The Major Causes of Turnover of Employees in the Hospitality Industry of Hong Kong - Research Proposal Example

RESEARCH PROPOSAL "Impact of High Turnover of Employees in Hong Kong's Hospitality Industry" NUMBER OF WORDS: 1253 (Text) Contents Title Objectives __________________________________________________ Background Literature Review Research Design and Methodology Sampling & Data Collection Methods Procedure &Analysis of Data Conclusion Timescale References Title: "Impact of High Turnover of Employees in Hong Kong's Hospitality Industry" Objectives: The study will be carried out with following aims and objectives: 1. To assess the causes of higher employee turnover; 2. To identify and evaluate key areas of employee turnover; and 3. To recommend the various ways to tackle high employee turnover. Background: Employee turnover occurs when employees voluntarily leave their jobs and replace themselves elsewhere. Turnover should not be confused with layoffs, which involves the termination of employees at the discretion of employer discretion in response to business condition i.e., reduced sales or a merger with another company. The severity of turnover varies widely by type of business and the economic health of the region where the companies are located. Innovative high tech companies and most successful manufacturing companies frequently experience low turnover rates while fast food restaurant managers expect turnover to be as high as 50 to 75% turnover is a major problem for companies in many Asian regions, such as, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan (Barnett, 1955; Chang, 1996; Syrett, 1994). In a recent forum of human resource professional bodies of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, in Malaysia, participants were unanimous in their view that Job hopping had became so rampant in these countries that it had become a culture (Asia-pacific management news, 1997). The hospitality industry in Hong Kong registered strong rebound during the year 2005. Visitors from America and Europe, Africa and Middle East grew 15.1% and 25.6% respectively. Growth rate of visitors from Australia, Newzeland and South Pacific was even higher at 31.8%. Visitors from North Asia, South and South East Asia increased 19.9% and 21.4% respectively (Hong Kong Hotels Association ED review, 2004-05). Based on the data provided by the Hong Kong office of China National Tourism Administration, China outbound Travelers reached 28 million in 2004 in which 12.25 million visited Hong Kong i.e., 43.75%. Hong Kong continues to be the single largest outbound destination for Chinese travelers also. In this way the hospitality industry in Hong Kong is passing through boom period. One of the biggest challenges the hospitality industry of Hong Kong is facing today, the rapidly growing demand for more hotel staff and acute shortage of manpower and talent. Higher staff turnover and the difficulty in retaining staff is primarily affecting the stability of the industry and high service standards. There are paucity of studies and researches regarding employees' turnover and lack of findings in terms of employees' interests and expectations. The economy i.e., the most common reasons given for leaving is the availability of higher paying jobs. In a better economy the availability of alternative jobs plays detrimental role in turnover but this tends to be over stated. The performance of the organization, the organizational culture, the characteristic of a job, unrealistic expectations, demographics and the person himself can be the reasons for higher turnover. It is important to note that the factors, which have been listed above, can be classified as being within or beyond the control of the employing organization. In order to actively participate in reducing costs associated with turnover, organizations need to identify those factors over which they do have some control and initiate necessary changes to reduce turnover attributable to these controllable factors. Therefore, the present study is planned and designed to find out the causes and the factors, which contribute to high turnover of employees. Literature Review: As the present study is industry and area (Location) specific so the basic resources for the study will be obtained from the last five years reports and reviews of the hospitality industry. Researches and journals related to employee turnover will also be considered for the theoretical background of the study. Available information from Internet will also be incorporated if necessary because they provide us the literature from global perspective at a glance. Methodology: Following methodology will be adopted: Sampling and Data Collection: A total number of 20 hotels will be selected on the basis of maximum number of employees. Data will be collected using a questionnaire, which will contain different ways of job satisfaction (Satisfaction with pay, nature of work as well as with supervision), organizational commitment, organizational justice (distributive and procedural), job hopping, perceived alternative employment opportunities and turnover intentions. In addition the questionnaire will also include items on demographic characteristics of the respondents. Hotels in Hong Kong will be contacted with the authority letter of their association regarding study. They will be instructed that their HR managers will allow the survey within their employees and send the completed questionnaires to the researcher directly. Questionnaire will be administered with the help of HR managers of each identified hotel. Employees will be informed that the purpose of the exercise will be to assess their feelings and thoughts on various aspects of job and that as such there were no right or wrong answers to questions included in the survey. Respondents will be assure of the strict confidentiality of their responses and will also be told that the completed questionnaires will be sent directly to the researcher. No one in their organization would ever see the completed questionnaire. To increase the response rate and to encourage objective and truthful responses an envelope will be provided along with each questionnaire so that the employee will insert the complete questionnaire in the envelop, seal the envelop and return it to the box placed in the HR department. Employee will also be given choice of mailing the completed questionnaire directly to the researcher. Procedure and Analysis: for demographic factors, respondents will be asked to indicate their age (in years), tenure (in years), gender, title, monthly income and education level. For measuring satisfaction level three items will be used as; Satisfaction with pay Satisfaction with the nature of work; & Satisfaction with the supervision. These items will be adopted from Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and the index of organizational reactions questionnaire. 15 items organizational commitment questionnaire (Porter et.al., 1974) will be used to measure organizational commitment. Four-item distributive justice scale and five-item procedural justice scale will be used to measure distributive justice and procedural justice respectively. (Magner et. al's 1994). The perceived alternative employment opportunities scale, which contain 6 items and will be adopted from Moowday et.al 1984, Billings and Wemmeures(1983), Arnold &Feldman 1982 and Micheals and Spector 1982. Three-item turnover intention scale will be used from Michigan organizational assessment questionnaire (Cummann et.al, 1976). For the recently known phenomenon i.e. job-hopping three items scale will be used. The three items in the scale are " To me switching job is kind of fun", I switch jobs because my colleagues do so" and "I want to change jobs because of no apparent reasons".( Khatri, Budhwar & Fern, 1999). Conclusion: Now data collected on the basis of the above questionnaire will be analyzed on the percentage basis so that we can find out the major causes of turnover of employees in the hospitality industry of Hong Kong. On the basis of the findings we can suggest the organizations to change accordingly to minimize the turnover rate of employees in their respective organisation. Timescale: The study will be conducted in 6 months: 1st one month will be preparatory phase (Development of questionnaire, identification of hotels, getting authority letters etc.) 2nd three months will be of main phase (contact with HR managers, employees, distribution of questionnaire etc.) 3rd one month will be follow up phase 4th one month will be for data analysis and report writing. References: 1. Arnold, H.J. and Feldman, D.C. 1982. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of job turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 67(3): 350-360. 2. Aryee, S. 1991. Creating a committed workforce: Linking socialisation practices to business strategy. Asia Pacific Human Resource Management, Autumn, 102-112. 3. Barnett, R. 1995. Flexible benefits: Communication is the key. Benefits and Compensation International, 24(6): 25-28. 4. Billings, R., Wemmems, V. 1983. The role of alternatives in process models of withdrawal. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Midwestern, Academy of Management, 18-29. 5. Cammann, C., Fichman, M., Jenkins, D. and Klesh, J. 1979. The Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire. Unpublished Maniscript, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 6. Chang, H. 1996. In Singapore, the dreams are getting bigger. Business Week, September 23, 1996. 7. Khatri, N. Budhwar, P and Fern, C.T. 1999. employee turnover: bad attitude or poor management Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 8. Magner, N., Johnson, G.G. and Elfrink, J. 1994. Evidence on the relationship between procedural and distributive justice in performance appraisal and accounting faculty attitudes and performance. 9. Michaels, C.E. and Spector, P.E. 1982. Causes of employee turnover: A test of the Mobley, Griffeth, Hand and Meglino model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 67:53-59. 10. Mowday, R.T., Koberg, C.S. and McArthur, A.W. 1984. The psychology of the withdrawal process: Across-validational test of Mobley's intermediate linkages model of turnover in two samples. Academy of Management Journal, 27: 79-94. 11. Porter, L.W., Steers, R.M., Mowday, R.T. and Boulian, P.V. 1974. Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59: 603-609. 12. Syrett, M. 1994. Through thick and thin. Asian Business, 30(12): 26-30. Read More