Overcoming high employee turnover in the hospitality industry through employee motivation

Is employee turnover critical for an organization? 

Employee turnover is one of the main problems existing in the hospitality industry. Number of studies done on this matter will not be sufficient as it is required to be further investigated because the hospitality industry is heavily depended on human resources. As retaining of employees is complex and it is a job that never ceases to end, every company is facing with the problem of employee retention. A perfect strategy of retention is impossible as the best managers sometimes have problems keeping the top-quality employees in check. Motivation is a great solution for this as the employee turnover is affected by the job satisfaction of employees and the motivation is mainly related to that. For a company the most valuable assets are employees and people. Because of different reasons the rate of turnout might high. It might be from surroundings of a person or a company. Pull and push factors are the key factors which is the cause of the employee turnover. 

Reasons for employee turnover 

There can be different reasons for employee turnover based on lot of empirical and theoretical reasons. However according to Ongori (Ongori, 2007) people might leave the company without a good reason at all. It is required from companies to update the retention strategies of employees frequently . In this ever-changing market and environment, it is required that the professionals of human resource department should be a sponsor of an employee, a change friend or a strategic partner to keep the best employees in the company and to never let them go and to reduce the rate of turnover. (Nanayakkara, 2016) 

The turnover of employees is a study spectacle. As said by Price (Price, 1977) the turnover ratio can be defined as the number of employees who left the company divided by the number of employees in the organization during the given period. The last form is categorized as dysfunctional according to the traits of turnover of employees. The turnover type is divided as 

1. Functional or dysfunctional 

2. Avoidable or unavoidable 

3. Voluntary or involuntary 

Can we reduce employee turnover by improving employee motivation? 

Ming (Ming, 2008) investigated the role of career development practices to turnover intention. He collected the data from four different industries finance, information technology, engineering and education. He collected the data on five variables using questionnaire technique from 357 Malaysian knowledge workers. He used correlation technique to find out the effect of variables (organizational rewards, career development opportunities, supervisory support, and promotion) on employee turnover. He found the most significant factor which affect the turnover intentions depend on the nature of organization practices and these practices enhance the personal goals and motivate the workforce and reduce turnover. 

Motivation has a major impact on the enhancing of the productivity of a company. Because of this fact many scholars have expressed their beliefs on what is motivation and how it could be kept in the workplace. As stated by Mullins (2007) (Abudu Amadu Musah, 2013) motivation is a persistence and direction of action. According to Vonglinow and Mcshane (McShane, 2000) the force within someone which will affect the way, tenacity and intensity of actions of voluntary is called as motivation. Other ways of motivating and monitoring are telling the staff what they have done and praising them for the actions they took (Templar, 2005).

The role of theories of employee motivation and the effect for retention of workers within a company was investigated by Ramlall. (Sunil, 2002) He used technique of questionnaire on 1070 to collect information about 7 variables. The technique he used to measure the effect of the variables is the correlation technique. The seven variables are, 

• Work environment 
• Needs of employees 
• Supervision 
• Employee development 
• Fairness 
• Needs of employees 
• Effort 

The key factors of motivation he recognized are employee development and work surroundings are among the key factors these factors are the most significant . Others are less significant compared to the supervision of work environment and development of employees. The recommendation of his is to focus attention to these mentioned variables to enhance the motivation level of employees. 

Referring previous literature, it is obvious that improving motivation significantly impact the high employee turnover ratio. However, it is better to know other positive impact gained through staff motivation. 

As mentioned in some of my previous posts below are few ways to improve employee motivation.

1. Strategic leadership – When employees getting strong leadership vision, they know what they are doing to achieve definite target, which impact the motivation level of the employees positively. 

2. Maintain clear and strong communication – When employees exactly know what to do and why they need to do they are motivated to perform that task. 

3. Providing clear and realistic targets – By setting up more clear and realistic targets enhance the motivation levels of the employees 

4. Promote teamwork

5. Create friendly and employee wellbeing culture 

6. Offer attractive benefits and salaries 

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Reference List

Abudu Amadu Musah, J. K. N., 2013. Reducing Employee Turnover in Tertiary Institutions in Ghana:The Role of Motivation. Journal of Education and Practice , 4(18). 

McShane, L. S. a. V. M. A., 2000. Organisational Behavior, Emerging realities for the workplace revolution.. USA: World Color. 

Ming, f., 2008. Linking Career Development Practices to Turnover Intention: The Mediator of Perceived Organizational Support. journal of business and public affairs, Volume 2. 

Nanayakkara, M. &. D. N., 2016. Application of Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory of Motivation to Identify Turnover Intention of the Non-Executive Level Employees in Selected Super Markets in Colombo, Sri Lanka, s.l.: s.n. 

Ongori, H., 2007. A Review of the Literature on Employee Turnover. African Journal of Business Management,, pp. 049-054. 

Price, J., 1977. The study of turnover. 1st ed. s.l.: Iowa state University press. Sunil, R., 2002. “a review of employee motivation theories and their implications for employee retention with in organizations”. The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge. Templar, R., 2005. The rules of management., s.l.: Pearson Prentice.