (2015). The relationship between perceived supervisor support, perceived organizational support, organizational commitment and employee turnover intention. International Journal of Business Administration, 6(5), 82.

Kim, S. Y., & Fernandez, S. (2017). Employee empowerment and turnover intention in the US federal bureaucracy. The American Review of Public Administration, 47(1), 4-22.

Lin, L., Baur, J., Ivers, J. J., & Buckley, M. R. (2017). Employee-Employer Turnover Voluntariness Typology and Third-Party Involvement in Turnover. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 10431). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.

Qiu, H., Haobin Ye, B., Hung, K., & York, Q. Y. (2015). Exploring antecedents of employee turnover Intention–evidence of China’s hotel industry. Journal of China Tourism Research, 11(1), 53-66.

Santhanam, N., Kamalanabhan, T. J., Dyaram, L., & Ziegler, H. (2018). Examining the moderating effects of organizational identification between human resource practices and employee turnover intentions in Indian hospitality industry. GSTF Journal on Business Review (GBR), 4(1).

Shaikh, T., & Zahid, M. (2016). Retention Strategies to Increase Organizational Commitment and Reduce Employee Turnover in Hospitality Sector of Karachi, Pakistan.

Subramanian, I. D., & Shin, Y. N. (2013). Perceived organizational climate and turnover intention of employees in the hotel industry. World Applied Sciences Journal, 22(12), 1751-1759.

Tenopir, C., Sandusky, R. J., Allard, S., & Birch, B. (2014). Research data management services in academic research libraries and perceptions of librarians. Library & Information Science Research, 36(2), 84-90.

Terera, S. R., & Ngirande, H. (2014). The impact of rewards on job satisfaction and employee retention. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(1), 481.

Weber, M. R., Crawford, A., Lee, J., & Dennison, D. (2013). An exploratory analysis of soft skill competencies needed for the hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 12(4), 313-332.