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2018 Abstracts

Employee Retention: Relationship among Housekeeper’s Job Satisfaction, Organizational Workforce, and Racial-Ethnicity within the Global Hospitality Industry in Utah

Madalyn Johnson; Megan Anderson, Utah Valley University

Hotel managers have a long hoped to increase employee retention, productivity, performance, and guest satisfaction, and to decrease the employee turnover through a better understanding of their motivations and attitude toward the hotel. Even the employee turnover is considered to be a major critical factor and problem to the operators and employees themselves as well, there is little to no research examining its causes/factors on an employee’s decision to stay or leave. The hospitality management should analyze its organizational workforces in the context of housekeeper’s job satisfaction and its relationship with the job performance and cultural diversity since cultural diversity in the hospitality industry abounds in a housekeeping department. The objectives of our research project is to determine the factors addressing this deficiency by testing a causal model of employee’s intent to leave and to determine the major contributing work environmental factors toward to their employees decision to stay or leave using a sample from the lodging industry in Utah. A content model of 12 attributes (i.e., job satisfaction factors, rewards, organizational workforces, position level, and racial-ethnicity, etc.) is developed and augmented in the context of previous studies. A survey instrument and questionnaire are developed and translated in Spanish as well since the major housekeepers are Hispanic background. The survey form will be distributed to housekeeping department employees in the hotels in Utah. Respondents are asked on the survey to indicate the overall rating on 12 attributes. Ratings are made on a 5-point Likert Scale. Factor analysis is to be performed to determine and analyze the structure of the correlations among a number of retention factors (variables) by defining a set of common underlying dimensions. Discriminant analysis is applied since one of the research objectives is to determine whether the employees are willing to stay or not (categorical dependent variables). Structural equation model (SEM) is introduced to accommodate multiple interrelated dependence (i.e., retention factors) relationships in a single model (i.e., job turnover). This research and its results will provide empirical evidence that organizational workforce improves job satisfaction and will play an important role in quality and productivity to the racial-ethnicity work environment. In addition, the hospitality management should consider how effective retention management strategies and workforces influence the racial and cultural diversity demographics as they play very important roles in the service oriented industry and their attitudes and behavior may not be in parallel with the traditional organizational culture.