Analysis of Employee Turnover at Imperial Hotel, HRM Essay Sample

This report aims at identifying the main causes for high staff turnover of approximately 80% every year in The Imperial Hotel, London and the impact it has on the overall performance of the hotel. Employee turnover refers to the total number of employees who leaves an organisation or company within a given period for other companies forcing the company to hire new employees. Employee's turnover can be voluntary or involuntary. Employees tend to give several reasons for leaving voluntary such as relocating to a new area, accepting employment with another company and dealing with a personal matter (Hope and Mackin, 2007). The Imperial Hotel is facing a voluntary type of employee turnover whereby the employees are leaving the hotel and accepting employment at competitor hotel companies. The report will further discuss how the rate of staff turnover in the hotel can be reduced by the analysing the different suggestions by Peter Farnsworth and also the various recommendations that the management of Imperial Hotel should undertake.

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The high rate of staff turnover in the Imperial hotel is as a result of the nature of the aggressive supervisory and management styles, low pay, unsociable working hours, lack of regular and proper training, little opportunity for promotion or bonuses and the high cost of travelling. The various recommendations that will be addressed in this report to help The Imperial Hotel to address the issue of high employee turnover include the provision of transport to the employees, outsourcing of training professionals, working in shifts and ensuring employees have access to information.

Analysis of the Problem of the high rate of staff turnover

Aggressive supervisory and management style is one of the reasons for the high employee turnover in Imperial Hotel. A bad manager can turn an employee to be miserable and live in an environment which is not favourable. Even when an organisation is offering a good pay to the employees they may still opt to leave voluntary if the relationship they have with their managers is not good. The former manager of imperial Hotel lacked the required skills to be in a position to reduce the high employee turn-over rate (Hom and Kinicki, 2001).

In this case, the Imperial hotel offers little opportunity for promotion or bonuses to their employees which has resulted in the high rate of employee turnover. Lack of promotion opportunities or bonuses can lower the morale of the employee making them feel demotivated. Employees tend to feel undervalued and their effort not appreciated when they fail to receive any form of motivation. Most of the employees want to be recognised and rewarded for the little efforts they make and for a job well done (Maertz, Griffeth, Campbell and Allen, 2007).

Lack of regular and proper training has also contributed to the high rate of employee turnover in the Imperial hotel. Employees who start new jobs without undergoing any form of training they tend to be unaware of the policies that can help improve their job performance. This results in lack of job satisfaction and hence the employee may opt to leave (Bruni, Luch, & Kuoch, 2013).

In this case, the high cost of travelling to work in the central London and difficulties of getting transport to go home at night has also contributed to the high staff turnover in the Imperial hotel. The employee can hate travelling especially when they are being underpaid and have to incur the transport cost on their own. Imperial Hotel requires employees to work with shifts and hence employees working for night shift may have difficulties to be at work on time due to lack of transport and as well they may feel their security is threatened while travelling at night and hence opting to leave.

The low pay in the Imperial hotel has also contributed to the high rate of employee turnover. Employees consider leaving to go work in another organisation when given a better pay. In this case, some young and talented supervisory staff have left the Imperial hotel to go work in other competitor hotel companies since they are being offered better pay, working conditions and benefits.

Unsociable working hours can result in high employee turnover in an organisation. Long working hours can result in employees opting to leave as they lack their own free and leisure time (Koys, 2001). In this case, the high employee turnover in the Imperial hotel has been contributed to the unsociable working hours. Individual members of staff in the Imperial hotel shows lack of commitment to the hotel with an intention to leave. This has led to increased pressure on the employees who are left of having to deal with more responsibilities and workload due to lack of having trained workforce who can fill in the positions immediately considering that Imperial hotel faces the problem of managerial succession. This has contributed to the routine system problem and culture of turnover in the hotel.

Comments on Peter Farnsworth Suggestions on How to Manage the Problem

Peter Farnsworth suggested that to manage the problem the hotel management should attract and retain staff to key supervisory positions. The Imperial hotel management should ensure that they do not demote staff who hold high ranks unless when they are involved in issues that compromise their credibility of holding such positions. I agree with Peter Farnsworth suggestion of retaining staff to key supervisory positions since it makes the employees feel that their services are considered essential and valued (Kim, 2012).

Peter Farnsworth also suggested that the employees should be offered pay packages and bonuses that encourage staying with the company through a robust reward strategy. I agree with this suggestion put forward by Peter Farnsworth. An example of a robust strategy that the management of Imperial hotel can implement is compensating the employees for overtime hours in addition to the staff incentive schemes that are meant to encourage the staff to meet excellent standards of work and improve productivity. This will motivate the employees to continue working irrespective of the time (Bryant and Allen, 2013).

As an independent consultant, I agree with the initial suggestion of Peter Farnsworth of benchmarking pay scales against the competitor hotels. The Imperial hotel manager should find out how employees working in their competitor's hotels are paid to ensure that the staff working in the Imperial hotel are not underpaid. This helps the manager also to identify the kind of payments to offer to the employees in the hotel. Employees tend to remain in the hotel where they have better pays. Conducting a benchmarking on other hotels will also assist the manager to know the various measures to implement to treat his employees better as compared to the other hotels (Ton and Huckman, 2008) .

Another initial suggestion by Peter Farnsworth to help manage the problem is to offer regular training and performance and also encourage the promotion of talented staff. I agree with this suggestion of Peter Farnsworth since training of the employees will help them improve their skills and also acquire new knowledge which will help them provide better services to the clients. Employees find it easy doing a job which they love and have the relevant skills and knowledge regarding it (Mowday, Porter and Steers, 2013). To retain the employees, the Imperial Hotel should train the staff to equip them with new skills which will help them have new responsibilities in their various positions and also prepare them for future advancement. When employees are knowledgeable, they can handle the global challenges encountered in the hotel industry. Employees who are talented are expected to have a competitive advantage (Pollitt, 2008). The Imperial Hotel management can implement advancement plans, accurate career previews, and internal promotion as a means of developing the employee's career.

The final suggestion by Peter Farnsworth is to manage the staff more effectively and supportively through 'hard and soft' Human Resource practices. I agree with this suggestion of managing the employees through 'hard and soft' Human Resource practices to help manage the problem of employee turnover. The Imperial Hotel management should develop a healthy relationship with employees which will help in building and developing trust among one another. It ensures that both the leaders and the employees work in a friendly environment where they can even socialise and share some of their problems (Imna and Hassan, 2015). It will help the leaders and workers to come up with ways to improve the quality of services offered in the hotel (Mwirigi et al., 2017). The Imperial hotel management can manage the staff more effectively and supportively through soft and hard Human Resource practices through communicating to the employees about various changes and issues taking place within the organisation. The various aspects of communication that Imperial Hotel managers should engage in include having a clear line of communication that makes it easy for the employee to communicate with the manager, regular staff briefings, and good intercommunication among employees working in the hotel (Phillips and Connell, 2012).

Recommendations for The Imperial Hotel management

The Imperial Hotel management should ensure that they have a budget for funds that can be used to outsource professionals to train their staff on a regular basis of at least once in every month at the hotel. Outsourcing of professionals will offer proper training and also equip the staff with new knowledge which has not been implemented in the hotel. This will help deal with the issue of lack of proper and regular training (Dunbar, 2013).

The Imperial Hotel management should ensure that they provide transportation services to their employees who work at night. The hotel can purchase a van that can be used to ensure that the employees do not incur the high cost of travelling to work in central London and difficulties in getting transport home at night. To deal with this problem the Imperial Hotel management can also ensure that they fully compensate the employees the amount they spend on cabs when they are travelling to work or from work.

I recommend that the Imperial Hotel management should ensure that their employees work in shifts and have off days as well during specific days of the week. This will help solve the problem of unsociable working hours. This will help ensure that one employee does not always work during the unsociable hours like at night.

I also recommend that The Imperial hotel management ensures that the employees have access to information to help deal with the problem of aggressive supervisory and management styles. The sharing of information should be made at all levels of management in the Imperial Hotel. The accessibility of information will help create a corporate culture which is a strong and robust performance of the employees (Ongori, 2007).

The management of the Imperial Hotel should organize seminars with other hotel managers which could be held three times in a year in one of the hotels. This will help network with other staff and also learn leadership styles and hoe the management is supposed to treat their employees. This will help address the problem of aggressive supervisory and management styles.

Conclusion

The high employee turnover rate in the hotel industry is caused by different reasons. The high employee turnover rate has a negative impact on the organisation and as well as the employees. It reduces the revenue of the hotel while on the other hand the morale of the employees is reduced resulting in poor quality services being offered. The main reasons for high employee turnover in the Imperial hotel include low pay, unsociable working hours, lack of proper and regular training and the high cost of...