Employee Retention in the fast Food Industry - Assignment Example

 Introduction This chapter of the study presents an introduction together with background information on the contemporary study’s nature and its purpose and objectives. It is divided into four, background of the study; problem statement, purpose, objectives, significance of the study and how the study is organized. Background of the study Retention of employees has proved to be significant to the formulation and accomplishment of goals and objectives of the organization. According to Abraham (2012) Employee retention can be a crucial competitive advantage for any organization. The study tried to explore the key factors that contribute to retention of employees. It also clarifies the theoretical framework for the major problems with employee retention. Presently, variations in trade agreements, technology, global economics and any other such factors are directly affecting employer/employee relationships. For quite some time loyalty has been the basis for that relationship. Losing very talented employees may be very disadvantageous to the future success of the company. Outstanding employees of a company may leave because they are underpaid, dissatisfied or unmotivated, therefore, trying to retain them is likely to present many challenges to the organization. Such employees may demand higher wages; they may fail to comply with the directions of managers, fail to comply with practices of the organization, or not interact well with their colleagues. The organization’s desire to retain such employees may be further complicated by information asymmetry because lack of enough information may not help the organization to differentiate productive employees from unproductive ones. Workers frequently take credit for other employees’ success and deflect failures to others. Thus, employees may be punished or awarded for outcomes that they are not part of. Inadequate information regarding performance of employees may result in adverse selection, outstanding ones may leave, and abysmal ones may stay. The situation is likely to occur when exceptional workers are not rewarded and both productive and nonproductive ending up with the same or almost the same compensation package. The problem of keeping outstanding workers in the company is further complicated due to bounded rationality. This results due to information asymmetry because workers do not know the information to provide and the managers do not know what information to ask from their employees (Abraham, 2012, p. 29). Organizations that are lucky enough to retain such employees will have to cope with agency costs. Insufficient information motivates employees to pursue their own interests resulting into divergence of interest between them and the organization. This produces costs such as poor investment decision making. Problem statement The success of an organization is shown by their ability to understand employee perspective and measure their retention factors, though employees create different understanding of assumptions and phenomenon. They use their own mental model to interpret their organizational environment. Many studies have been conducted on employee retention in the UK to establish major factors that bring about their satisfaction and motivation to exist. However, few of them have need carried on fast food industry. The most common problem that would affect employee retention in fast food industries of UK is low pay. Such jobs are low paid, and workers only seek to gain some experience before moving on to better paying jobs. In addition, they face negative feedback from customers because such jobs are service oriented, they, therefore, find such jobs unsatisfying and humiliating hence is eager to job hop. Research questions This research suggests examining employee retention in the fast food industry by posing the following research questions: i) Is employee retention a reasonably common occurrence in the fast food industry? ii) What are the main reasons for high turnover of employees in a fast food retail sector? iii) How has Pret a Manger been able to retain employees? Research objectives This research aims at testing whether fast food industry in the UK has been able to retain its employees. The main research objects of the study can be summarized as follows: i) To explore the types of benefits that is crucial for a fast food industry ii) To assess the most useful organizational strategies for employee retention iii) To investigate the actual issues relating to organizational culture that can contribute to employee retention in the fast food industry iv) To explore the future plan of fast food industry workforce that contributes to their retention. Significance of the study Recently, the number of workers’ intent to quit has greatly increased. As a result, selection and recruitment costs are important to the organization. Therefore, this research would benefit and assist most of the firms in the first food companies, particularly Pret a Manger, in the fast food industry to lower the turnover rate in order to save the costs associated with hiring and time for retraining such new employees. In addition, it would help Pret a Manger to retain high-skill and talented workers to perform a better work. Purpose of the study This research tries to establish the retention of employees in a fast food sector. It is designed to investigate the main retention factors for fast food industry employees. The paper tries to expand our understanding about satisfaction of employees in a fast food sector. LITERATURE REVIEW Past studies of employee’s retentions are put forth as the framework to understand and methodologically analyze factors affecting employee’s retentions. Retention is defined as “an obligation to continue to do business or exchange with a particular company on an ongoing basis” (Thomas, 2003, p.18). According to Abraham (2012), it can also be defined as customer commitment, liking, trust, and identification, readiness to recommend and repurchase intentions. Many studies have shown that retention is driven by numerous main factors which should be managed congruently: strategy, pay and benefits philosophy, organizational culture and career development systems. Building of learning processes and knowledge creations is very crucial in helping the organization to gain competitive advantage. Success in organization is determined by how well it nurtures individual expertise in the people it hires as well as the successful sharing of such proficiency and expertise. “This requires executives in a corporation to look beyond strategy, structure and systems to a focus on the company’s purpose, process, and and people," (Ram and Prabhakar, 2011: 49). High employee turnover normally results in a substantial loss in expertise and knowledge for the organization. The organization loses all the training and knowledge such employees has. It is very hard to retain employees in the hospitality industry due to the negativity that the jobs in the fast food sector are linked with (Macey and Schneider, 2008, p. 15). Such jobs are negatively perceived; most employees see them as demeaning and humiliating. Most employees tend to change jobs, for instance; British workers change employers approximately more than seven times during their lifetimes. The effective working span of employees is further shortened because those employees take approximately 12 months to settle into new jobs and become fully productive (Abraham (2012, p.35). Employee turnover Employee turnover refers to the total number of employees to be replaced in organization to the ones in the organization. Today, most businesses find it very challenging to manage employee retention and keep the turnover ratio below industry norms and target. Even though frequent job turnovers bring new ideas and fresh creativity to the organization, the organization’s investment in training and experience of the outgoing employees is suddenly lost. Employees normally leave an organization is the turnover culture, this lowers productivity and competitive advantage of an organization (Dundon, et al. 2004, p. 1151). Employee turnover may be higher in the retail industry due to the nature of the regional labor market, organization factors and culture (poor management skill or bad management behavior). An employee who is familiar with an organization may leave to seek better prospects. They seek better employment since the industries do not pay higher wages. Most employees in this industry are mainly part-time students who use these jobs as a stop-gap arrangement until they find something better or before they complete their studies. Retention of employees Functioning of an organization is vital in influencing worker decision to remain with it or leave. Employees who are dissatisfied are likely to leave the organization. Firms may hire and retain employees using the following techniques (Dundon et al., 2004: 1156): i) Creating a worker referral network ii) Consistent communication with employees that benefits everyone iii) Engaging both employers and employees in the recruitment process iv) Helping worker to fell successful to9 be associated with the organization by forming a culture of success v) Establishing a reverse mentoring program for managers to gather feedback from employees constantly vi) Promoting a positive attitude within the organization and ensuring that all workers feel valued vii) Creating efficient system of governance to eliminate internal competition for resources. Organizations need to identify things that motivate all workers so as to retain them to increase the level of success if the organization. Motivating employees Organizations need to know motivating factors of their employees to be able to retain them. Pret a Manger has been able to retain their employees by restructuring their human resource management systems so as to gain competitive advantage (Dundon, et al. 2004, p. 1149). The firm has provided both lower order needs and high order needs to their employees. It has also provided adequate salaries and reward systems to their employees thus motivating workers to be embedded to the organization. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research design This study is going to use quantitative research approach because it aims at determining how common the employee turnover is in the fast food industry in the UK (Bryman and Bell 2003). In addition, it is used because of the large number of participants to evaluate evidence and generate hypothesis. However, in order to determine the reasons for high turnover of employee within the industry, qualitative research approach is going to be used since the participants’ objective opinion should be taken into question. The main reason why quantitative research is used is to test the hypothesis that is generated from questionnaires. Data collection method 1) Primary data In order to make quantification of the data possible, the research is going to use questionnaires. In addition, the use of the questionnaire is the least expensive method to gather data from a large number of participants. A Likert-type of questionnaire is going to be used and the response will be given a numerical value on a scale varying between 1 and 5, where 1 indicate that the issue examined is not important and 5 indicate that the given issue is important. In addition, the questionnaires will be structured on an informal basis and is to be completed through interview with chosen participants. 2) Secondary data This research has been performed using online articles, journals and textbooks as extra information and proposal references. Consequently, research was done to evaluate literature review so as to get the accurate data. Sampling design 1) Target population Zikmund (2003) defines population as “identifiable total set of elements of interest being investigated by a researcher.” The target population of any research is a whole group that the researcher or investigator is interested in. For this research, the target population is covered from the senior level of employees to junior level of employees from fast food restaurant, Pret a Manger and other nearby restaurants, United Kingdom. The target population has been estimated to be around 750 employees. 2) Sampling Frame and Sampling location Sample frame is made up of an asset or a list of directions for identifying the target population (Bryman and Bell, 2003, p.125). However, the sampling frame may be irrelevant to the non-probabilistic techniques as the research group lacks name list of the participants and thus it is unsuitable in this research. Sampling location refers to a place where the research is being carried out. This research has been carried out throughout London City only. 3) Sampling elements The participants were employees from senior level management to junior level in a fast food industry restaurant. The questionnaires were circulated to different ranges of participants and were based on gender, income level, age, education level and race. Consequently, it assists in generating different perception among the participants to attain accurate outcome in the research. 4) Sampling technique The most suitable sampling technique or method for the research is convenience sampling. This sampling technique is known as a collection of data from conveniently available members of the population to provide the needed information. It is the most used sampling techniques for research since it is the most appropriate method to get some fundamental information efficiently and quickly. 5) Sample size Sample size is the total number of elements that should be included in the study. The total sample size to perform this research project is 275 participants that were employees from senior level of management to low-level employees from Pret a Manger fast food restaurant. The sample size is based on the target population. Appropriate time schedule of the research proposal Appropriate time schedule ensures that the project is conducted within a set time limit so as to ensure the success of the project. Working a time schedule is very essential in ensuring that the research remains on course and that every element or activity is given enough amount of time. This paper uses a table for the time schedule. The timing is properly planned to allow for more time. Activity Targeted completion date 1. Submission of the topic completed 2. Topic approval completed 3. Finding and reading previous literature completed 4. Designing materials 1 week 5. Learning how to use method 2 weeks 6. Designing questionnaire 1 week 7. Drawing of sample (finding participants) 1 week 8. Emailing participants the questionnaires 3 days 9. Data collection 2 weeks 10. Data cleaning (running tests) 2 weeks 11. Analyzing data 2 weeks 12. Writing up 3 weeks 13. Rewriting 2 weeks 14. Thorough proof reading by me and by someone else 3 days 15. Submission References Abraham, S., 2012. Development of Employee Engagement Programme on the basis of Employee Satisfaction Survey. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance and Marketing, 4(1), 27-37. Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2003. Business Research Methods. New York: Oxford University Press. Dundon, et al., 2004. The meanings and purpose of employee voice. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 15, 6, 1149–1170. Macey, W. and Schneider, B., 2008. The Meaning of Employee Engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 3–30. Ram, P. and Prabhakar, G., 2011. The role of employee engagement in work-related outcomes. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Business, 1 (3), 47-61. Thomas, A., 2003. Leading and Inspiring Teams. London, UK: Heinemann. Zajkowska, M., 2012. Employee Engagement: how to improve it through internal communication. Human Resources Management & Ergonomics, 6, 104-117. Zikmund, W. G. 2003. Business Research Methods, 7th edn. Thompson, London. Read More