Investigative Project: Action Research Approach To Address Employee Turnover And Motivation

Research Methodology and Data Collection

Regarding the previous study, employee turnover occurs when employees leave the company and an employee turnover rate refers to the percentage of employees who leave the company which could be calculated by per month and year (Phillips and Edwards, 2008). Employee turnover in the hospitality industry is considered to be a serious issue which needs to be solved as it negatively impacts the employee performance and as a result, the customer satisfaction.

As employee turnover is directly related to employee motivation and satisfaction, the company with the high turnover rate seem to have low employee satisfaction which leads to decrease the customers’ satisfaction (Lynn, 2002; Wood & Macaulay, 1989). In fact, dissatisfied employees and new employees who have inadequate training and experience are more likely to provide an inferior performance (Keiser, DeMicco, & Grimes, 2000).  In contrast, satisfied employees always have higher empowerment which causes efficiencies and innovation in the work, which help increase customer satisfaction (Bushe, Havlovic and Coetzer 1996). Moreover, high turnover rates may cause negative effects on companies’ profitability and operation due to cost for replacing vacancies, providing training programmes for new employees and also wages and incentives (Keiser, DeMicco, & Grimes, 2000).  Therefore, employee turnover has the significant impact on the loss of productivity, monetary cost and operation.

In terms of employee satisfaction, 

Regarding motivation, it has been mentioned as the fact that force an individual to achieve the goal to satisfy their need and expectation (Mullins, 1996). Employee motivation can be mainly divided into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (e.g., Pink,). In fact, intrinsic motivation refers to the desire to work for its own sake, so as to experience the pleasure such and satisfaction inherent in the activity such as find the job interesting, challenging and feel themselves being involved and developed (Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989). Extrinsic motivation, in contrast, occurs when employees are motivated to work to achieve positive consequences such as an incentive (e.g., wag, holiday, and reward) or to avoid negative consequences such as a punishment (Deci & Ryan, 2000)

Herzberg et al. (1959) mention that to gain satisfaction, employees needed to be encouraged by motivations, and It is necessary to motivate the employee to make them satisfied with the job in order to help the company to reduce the turnover rate (Shanks, 2011). However, to motivate employees is a real challenge for companies as motivation is an abstract which can only be inferred but cannot be visualised. Indeed, the needs and expectations of employees are different, unstable, continuous (Hellriege and Slocum, 2011). Therefore, companies need to understand the diversity in their workforce to motivate their employees in different ways which based on their background and circumstance (Qayyum and Sukirno, 2012).

Focussing on the food and beverage department at The Royal Lancaster hotel. Employee Turnover rate …… . From the author’s interior experience, there are some benefits and social gathering (Appendix) to motivate employees, improve their satisfaction and reduce employee turnover.

Furthermore, there is a company procedure in which the line managers are supposed to discuss with their staff one to one about the job and their situation at that stage to find out how everything is, how they are feeling with the job and if they need any additional support from the company. Another procedure is the ICC representative who gives an opportunity for staff to voice their thoughts, opinions and requirements to their representatives (e.g. supervisors and managers) Then, the representative will, in turn, discuss opinions and requirements during a meeting with the management team and general manager. However, it seems like strategies that the company are using for satisfying and retaining employees may not apparently be as successful as expected. There is a lot of staff complaining about their situations such as poor management, a large lack of staff to carry out the necessary responsibilities and inferior wages and benefits. As a result, some of them have decided to leave the company and look elsewhere. Thus, the aim of this project is to investigate what are the motivations which drive employees to carry on with their respective role(s) within their company and how this information could be used with the company to increase employee motivation and decrease employee turnover.  

Action Research

Action research has been applied, and the research relies on the primary data collection method. The reason for adopting the primary data collection is because this method is targeted to obtain data for the specific issues (Saunders, 2007). Furthermore, the original data will be collected personally by the researcher which directly related research topic (Altinay and Paraskevas, 2008).  The author took part in the observation and adopted face to face interview to collect data from the employees in operation level of the food and beverage department who were willing to participant

It was stated that action research procedure which adapts behavioural science knowledge with company knowledge to solve the company problem (Shani and Pasmore, 1985). Action research focuses on the company operations issues or problems which have been extending rather than creating issues for the purposes of the research (Coughlan and Coghlan, 2002). Moreover, action researchers are not merely observing something happening, but they need to be participating in the investigation, actively work and take action to make it happen (Gummesson, 2000). It was stated that action research includes four main steps of action which are Constructing (involves naming the issues) planning action, taking action and evaluation action (Coghlan and Brannick, 2014). According to Lewin (1997), to truly understand the operation, be able to identify specific issues or problems, plan the actions and contribute the result to the organisation, the researchers need to be involved with the operation member to see how it really works. Regarding this study, the researcher has been working as one operation members of the food and beverage department at Royal Lancaster hotel. Likewise, the issue of the research is based on the interior experience which it is employee turnover issue. Gummensson (2000) mentions that action research can include quantitative data and qualitative data. This research focuses on qualitative data which was collected by primary data collection method including observation and interview.

In this current study, non-participant observation has been used to collect the data. In non-participant observation, the researcher observes the phenomenon without participating in it. The researcher has used both simple observational method and behavioural observational method for collecting data (Reinharz 2017). This is one of the value forms of research as it can provide information beyond statistics and numbers. The researcher has observed the consumers, the staffs and the managers in a natural situation and notes down observations that are simple and can provide numerical data regarding the trends and at the same time can provide insights on this phenomenon (Le Tran et al. 2017). The study used non-participant observation as participation may lead to the change in the behaviour of the observe people. Therefore, this has facilitated in developing data that is accurate and reliable. Therefore, the study had attempted to the make the data more effective by combining the data from both simple and behavioural observations.

The interview data collection is mainly used in case of the qualitative data analysis where the open-ended questions are asked to the management of the organisation about the addressed research problem.  Interviews are one of the key methods that can be used for conducting research and has been used to ensure highly personalised data in research (Alshenqeeti 2014). As the number of respondents in the study is limited conducting qualitative analysis can develop a controlled data. The major advantage of using an interview is that the research will be able to provide an in-depth analysis and description of the subjects in the research. The study conducted face to face interview which had been able to capture the nonverbal and verbal cues from different sets of participants (Ranney et al. 2015). The study has conducted an interview with 7 personnel that are employees for collecting relevant data, and one manager has also been interviewed.

Observation Data Collection

 This part of the study will analyse the collected data through observation and interviews. The finding of the data from this two method will be analysed thoroughly to draw a relevant conclusion.

The first observation shows that the Royal Lancaster hotel is busiest during the breakfast and dinner. These means that the frequency of consumers during these periods is significantly higher when compared to the daytime. Therefore, the organisation can generate more revenue by effectively serving the customers during this period.

The second observation shows that there is a shortage of staff during the rush hours. Therefore, the staffs have to work very hard all the time in order to cover up for the shortage. The employees are unhappy due to these reason that they have to work than the compensation that they are offered. Moreover, the manager is not cooperative, so the staffs are unable to communicate their issues which makes it difficult for the staffs to work with the manager.  

 The consumers were agitated due to the late services they receive, and they have made several complaint faces to face, through emails and on Trip Advisor. This observation shows that the hotel is not being able to provide excellent services to their consumers.

The service charge the staff receive is less, so they complain about it, but no measures have been taken to mitigate this issue. The staffs have also complained about the operation and management as they are not receiving the roster on time, they do not have adequate equipment and no separate room for breakfast which causes issues for the staffs due to the ongoing refurbishment within the hotel premises. This shows that the staffs are facing a large number of issues which is hampering their work. However, the management has been ignorant in addressing the concerns highlighted by the staffs.

The staffs have also complained about equality where they think that they are not being treated equally by the managers which makes some of the managers difficult to work with.  The managers are bothered to give any importance to the feedbacks and complains of the staffs. There are three employees within the organisation that have conflict among them. The management is not concerned and has not taken any actions to make that the relationship among these employees better so that it does not hampers the operations. Moreover, every week on an average one staffs takes an unscheduled leave. This increases the burden on other employees as the shortage increases even further, and they have to cover for the missing employee. These have caused the staffs to leave their jobs and have increases the attrition rate of the organisation.

The observational and interview data have shown similar results where it is very evident from the data that the majority of the employees are not satisfied with their job. The staffs work because of the compensation they receive, and they will leave even they get a better opportunity. The market trends show that the attrition rate in the hospitality industry is comparatively high due to their low compensation compared to the other sectors, the high level of stress and lack of motivation due to the effectiveness of the work environment (Lu and Gursoy 2016).  Royal Lancaster Hotel has a high attrition rate, and the employees are not dedicated to their work which affects their day to day operation. The analysis of the results show that the attrition of Royal Lancaster Hotel is high due to the lack of growth opportunities, the staffs are not happy with the current organizational policies, job satisfaction and motivation of the work they do are low, no training and development programs to help the staffs to develop new skills, empowerment skills, employee engagement, performance management, communication and organizational culture.  

Royal Lancaster Hotel has not addressed the grievances of the staffs and the consumers which have to worsen the situation. The high level of attrition has affected the operation, and the organisation is unable to handle the consumer during the peak hours.

3. Conclusion and recommendation

The findings and analysis of the collected data show that the level of motivation of the employees are shallow and the management is not doing enough to improve the satisfaction level, engagement and technical skills. The administration is ignorant of the issues and is not willing to cooperate with the employees. Royal Lancaster Hotel requires a drastic change in their organisational policies if they want to maintain their long-term sustainability and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

It is highly recommended that the Royal Lancaster Hotel hires new staffs to deal with the pressure during the peak hours. The organisation will have to make changes to the management so that they can improve the motivation level and satisfaction level of the employees. The organisation have made changes to the communication within the organisation where the communication system will have to be two way so that the staff feedback can reach the higher level of management.  The organisational culture will have to be changed significantly to facilitate productivity and manage conflicts within the organisation so that it does not hamper the operations.

References:

Alshenqeeti, H., 2014. Interviewing as a data collection method: A critical review. English Linguistics Research, 3(1), p.39.

Le Tran, M.A., Seymour, J., Riecken, T. and Abbas, R., 2017. Data Collection 1: Observations and Document Analysis: Who’s looking?. In Qualitative Research and Intercultural Understanding (pp. 38-47). Routledge.

Lu, A.C.C. and Gursoy, D., 2016. Impact of job burnout on satisfaction and turnover intention: Do generational differences matter?. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 40(2), pp.210-235.

Ranney, M.L., Meisel, Z.F., Choo, E.K., Garro, A.C., Sasson, C. and Morrow Guthrie, K., 2015. Interview?based qualitative research in emergency care part II: Data collection, analysis and results reporting. Academic Emergency Medicine, 22(9), pp.1103-1112.

Reinharz, S., 2017. On Becoming a Social Scientist: from survey research and participant observation to Experimental Analysis. Routledge.

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