High Labour Turnover in the Hospitality Industry in the UK

Categories: Business Hospitality Industry Industry

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The hospitality industry depends on manpower for its survival and a shortage of which would be a great challenge to tourism and hospitality industries. The competitive nature of the hospitality industry results to continuous restructuring of career progression prospects so as to match the industry growth with the talent and service levels through monetary and non-monetary reward structures. A healthy labour turnover is associated with the fresh blood argument, skills development and labour market regeneration.

Labour turnover is the total number of labour force leavers expressed as a percentage of the total number of employees in a department or industry (Hoques, 2000, 9).

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When employees leave their jobs before staying for more than one year, then a high turnover is attained. This state can be attained by ensuring job satisfaction, career development, commitment and training good pay conditions lack of which will cause labour turnover.

In the UK, the hospitality industries are subjected to high labour turnover and this can be related to various causes due to poor employers’ practices.

The management of these hospitality industries are to blame for their style of management and their competencies. The policies employed by most managers in these industries do contribute to the high turnover due to the temporary nature of many hospitality workers (Boella & Turner, 2005, 12).

This has led the industries to incur great unnecessary costs which could otherwise be avoided and provision of poor quality services as a result. Given that many industries are in the run of providing consistency in quality of products and services in the ever increasing competitive market, they tend to focus on there products and services while neglecting the interests of its workers and this contributes to the high rate of labour turnover on these hospitality industries (Suff, 2010, 8).

High labour turnover can also be associated with cultural perspective within the hospitality sector. The labour turnover culture brought about by management who assert that there is a relationship between individual workers’ values, norms and propensity to leave employment which is perceived to be beneficial to both the employee and employer. All in all, job satisfaction, commitment to the organisation, work difficulties and promotional opportunities are great determinants of employee loyalty to a firm lack of which will result to labour turnover (Abraham, 1999, 13).

In UK hospitality industries, the high turnover of employees is predictable it effects to loss of knowledge and inability to meet business objective. In addition, given that the industry is growing the expectations and demands of customers for quality rises high due to varying consumer tastes and stiff competition. Thus hospitality industries are more concerned with in excellence in service quality, performance, stiff competition and customer satisfaction while neglecting aspects pertaining to employees and this dissatisfaction makes them to leave.

Solutions to high rates of labour turnover The Millennium and Copthorne Hotel, Encore Catering Company, Mount Charlotte and Hilton Group are examples of hospitality industries with the lowest labour turnover and this is attributed to the best practices of its management especially when dealing with its employees (Taylor, 2002, 6). The high rate of labour turnover can possibly be reduced by retaining staffs in their jobs by means of recruitment, organisational commitment, job satisfaction, improving productivity and ensuring excellence and quality services.

The understanding that labour cost, labour utilisation, labour market behaviour and employee pay are inseparable from management of people’s skills in promoting productivity, motivation and commitment (Riley, 2000, 10). Ensuring a good pay system as a means of motivating employees and career development will encourage their commitment. The line managers should also ensure that employee’s issues are attended to and that there is favourable environment for working in the industry.

Proper training measures of employees so as they can fit in the demanding market so as to provide quality services and be retained in the industry to cut employment costs. Findings According to statistics, the sales staff had the highest labour turnover rate of 23% as compared to management who had the lowest labour turnover of about 11%. In addition, full time employees express the highest turnover of 18. 9% compared to part time employees who had as low turnover as 9. 6% in the hospitality industry according to IPD survey (Deery, 2002, 6).

Other hotels labour rate turnover is as high as 58% to 112% as a result of management problems. The industries with best management practices have the supreme labour turnover of 26. 5% average implying that only a quarter of their staff changes their jobs annually (Denvir & McMahon, 2002, 144-45). Conclusions

In conclusion, a benchmark practices should be arrived at within the hospitality industry on fighting the operational and administrative challenges that results to high labour turnover. A high labour turnover affects the hospitality industries both directly and indirectly in many ways. Indirect costs results to low employee morale, higher pressure on the jobs, high learning costs, high organisational memory and poor restaurant service. The direct costs are incurred during recruitment, replacement, time management, and selection and hiring of temporary workforce.