Employee Turnover Influencing Factors - Essay Example

Case Study: Employee Turnover Influencing Factors [Name] [Professor Name] [Course] [Date] Reason and influencing factors of High employee turnover High employee turnover can have grave effect on the productivity of an organization. In fact, it is generally considered as one of the major challenges confronting management of businesses. The process, which takes place each time an employee quits a job to find another one, is disruptive to the favorable running of business processes. It is one of the most costly and intractable trying times that an organization may face. On examination of the high employee turnover at Harbour Inn in the case study, several factors can be pointed out (Clark-Rayner & Harcourt 2000). The high employee turnover can be said to arise from dissatisfaction expressed by the employees with regard to the working conditions at Harbour Inn’. Firstly, one of the factors includes feelings of lack of appreciation and recognition that the employees seem to be continually facing. For instance, one of the Harbour Inn’s employees, called David, claims that though the employees are generally friendly, the supervisors and the managers are unfriendly and seem to look down upon the employees as they rarely interact. This recounts findings by some theorists that since employees are always eager to do the job as necessary (Rankin 2006), it follows that the employees would naturally want their efforts to feel recognized by the employers, as well as feel appreciated. If this is lacking, then it may create a condition where the employee would feel obliged to leave. David further claims that the only time they get in close contact with the supervisors of managers is when they have done something wrong and they have to be shouted at. With regard to economy, the employees at Harbour Inn must have felt obliged to quit as there are no rewards or incentives. The argument is based on David’s assertion that there are no rewards or incentive that would motivate to work harder. A major factor that influences employees to jobs is the low wage rate. Most often, employees will quit for higher paying jobs (Clark-Rayner & Harcourt 2000). In some cases, unequal wage structures or poor pay scales can lead an employee to quit a job. Though the two are different in the ways that they manifest themselves to the employees, paying some employees with the same qualifications different salary scales may cause great satisfaction in the same manner an employee who is paid low wages (Rankin 2006). For instance, Susan is evidently unhappy with her job as she does not seem to be getting worth her worth as she is employed on casual basis and hopes that the work hours and perhaps the wage rate would be increased. From my analysis, there exists poor work-life balance at Harbour Inn, which is a major motivation for high employee turnover. Usually, when workers complain about poor work-life balance, it is a key indicator of their intention to leave once they find a better offer. As a matter of fact, if a worker’s life lacks a reasonable split of energy and time between his job and his life, which in this case includes obligation to friends, family, hobbies or social life, they may have a good reason to leave. With reference to the case study, from the expressive statement that depicts Susan’s typical working day, she is showed as having to walk great distances to and from her car “day and night”. This can actually be derived to mean that she works through the day until night. Obviously, in this situation, and as with many other workers, she is not in a position to split her work with that of her personal life (Griffeth et al. 2000). In this case, she is denied the capacity for self-accomplishments out of work, a factor that has been blamed for causing high employee turnovers. Practically, an employee who is in constant conflict with her immediate supervisor may be left with no choice but to seek an opportunity elsewhere. Additionally, lack of cordial relationships between the business heads and the employees may leave the latter with an option of quitting their current jobs. However, the issue of workplace conflict is rather wide and may be further explained by differences in opinions, favoritism by employers, cultural conflicts and general existence of a tensed atmosphere. Most of these are demonstrated in the case study, which explains the high worker turnover. The case study details out extreme incommunicado conditions such as non-existence communication channels and understanding between the managers who are mostly of Australian origin in the late forties and fifties and the employees who are mostly between the ages of 18 and 25 years, and who are mostly Vietnamese, Chinese, Australians and Indians. These show existence of intercultural differences as well as age gap, all of which are justifiable ingredients to seek an employment elsewhere. Vindictive managers can make worker’s career progress very difficult and frustrating. In addition, from the case study, it is evident that the working conditions are substandard, and that employer often fails to fulfill his promises of making efforts aimed at ensuring the conditions are manageable. For instance, Susan is greatly discouraged and dissatisfied by the working conditions as when she was recruited, she had been promised a parking lot, and three months later, the promise has not been met as she has to walk great distances to and from her car even at night without security escort. Researchers have argued that employee will always be unwilling to put up with unfavorable conditions or inconveniences for long and would always want to seek out. It is arguable that Harbour Inn lacks opportunity for career growth or advancement, one of the reasons Susan is unhappy with her job. Often, if the job proves to be a dead-end proposition, researchers advise that it should be explained during hiring to make it clear to the employee. In that case, some social scientists have expressed that the job should be precisely described to avoid raising hopes for advancement. This is a situation that Susan faces, as she had been promised she would be trained fully for her position although her training seems to slowly coming to a standstill. It is believed that when new employees are poorly trained, they may face difficulty in skill growth essential for the job. They may as well face difficulties in meeting the minimum targets as set to measure their performances (Campion, 1991). This would make them feel frustrated as it happened with Susan. Additionally, organizations that are in the course of implementing substantial changes may experience high job turnovers if they fail to train the employees well. The Harbour Inn also faces serious problems in the way the business is managed. For instance, there is lackluster supervision, as it can be perceived from the case study that the managers have poor coordination. For instance, Susan complains that she hardly ever sees her managers, in which case she lacks the way forward on her job situation and whom to address it to having been promised that her working hours would be increased over time. On the other hand, David complains that the only time they communicate with the managers is when they are being shouted at. Employees must be assured of the right guidance and direction, failure in which they would perform the work in their own way. Likewise, lacking of a definite training program causes employees to have poor performance and is a cause of voluntary turnover as much as poor working relationship with the supervisors and managers (Shaw 2001). Stopping employee turnovers in hospitality organizations There are various preventive measures that can be applied in the management of hospitality organizations to prevent employee turnovers, including training departmental or line managers to ensure they supervise their divisions effectively before they are ultimately appointed or promoted (Lee & Mitchell 2000). In addition, the hotel management should consider providing good working conditions to its employees in areas they have expressed concerns. In the case of Susan, she was promised a parking lot, a promise she never realized and which accounts to the sum of her dissatisfaction with her working conditions. In some cases, the supervising managers should be held accountable for worker turnover within their departments. Additionally, maximization of employee benefits such as accommodations, regular appraisals, personal work-hour preference have proved successful in ensuring worker retention. By setting a proper compensation and benefits criteria, as well as working with the human resources in setting proper pay packages, the turnover rates can be greatly decreased (Philips 1990). In addition, the management should consider setting up flexible work schedules and attractive bonus structures. The willingness by an organization to promote workers has been suggested to reduce turnover rates as employees are always determined to seek career progress. Promotion of employees is consistent with empirical literature as the increases wages that come with the promotion motivates the workers (Shaw 2001). Contrary to what most employers think, although increases salaries and benefits may play a factor in motivating a worker resulting to reduced turnover rates, they are not the major reasons that influence the employees to get satisfied with their work and hence the results may not be that significant. Rather, it is imperative that the employer makes the employees feel that he truly cares about them. Consequently, this warm affection should be felt and be transferable right from the employer to the supervisors down to the lowliest ranked worker (Lazear 2000). Although a number of organizations have a caring chief executive officer, the value of his affection diminishes greatly once the worker begins to experience tensed relationship with his supervisor. In most cases, the strained relationship may remain unnoticed by the executives even as it causes dissatisfaction, which could be severe to the level of causing turnovers. In this case, the management should establish open communication links without the necessity to follow protocol, as it’s only through interactions that the top management may get to learn about the unhappiness that the workers may have (Price & Mueller 1981). There exists many effective ways that can be ensured, including paying attention to the worker’s personal needs as well as offering telecommuting, or free correspondence via email. For instance, at the conclusion of a project, the managers can send simple emails of praise to workers in addition to memos detailing achievement of a team. It can as well start peer recognition programs to express positive feedback to the workers (Mobley 1982). In conclusion, employee turnover is exceedingly disruptive to any business as it makes it difficult for the employers to sustain a steady and trouble-free operation, meaning the management should take the responsibility of having their own rating on worker turnover and measurement of how it affects the organization (Carsten & Spector 1987). Loss of a single worker can be detrimental to the success of a project and has always proved to sway investor’s confidence in a firm. The stronger the feeling of content has in his job the more unlikely it is to look for an alternative job. This aspect of turnover shows the whole gamut of attitudes and emotions as antecedents of behavior. This is because when a worker leaves a job, as much as it affects the organization, individual workers are also affected emotionally (Abelson 1987). The phenomenon of employee turnover is of particular interest to social theorists and organizations as it is relatively costly. Most often, employees who decide to remain in an organization tend to feel they are in control of their destinies in the organization as they feel that their idea, opinions and positions are valued and paid consideration in any management decisions made. This way, they do not experience similar sense of isolation or detachment as experienced by those workers who feel they are disregarded and that their jobs hang on the line (Lee & Mitchell 2000). 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