Employee Turnover for Yama Sushi Restaurant - Research Proposal Example

 Employee Turnover for Yama Sushi Restaurant Parameters The report objective is to assess and highlight all those factors that cause and increase employee turnover at Yama Sushi Restaurant. Currently, it has been observed that the Restaurant is facing the problem of employee turnover in which employees are frequently leaving the Restaurant and putting additional pressure for recruiting the new employees. Problem Description The project report will be considerably beneficial for the Restaurant. First, the research and data collected from the respondents are based on the primary research in which face to face interviews from the current and previous employees have been carried out by the researcher. Consequently, the extracted reasons behind the employee turnover will be practical and the Restaurant management can use this report for addressing those causes by understanding them and implementing the recommendations provided in the following sections. Methodology The researcher has carried out direct interviews from the current and previous employees of the Restaurant. In these interviews, the focus has been to highlight and explore all those causes that are directly or indirectly related to the employee turnover. However, before going to formally conduct the interviews, a free consent from the manager and from the employees has been ensured. At the same time, they have also been assured that their personal information, views and opinions will not be shared with any other person or organization. Findings The research has found various important findings. First, the majority of the respondents suggest that they do not receive their paychecks on time instead frequent delays are common. Second, there exists no promotion structure at the Restaurant. Many respondents opine that the Restaurant has no promotion structure describing and detailing the different levels of promotions and organizational hierarchy as well. Third, gender-based discrimination is also common in which females are given preference to the males. Fourth, the Restaurant is not generating enough revenue as its outlook is only specific to a particular community. Fifth, the manager is of the view that the increase in the economic activity has mainly contributed to the rising trend in the employee turnover. Recommendations Yama Sushi Restaurant should introduce a range of recommendations for decreasing the employee turnover. First, it should ensure that all employees receive their paychecks on time. This will enable employees to understand that the Restaurant management has changed its payroll structure. Second, an effective and strong promotion structure should be developed and should be implemented immediately. This is the most important change as this directly affects the motivation of employees. In the promotion structure, all milestones and organizational hierarchy should be clearly mentioned as this will enable the existing employees to put their efforts for improving their performance at the Restaurant. Third, discrimination should be replaced by the merit-based approach in which certain benchmarks, such as communication style, interaction with clients and body language, should also be imparted to the merit-based approach. Consequently, this will improve the service quality and service delivery besides putting positive and constructive effects on the overall profitability of the Restaurant. Introduction Employee turnover has become a major organizational issue at Yama Sushi Restaurant. Employees are backbone to any organization as they facilitate the organization to provide its services besides enabling it to effectively compete within the market. Keeping this view in mind, it is essential that employees’ appropriate and relevant requirements and expectations should always be taken care of. However, this is not happening at Yama Sushi Restaurant as it has been observed and experienced that the employees do not stay for a longer period of time instead, within a period of six to eight months, they switch over to a new job. This switching tendency is not common in hotel and tourism industry as the hotel and restaurant owners are not inclined to increase their human resource cost in the shape of ever increasing employee turnover rate. Recently, it has been observed that a structured employment, in which promotion and different milestones are being offered and provided to the current and future employees entering into the hotel and tourism industry, has been mainly followed by many hotels and restaurants. However, this practice has not been implemented by Yama Sushi Restaurant instead they prefer to distance themselves from the industry practices. Consequently, this has become a major cause of concern for existing and outgoing employees working at Yama Sushi Restaurant. If the employee turnover issue is not addressed immediately, various ramifications would be faced by the restaurant management. First, ever increasing employee turnover will increase cost of doing business in the shape of higher recruitment, selection and training and development. Currently, the Restaurant already faces a strong competition from the competitors as they provide similar food menu items which are being provided by the restaurant. Second, higher employee turnover will put negative effect on the service quality and service delivery as well. For example, every new employee requires time and space to adjust with the new workplace environment; and during this period it has been commonly observed that service quality and delivery are mostly compromised. Third, higher employee turnover will also demotivate the existing employees working at the Restaurant. It is an established fact that employees take serious note of all those issues that directly or indirectly affect their employment and their promotion and other benefits that they receive from the organization. Under this condition, it is substantially essential that the owners should consider the current and future ramifications of the current trend in the employee turnover rate and take some serious steps for reducing or controlling this rate at a tolerable level. Problem Statement Yama Sushi Restaurant faces the employee turnover problem which increases costs associated with the process of recruitment, selection and training besides putting negative effects on the service quality and service delivery of the restaurant. Employee turnover is of central importance for all organizations. Employee turnover has been defined as a process of employees leaving an organization and needing to be replaced (Aswathappa, 2007). More clearly, “employee turnover refers to the movement into and out of an organization by the work-force” (Arora, 2009.p.545). In the recent economic and employment trend history, the problem of employee turnover is increasing throughout the world for a number of reasons. First, from 2008 to the end of 2013, the global economy was undergoing the process of recession in which a few employment opportunities were created and more people remained unemployed during this period. Thanks to the recovery, which always comes after such period, the global economy has resurged and has revitalized the economic activity which has provided stimulus to employment opportunities. As a result, more and more jobs are created particularly after the start of 2014. However, this higher economic activity has both negative and positive effects on organizations. For example, employee turnover is also increased by the global economic activity as employees can easily find new and better employment opportunities which make the switching process considerably easier and faster as well. As a result, this also adds fuel to the fire of growing employee turnover in all industries and including in the hotel and restaurant industry. Methodology Research methodology refers to a systematic way to solve a research problem (Kothari, 2006). In other words, research methodology enables a researcher to construct a particular but systematic way to gain access to new information and knowledge through applying that particular method. Keeping this view in mind, the researcher used the interview technique for collecting the relevant data on the topic of employee turnover at Yama Sushi Restaurant. For collecting the data, the researcher selected a sample of 7 employees and they include: Current hotel manager, 3 current employees and 3 previous employees. The researcher first interviewed the manager with the questions mentioned in the appendices section available at the end of this assignment. Before going to interview, the researcher obtained their free consent from all the respondents after informing them about the objective of the entire research activity. After this step, the researcher also informed them that their personal information, views, or opinions will not be shared with any third unauthorized person. Consequently, this research strategy considerably motivated and convinced them to provide their feedback in the interview. Additionally, all interviews with the respondents have been recorded so as to extract the relevant data from the collected information from the interviews. For analyzing the collected data, the researcher has used the qualitative research approach. Qualitative research method provides a considerable amount of data which is collected from words, symbols and actions (Eugenia et al., 2010). As a result, this approach has enabled the researcher to apply the qualitative research methodology approach for analyzing the data. However, there are certain limitations to this approach. First, this approach primarily relies on the will and wish of the researcher for analyzing data. In this situation, it is possible that the researcher may not be appropriately capable enough to appropriately carry out the process of analysis in a professional manner. At the same time, the qualitative research method does not take into account the objective view of phenomena instead subjective understanding is applied. Additionally, the researcher has also applied the observational method for assessing the current employee turnover situation at Yama Sushi Restaurant. During the internship period, I was very curious about organizations and their culture, environment and all those factors that directly or indirectly address the issue of employee permanency. Keeping this objective in mind, I continued to observe the behavior, attitude, body language and dealing and servicing style of employees working at Yama Sushi Restaurant. And some observational findings have also been included in the following findings section. Findings Various findings highlight some fundamental causes behind the rise in employee turnover at Yama Sushi Restaurant. First, delayed paychecks have been identified as the most crucial cause which increases the employee turnover. Majority of the respondents, excluding the manager, opined that they do not receive paycheck on time and frequent delays are being faced by the employees. Promotions are infrequent. The majority of the respondents also highlighted that the Restaurant management has not developed any comprehensive promotion structure highlighting the different milestones, strategy and methods for promoting employees to the next level of management. Discrimination has also been one of the main causes behind the employee turnover. Some respondents suggest that they gender discrimination is commonly found in which females were given preference to male employees. Limited profit also pushes employees to switch over to new best available option. Yama Sushi Restaurant has the Japanese outlook as reflected by the restaurant name. This name connotes a message that the restaurant is only serving to the Japanese food. Consequently, the Restaurant fails to generate sufficient profit which also causes employee turnover. Specifically speaking, the manager provided different reasons causing employee turnover. He highlighted and insisted that stabilizing economic activities and growing economic alternatives for new and existing employees remain the major cause behind the employee turnover. Conclusion Yama Sushi Restaurant faces the problem of employee turnover. Recently, it has been observed that the employees do not prefer staying for a longer period of time at the Restaurant instead they prefer switching. For evaluating the reasons behind this problem, the researcher collected data from the current and previous employees. And the subsequent findings reveal that there are a number of reasons causing increase in the employee turnover: delayed paychecks, absence of promotion structure, discrimination and limited profit. However, the manager interview did not agree with these findings instead he insisted that the employee turnover is mainly caused by the increase in the global economic activity which has provided an opportunity to employees for availing the next best option available to them. Recommendations The root causes of employee turnover should be appropriately understood and addressed so as to reduce or control the current trend of employee turnover at Yama Sushi Restaurant. For this objective, a number of recommendations have been developed and have been proposed. First, it is highly essential that the issue of paychecks must be addressed promptly. Paycheck is of paramount importance for employees as their all needs are satisfied through the paycheck; and if they do not receive the paycheck on time, they would not be able to pay their utility bills, cable and internet subscription charges, rent and other costs that heavily rely on the timely issuance of paycheck. Keeping this view in mind, it is highly essential that the Restaurant management should issue the paychecks on time and make sure that the employees receive their payments as well. this will enable the existing and new employees to full concentrate on the service quality and service delivery at the Restaurant. Consequently, this will put a positive effect on the overall service quality of the Restaurant and that change offers an opportunity to also experience rise in the profit as the satisfied clients will return and will become loyal customers for the Restaurant. Promotion structure The Restaurant management should introduce a promotion structure. In the promotion structure, organizational hierarchy along with promotional steps should be included as they will enable the employees to understand their current position. At the same time, it will also provide information pertaining to all those steps that should be taken for qualifying the next level of management position. Currently, they do not have any structure providing any guidance to them. In order to reduce the employee turnover, the Restaurant management should introduce the promotion structure which should not be in contradiction with the current promotion structures which are being followed and implemented by the competitors in the hotel and restaurant industry. Merit-based Approach should also be introduced in the Restaurant. In this merit approach, promotion should not be based on any bias or preference standards rather more constructive and professional approach should be developed. For example, certain benchmarks should be developed which should be helping to assess the service quality and delivery of services at the Restaurant. For this objective, the service quality benchmarks, such as interaction with the clients, body language, communication style and other relevant parameters can be used for introducing and implementing the merit-based approach. In this regard, it is important to highlight that through implementing the merit-based approach, discrimination will also be automatically eliminated; and the elimination of discrimination will further enhance the service quality and service standards. The Restaurant management should also increase food menu options. Currently, this is one of the most important reasons that the clients are not being served with the common food menu options which are being offered by the competitors. And it is this reason that also causes profit reduction and besides increasing employee turnover as well. For increasing the food menu options, the Restaurant management should introduce non-Japanese food items which are commonly eaten and preferred by the local population living around the Restaurant. This will certainly increase revenue besides decreasing the current trend in the employee turnover. References Arora, S.P. (2009). Office Organization and Management. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing. Aswathappa, K. (2007). Human Resource and Personnel Management: Text and Cases. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Eugenia, M.W., Karacapilidis, N., & Raisinghani, M.S. (2010). Dynamic Advancement in Teaching and Learning Based Technologies: New Concepts. New York, NY: IGI Global. Kothari, C.R. (2006). Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques. 2nd ed. New Delhi: New Age International. Appendices What is the current status of employee turnover? What are the causes of employee turnover? What are the major complaints of outgoing employees? What are the important measures that have been taken to reduce the employee turnover? Read More