4 JIMS 8M, July-September, 2014 EMPLOYEE TURNOVER IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRIES A STUDY OF SERVICE STAFF Parag Arun NarkhedeŒ Œ Assistant Professor, KCES’s Institute of Management & Research, NH - 06 Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India. Employee turnover has been and continues to be a particularly prolific area of research, with many publications on the topic. Evidence suggests that turnover in hotel industry is triggered by dissatisfaction with such factors as relationships with supervisors, job content, working conditions, work timings, size of restaurants, salary and other benefits etc. In this paper the author intends to find out the causes of turnover in hotels serving food to customers, and discover suitable measures to overcome the problems. For this the data has been collected from selected hotels in Jalgaon City through schedules particularly from member of staff serving at table. The results provided significant evidence to justify increased emphasis on staff retention strategies and the creation of healthy work environments for serving staff. Research Employee turnover has long been a major concern of the service industry especially Hotel industry and of academics who investigate human resources issues. High employee turnover affects the quality of products and services. Mok & Luk,(1995) discovered that high employee turnover rates are a fundamental labor problem in the hotel sector, and the impact of job attitudes such as organizational commitment on employee turnover has been found to be significant(Griffeth & Hom, 1995). Because most turnovers among new employees of the hotel industry occurs during the early stages of employment and the impacts on organizational commitment are tremendous on subsequent successful delivery of services to customers, investigation of the factors that may exhibit significant influence on intent to quit continues to be of considerable interest to researchers and hotel practitioners. Therefore, the primary objectives of this study are to (a) find out causes of staff turnover (b) assess the impact of supervisor recognition and opening in other reputed hotels onemployees’ turnover intentions and (c) propose recommendations for hotel managers to reduce employee turnover. I. Review of Literature Turnover remains one of the most troubling issues for hotel businesses. While the turnover rates of hourly workers are legendary, even more challenging are the turnover rates among waiters especially because of the disruption caused by their departures (Ghiselli, Joseph, & Billy, 2001). In a limited study of hotel managers, annual turnover was found to be as high as 80 percent (Woods & McCauley, 1989). Lam, Lo, & Chan, (2002) found that the impossible people in newcomers’ lives influence the latter’s turnover and commitment, which are rarely discussed in the literature. Labour turnover is defined as ‘the movement of people into and out of employment within an organization’(Denvir & McMahon, 1992). It can be voluntary or involuntary. Correspondingly, on the basis that people leave an organization for a multitude of reasons that may not be management-related, further turnover can be categorized into controllable and unavoidable turnover. Turnover in the hospitality industry has been shown to be unacceptably high(Kennedy & Berger, 1994), averaging up to 200 or 300 per cent per annum (Wood, 1992), although substantial variations exist between different establishments.The literature has so far identified factors that impact on turnover rates as orientation and socialization processes(Wood, 1992); ad hoc recruitment and selection procedures(Wheelhouse, 1989); discrimination at the workplace(Antolik, 1993); training and development opportunities(Hiemestra, 1990); management styles (Boella, 1988); organizational commitment (Denvir & McMahon, 1992); competition and organizational culture (Woods & McCauley, 1989); labour shortage (Wood, 1992); stress and burnout(Hom & Griffith, 1995); the seasonal nature of the industry (Boella, 1988); and job dissatisfaction (Hom & Griffith, 1995). There has long been concern about excessive employee turnover and its associated costs (Jesitus, 1992). High turnover incurs significant replacement and recruitment costs and thus is likely to affect profitability. Correspondingly, Denvir and McMahon, (1992) suggested that labour turnover is not ‘an isolated occurrence’, where ‘multi-dimensional’ aspects include low staff morale, substandard work performance and absenteeism. Each DOI No. 10.5958/0973-9343.2014.01230.7