Impact Of Demographic Factors On Job Satisfaction In The Hospitality And Tourism Industry

Background of the Research

Discuss about the Job Satisfaction.
 

In Australia, the hospitality and tourism industry is an important sector. However, labor shortage is a problem of this industry. This is mainly because of the skill gap. The existing labor force does not fulfill the requirement of this industry (Beesley and Davidson 2013). Therefore, it requires proper training to overcome the problem. However, with proper training when the workers got the job, it is important to analyze how their performance gets affected. This research proposal is the basic approach in terms of ensuring any research that is implemented is cost effectively, timely and relevant. Thus, this particular research would allow for developing a complete research proposal including all the stages of the process of research. This research is simply analyzed the based on the opportunity or the problem for the investigation recognized in the hospital and tourism industry. The paper has set the objective of the research and formulated the research questions. This research has also applied several research frameworks and theories in order to accomplish the objectives of this research, related to the hospitality industry and job satisfaction with respect to demographic of the workers. This proposal will analyze the collected data regarding the job satisfaction of the housekeepers across this industry. The data analysis focus on answering the question formulated in the research. The proposal will try to provide an expected outcome from the data analysis. At the end, it will conclude by summarizing the overall findings.

Initially, the tourism and hospitality industry has not only profound significance to the economy of Australia (8.7 % of GDP 2011-12) but also this industry is the larger employer in that country (5.6 % of the labour force) (Tourism Research Australia 2013). Secondly, this particular study or research has pursued for evaluating this relationship because it shapes the practice of housekeeping human resource management in the light of significant relationship between the numerous strategies of sector profit, job commitment, service quality, training as well as employee retention. This industry tend to emphasize inappropriately on the enhancement of the adequate opportunities of training programmes, sustainable benefit schemes or the sound working incentives inadequately. These elements constitute undeniably a crucial factor in the tourism and hospitality industry (Belias and Koustelios 2014). Affecting the consequences adversely arise whenever these players fails for addressing these particular elements. Training in the tourism and hospitality, for instance, immensely pays off in order to offset in the employee availability’s resultant effects and the employee exit’s higher costs.

Research Aim

The major aim of this particular research is to examine in what way, the demographics of the hotel industry in Australia have an impact on the job commitment as well as job satisfaction in the house sector of hotel and tourism industry. On the other hand, this study is also aimed to demonstrate the way through which the type of training influence positively the job commitment as well as job satisfaction with the training for the housekeeping employees in the hotel and tourism industry.

There are several objectives of this particular research. These are as follows:

• To characterize the organizations of house-keeping as well as specifically the human resource management.
• To evaluate and assess the employee turnover extent in this particular business sector
• To assess the impact of the training for the employees on the job commitment and satisfaction achieved for the employees of the housekeeping services.

Research questions in this study would mainly specify the research problems identified in this research. The two major research questions those can be specified in this study are as follows:

• How do the demographics of the hotel industry such as job qualifications, work experience, education attained, gender and age have an impact on the job satisfaction and commitment in the house-keeping sector?
• How does type of training positively affect the job commitment and satisfaction with the training for the employees of the housekeeping services? 

This particular industry is a wide classification of fields inside the service industry that incorporates cruise line, transportation, theme parks, event planning, lodging as well as any other additional field inside the tourism industry (Ouko 2012). It is a multibillion-dollar industry, which actually depends on the disposable income and leisure time availability. The unit of hospitality like an amusement park, hotel or a restaurant is comprised of several groups like direct operations and facility maintenance. The direct operations of this industry incorporate the human resources, housekeepers, servers, marketing, management, bartenders, kitchen workers, and porters and so on.

The backbone of the hospital industry consists of the customer service or a concept that is shared by all the segments of this hospitality and tourism industry. There are three major categories of hospitality industry. These are as follows:

Food and Beverage – Food and Beverage reigns supreme in the hospitality industry. It is the biggest hospitality industry element, which can take the form of catering establishments, fast food eateries, high-end restaurants and other manifestations (Boella and Goss-Turner 2013). The trade of food and beverage can function symbiotically as the component of the other businesses like in movie theatres or bowling alleys. Food and beverage can enhance dramatically the entire guest experience by giving an offer of first-class customer and outstanding food service.

Accommodations –Breakfast, hotel and bed firms and other places who offer lodging represent a wide hospitality industry segment. Several kinds of businesses run the gamut to the campgrounds and hostels from extravagant resorts. The focus of the hospitality business on giving lodging should integrate attentive, efficiency and comfort customer service as the foundation.

Research Objectives

Travel and Tourism – Another major hospitality business segment encompasses transportation. It incorporates the staff, cruise ships, trains and airlines for each. Cruise staff and Flight attendants function as the hoteliers and food servers in their efforts for providing drink or food and a comfortable experience.

To remain successful in the competitive in the market, it is necessary for the hospitality and tourism industry to improve the level of job satisfaction. The role of the human resource management is to maintain the satisfaction level and to improve it. They apply proper measures to improve the job satisfaction level and they try to incorporate motivational factors at the workplace.  Changes in demographic is one of the factors that influence the performance of the workers. However, there is only little literature about the impact of demographic factors on the performance of workers in the hotel and tourism industry. The demographic variables are age; gender; experience and educational qualification (Choi 2013). Many scholars have opined that gender has no significant impact on work performance. Therefore, it can be said that both male and females are equally satisfied. However, many have found that female workers are inconsistent and career development is more continuous for the men. According to the Shaffril and Uli (2010), age is a major determinant of work performance that indicates job satisfaction. Young people are interested in enhancing their skill through training and skill development. In contrast, the old people are not interested in career expansion and training. Scholars have also identified that there is job satisfaction with high level of performance when the worker is more experienced. Many have also identified that young employees are low performer. Many studies have found that education increases job satisfaction (Altinay, Paraskevas and Jang 2015). Well training fosters the professionalism and lack of training causes frustration. Job satisfaction can be improved through motivational factors but impact of motivation varies according to the demographic. Some factors influence the females and some influence the young workers than the male and the old people respectively. Job satisfaction decreases staff satisfaction and productivity improves. Therefore, it is important to analyze the role of demographic on the job satisfaction of the employers. Demographic factor affects the organizational commitment that in turn affects the changes in the performance of the workers. Kansra and Pathania (2012) opined that the female workers have less attachment to work. According to a study conducted by International Journal of Informative & Futuristic Research found that female workers have high satisfaction level than its counterpart. This paper also found that job satisfaction is highly related to turnover rate; and turnover rate is higher among the young people who can easily find an alternative (Biswakarma and Sharma 2016). According to Kabungaidze et al. (2013) the older; long serving employees are much less inclined to search for alternate opportunity. Hence, ole people are more satisfied with their current and existing job. Ozturk and Hancer (2011) has found that financial comprehension; promotional opportunity and supervision affects the workers of the hotel industry and their job satisfaction level. However, this study has indicated that in various demographic categories, the response of the employees or the managers are different. In researches, it has been found that age and job pleasure has U-shaped relationship (Imran et al. 2014). Satisfaction declines in initial wage and rises as employee grows older. 

Research Questions

The relationship between skill attainment and job satisfaction is not simple. Specific skills bind the workers to the firm and it may reduce satisfaction. This is because; it creates barrier to leave the company. This indicates that mismatch of skills of the workers and skills required leads to decrease the job satisfaction (McPhail et al. 2015). Therefore, it is better to have training on education than to get on-job training. Many have also opined that over-education or over skilled workers lead to dissatisfaction of the workers. However, it can be said undoubtedly training improves workplace performance by increasing the output per workers (Baum 2015). Many scholars have opined that training is associated with increase in the value addition than increase in the wage.

The research methodology that has been applied on the overall research is introduced in this particular chapter with few reasoning for the same. On the other hand, several sections in this research methodology chapter are categorized that incorporates the clarification to select the philosophy of positivism research. The reason to select the deductive approach of the research as well as the approach of this research is also illustrated in this chapter. This entire study has been conducted based on the secondary data and the clarification for selecting the same is also established. In addition, this chapter also includes the timetable and ethical considerations associated with the accessibility issues.

Research Philosophy: The material facts those are available previously in the world as well as necessary to be tested in terms of several scientific techniques are referred to as the positivism philosophy. As per Realism, the independent objects those are free from the human being perception as well as identical objects are present in the universe and are realized also by the human sense. Interpretivism, in addition is also the philosophy that is publicly designed by the human being with the help of perception as well as do not involve any kind of testing information (Panneerselvam 2014).

Clarification to select the positivism research philosophy: The major reason of selecting the positivism philosophy is that this study grows head to head with the deductive process. Another major reason is that this particular study is implemented with the help of secondary research.

Research Approach: Research approaches can be divided into two significant approaches such as inductive and deductive approaches. Deductive approach is that particular approach where researcher has to go through the previous research, which was accomplished, on the equivalent topic (Blumberg, Cooper and Schindler2014). Data collection through several types of communication methods and modes is put into action finally, is referred to the inductive process. 

Literature Review

Clarification to select deductive approach: The researcher would select this particular research approach as the research totally is based on the secondary data those are gathered with the help of journals and books regarding the subject of this study.

Research Design: This particular section has three different options for selecting from for the researcher those are as follows:

Descriptive Design- The subject of this study, whenever, has huge opportunity to be researched; the researcher at that point of time adopts the descriptive research approach. 

Explanatory Design- The researcher utilizes the exploratory design for proving their statements with effective and desired examples in terms of creating a certain relationship among various variables those are utilized during the cause.

Exploratory Design- The research would adapt this particular research design while the researcher would face issues about the complete understanding of the issues.

Clarification to select descriptive research design: This research has a large numbers of opportunities for exploring the characteristics of the house keeping organizations and human resource management. As several information have to be collected through secondary method, the descriptive deign would be preferred by the researcher.

Sampling: This particular research would be conducted through the primary data collection and secondary data collection method and thus, the data gathered is kept into utilized in terms of completing the entire study. Responses are gathered by conducting personal interview with the housekeepers. However, from journal articles and research papers the results or the responses have been gathered.

Data that has numerical value are quantitative data and data that are discreet in nature are qualitative (Creswell 2013). Quantitative data is gathered in this section for determining characteristics of the housekeeping organizations and would be calculated depending upon several consequences those are considered from different books and journals. Qualitative Data is collected information regarding the satisfactory level that is the dependent variable.

Accessibility Issues: The most complicated part of different issues faced was the very low budget and lack of time. Browsing several websites and extraction of desire articles and journals and information was also the difficult part for completing. Furthermore, several legal formalities were required to be taken care of in terms of running the research in a well-designed way.

Main activities	1st week	2nd week	3rd week	4th+5th week	6th week	7th week
Topic Selection	ü
Literature review		ü
Research methodology			ü
Secondary data collection				ü
Analysis and data interpretation				ü
Findings					ü
Conclusion and Recommendation					ü
Final submission						ü

In this research, responses from 200 housekeepers from different hotel and hospitality industry have been collected. Data has been collected regarding the Age; Gender; educational qualification; experience. Correlation of these variables with the job satisfaction level can be obtained by statistical method. The regression analysis can be used for more detailed understanding of the impact. The Statistical Package for teh Social Sciences (SPSS) will be used for the purpose of data analysis. Job Satisfaction level has been categorised into five levels; such as, Very satisfied; satisfied; indifferent; unsatisfied; very unsatisfied.

 It is expected to find that correlation between age and job satisfaction is moderate; and they are positively related. This indicates that the older is the employee the more will be that person is committed to the organization and young housekeepers are not satisfied with their present job. This is because; they are more likely to change their job or there are high chances that they will shift to another company with the same kind of job. Another finding that is expected is that more is the educational qualification; the less will be the interest of the workers to be engaged in housekeeping services. A more qualified person has prospectus to be engaged in higher-level job than housekeeping; whereas, a less qualified worker is more satisfied with their work. In this research, it is ambiguous to expect the relationship between gender and job satisfaction. However, after obtaining data through regression analysis; it can be concluded whether female and male workers have different kind of level of job satisfaction. Arbitrarily, it can be expected that, the result of data analysis will show insignificant relationship between gender and job satisfaction. Experience of workers might be negatively related to the job satisfaction. This is because; more is the person is experienced, higher is the expectation from a job. As a result of this, his or her job satisfaction level is less fulfilled. Whereas a less experience workers may found that satisfactory with the current role, played as a house-keeper. One thing must be noted that, there is similar probability that the correlation become positive, as experienced people are older as well who are more satisfied with their job. The relationship might be positive or negative but the significance might be less.

Job satisfaction is considered to be improved through some motivational factors. Money; career advancement; training; health benefits; fun place to work and flexible hours are some major motivational factors. These factors have different impact according to the demographic. The young housekeepers are more interested with fun at work; flexible working hours; whereas the relatively old people are satisfied if they receive health benefits and career advancement. Similarly, the people with more experience are interested to have career development and training. The less educated people are less likely to be engaged with career development programs. Female housekeepers are satisfied more if they get flexibility in the working hours; health benefits and money. Therefore, the respondents’ job satisfaction level is different according to the demography of the workers.

The performance statistic of the housekeepers of the hospitality industry has been obtained and it has been clarified while conducting the interview whether they have received any training or not. It has been identified that, those who have gotten training are less qualified workers and after achieving certain skills their performance has significantly improved. The performances of the previously trained workers are already high so the additional increment in their performance is not so high (Burgard and Gorlitz 2014). Due to equality, job satisfaction through training is expected to improve and their commitment to the company enhanced. 

Conclusion

The proposal has formulated some research objectives and questions. Based on these, the proposal has discussed some findings of the previous literature. After reviewing the literature, it has described the methodology adopted. The research will be conducted with the help of secondary and primary data. To get the outcome, statistical tools will be applied and interpreted. The findings will be based on the formulated research questions. It will verify whether the outcome of the data analysis is similar to the findings from the literature. The effect of demographic variables in the job satisfaction and influence of training on the performance of the house-keepers has been analyzed. 

References

Altinay, L., Paraskevas, A. and Jang, S.S., 2015. Planning research in hospitality and tourism. Routledge.

Baum, T., 2015. Human resources in tourism: Still waiting for change?–A 2015 reprise. Tourism Management, 50, pp.204-212.

Beesley, L.G. and Davidson, M., 2013. A Critical Analysis of Skilled Labor Supply and Demand in the Australian Hospitality Industry. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 14(3), pp.264-280.

Belias, D. and Koustelios, A., 2014. Organizational culture and job satisfaction: A review. International Review of Management and Marketing,4(2), p.132.

Biswakarma, S. and Sharma, S. (2016). Effect Of Demographic Variables And Job Satisfaction On Employee Turnover : A Study Of Hotels (FHRAI Approved) Of Kolkata. International Journal of Informative & Futuristic Research, 3(5).

Blumberg, B.F., Cooper, D.R. and Schindler, P.S., 2014. Business research methods. McGraw-hill education.

Boella, M. and Goss-Turner, S., 2013. Human resource management in the hospitality industry: A guide to best practice. Routledge.

Burgard, C. and Görlitz, K., 2014, October. Continuous training, job satisfaction and gender: An empirical analysis using German panel data. InEvidence-based HRM: a Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship (Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 126-144). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Choi, S., 2013. Demographic diversity of managers and employee job satisfaction empirical analysis of the federal case. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 33(3), pp.275-298.

Creswell, J.W., 2013. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

Imran, H., Arif, I., Cheema, S. and Azeem, M., 2014. Relationship between job satisfaction, job performance, attitude towards work, and organizational commitment. Entrepreneurship and innovation management journal, 2(2), pp.135-144.

Kabungaidze, T., Mahlatshana, N. and Ngirande, H., 2013. The impact of job satisfaction and some demographic variables on employee turnover intentions. International Journal of Business Administration, 4(1), p.53.

Kansra, P. and Pathania, G. 2012. A Study of Factor Affecting the Demand for Health Insurance in Punjab. Journal of Management and Science, 2(4).

McPhail, R., Patiar, A., Herington, C., Creed, P. and Davidson, M., 2015. Development and initial validation of a hospitality employees’ job satisfaction index: Evidence from Australia. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(8), pp.1814-1838.

Ouko, M.O., 2012. Hospitality industry//Personnel management (Doctoral dissertation).

Ozturk, A.B. and Hancer, M., 2011. The effect of demographics on job satisfaction: a study of hotel managers in Turkey. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 12(3), pp.189-201.

Panneerselvam, R., 2014. Research methodology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.

Shaffril, H. and Uli, J. 2010. The Influence Of Socio-Demographic Factors On Work Performance Among Employees Of Government Agriculture Agencies In Malaysia. The Journal of International Social Research, 3(10).

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