IMPLEMENTING 8D MODEL OF PROBLEM SOLVING IN EMPLOYEE TURNOVER: A STUDY OF SELECTED HOTELS IN DELHI AND RAJASTHAN

Journal of Kashmir for Tourism and Catering Technology

Vol. 2, No. 2, December, 2015

ISSN 2348 1986

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IMPLEMENTING 8D MODEL OF PROBLEM SOLVING IN EMPLOYEE TURNOVER: A STUDY OF SELECTED HOTELS IN

DELHI AND RAJASTHAN

Surjeet Kumar, PhD Asst. Professor,

Dept of Tourism and Hotel Management, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra Email: [email protected]

Dilbag Singh

Research Scholar, Dept of Tourism and Hotel Management, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra

Email:[email protected] Abstract

India is an emerging market in the field of hospitality; a number of international players

are willing to invest in Indian market, because of the growth potential & huge availability of

skilled & trained manpower. As a result the hospitality sector has tremendous employment

opportunities in hotel sector in India. According to report of National Skill Development

Corporation 2011, the requirement of human resource in hotel industry in India will be 27,

72000 by the year 2022. But, on the other hand the hotel industry is suffering from a number

of problems these are market size, competition, government policies and human resource

related issues. Employee turnover is also one of them. Comparison Trend Survey-2013-14

finds that the average rate of employee turnover in hospitality industry is 13%, which

indicates that after having so much opportunity the industry is still suffering from the problem

of employee turnover. The present study focuses on the issue of employee turnover in

housekeeping department in the hotel industry of Delhi and Rajasthan & tries to find out the

various reasons and remedies of employee turnover. Further, these results & presented in

systematic manner with the help of 8D model of problem solving.

Keywords: Employee Turnover, Hotel Industry, India, Delhi & Rajasthan, 8D model

1. Introduction Hotel industry in India has witnesses a tremendous growth. A number of international players

are willing to invest in the country because of the future potential in the market. According to

the National Skill Development Corporation (2011) [18] estimates there will be

requirement of 27, 72000 employees in hotel industry by the year 2022, and the share of

housekeeping department will be 6, 34000. This also indicates that housekeeping department

will be providing huge opportunities in employment generation in hotels. Moulishree and

Prashant (2012) [17] states that the hotel industry is currently a $23 billion industry & will

add 50,000 new hotel rooms in the top 6 cities of India by the year 2016-2017, but further

raise the question whether the institutes are capable of providing enough skilled manpower .

Kumar, S and Singh, D

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The available people in the sector are only 52,000 against the requirement of 583,000

professionals, which will rise up to 754,000 in the next few years, according to the

government. The current manpower supply of hotel industry in India is only 8.92% of total

requirement. Apart from the shortage, the Employee Turnover is also one of the burning

issues in Indian hospitality industries. It is inevitable and important to address the second

issues, Taylor (2008) [30] defines employee turnover as the ratio of the staff that had to be

replaced in a given time period. Whereas, Naukrihub.com, (2010) [18] suggest that

employee turnover is gaining or loosing employees at a measured time period, if an employer

has a high rate of employee turnover than its competitors it means his company have a shorter

average tenure of the employees. High rate of turnover may decrease the productivity, service

delivery and spread of information. The present study is an attempt to find various

reasons/causes of employee turnover in Indian hotel industry. & further explore various

remedies for reducing employee turnover.

2. Review of Literature

The hotel industry is a service based industry, and like the other service based

industry employees plays a vital role in the success of the organization. But when we

are looking at employees, the present scenario is not that rosy. In the present time, the

hotel industry is facing an acute shortage of staff. This is due to high employee

turnover. Employee turnover is a set ratio of people to be replaced by an organization

with in a limited time during a year. Employee turnover is such a burning issue for the

service sector now a days &hotel industry is not an exception. So it is very important to

understand what employee turnover is & what are its causes and remedies for it.

A number of researches has been done on different aspects of employee turnover. It

is an over in a positive as well the negative way, in addition to this problem, another

study was conducted in Singapore by Tan and Tiong (2006) [29] they came on a

conclusion that there is a relationship between work satisfaction, stress and employee

turnover. Further, Rahman, Naqvi and Ramay (2008) [21] conduct a study in Pakistan

to go through the interconnection between the job satisfaction, organization

commitment, perceived job opportunities and turnover objective. Steijin and Voet

(2009) [27] also mentioned the relationship between supervisor and employee’s

attitude. For that we will firstly understand what exactly the employee turnover is, what

the various reasons behind it are and how we can cure it. A number of studies have been

conducted in this field as Beam (2009) [4] says that Employee Turnover is a

comparison ratio within the organization during a set period of time which is to be

replaced with average number of total employees. Employee Turnover is a huge

expense for the organization, a number of factors plays a very vital role in this segment.

Wages, company benefits, attendance and job performance etc. The organizations take a

deep interest to find remedies for that issue as it is very much expensive for them.

Further they found that the company bears direct or indirect expenses like the

advertisement, headhunting fees, human resource cost, loss of productivity, training

cost on every replacement of the staff, this cost can be ranges from 30 to 200 percent of

the salary of the particular employee according to the job profile of the employee .

Colema (1987) [5] studied that employee turnover consist of operational interruption,

deflation, negative public relation, personal cost and decreased social incorporation. In

a study of Rampur (2009) [22] which finds that salary of the employees plays a very

vital role in the turnover intention because most of the employees swap themselves



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from one place to the another one only for the sake of vastly paid salaries, apart from

that low level of performance appraisals and this also occurs because of the low salary.

A research conducted by the American Hotel and Motel Association (2010) [2],which

covers the entire world finds that the ratio of employee turnover is highest in the

hospitality industry. Further the finding suggest that in U.S.A the average of non-

managerial employee turnover is 50% and on the other hand the managerial is 25%

annually, they suggests following reasons for the high employee turnover within the

hospitality industry: Seasonality; Organizational Culture and Leadership ( Lack of

positive culture also leads the negativity); Labor Pool (of untrained and unskilled; many

of them choose it for a part time ); Customer Service Issues; Pay Rates and Hours (rates

are comparatively low). As Sellgren (2007) [26] finds that a good leadership is very

much required in the betterment of a work environment, increase the performance level

of the employees and also can motivate them to work well. If the employer are

providing them the less salaries than the actual salary rate in the market it will also

increase the dissatisfaction level of the employees and increases the turnover rates

among them, further he says that the work stress also have the negative as well the

positive aspect towards the employee turnover- if the employees are capable to tackle

the problems within the organization then it is okay but on the other hand if they are not

capable to perform in such conditions it will helps to increase the turnover rates among

them. On the other hand inactive work climate also increase the dissatisfaction among

the employees and empower the turnover within the employees. In his study he also

came to know that if the employee is not satisfied with the work he did can also be a

reason for the employee turnover, bad working environment is also one of these reasons

for the dissatisfaction of the employees. Maslow (1943) [13] his study suggested that

high qualification as compare to the job profile can also leads to the dissatisfaction of

the employees. Rutherford (1942) [23] suggests the job satisfaction and employee’s

commitment are interrelated, if the job satisfaction is less it will promote the downfall

in the commitment. With his study he came to know that turnover is very much linked

with the job satisfaction, for a smooth functioning of the organization the job

satisfaction is very much required. Mondy (2008) [16] finds in his study that job

description also play a vital role in the employee turnover, if the organization has a

clear job description it helps to keep the employees happy but on the other hand if the

description is not transparent it create confusions within the organization and the

employees, as a result dissatisfaction among the employees. Surjeet Kumar & Dilbag

(2015) [25] in their study conducted in India, finds that employee turnover is a big

problem especially among the employees of housekeeping department in a hotel. They

finds following reasons of housekeeping department in there study these were poor

leadership, low promotion and unhealthy social life, lack of quality, poor

communication channel and poor safety, job security and offer from other hotels, less

growth options, family transfer and further study.

3. Research Methodology Present research tries to explore various reasons & find remedies for Employee

turnover in housekeeping department. . For the conduct of research a detailed


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questionnaire was designed to collect the primary data and the data was collected from

five star, three star and budget hotels of North India. The questionnaire focuses on

employees of housekeeping ranging from Executive Housekeepers to Room Attendants,

it also includes Human Resource Managers and General Managers. Further, to find

reasons & remedies factor analysis (a data reduction technique) was implemented & the

result were presented with the 8D Model of problem solving. This is a systematic

method of solving the problems by improvement of the problems and error. The 8D

methodology is a plan that involves a team work for the reduction of problems as well

as complaints, in a well-structured eight step method & it focuses on the facts instead of

opinions. This is a much effective plan to get rid from the problems by adopting

remedies towards the root cause of the problems as well as compla ints. This approach

helps the organization to search the weakness in their management and find out the best

possible action plans as a solution. This method has been used in Auto industry and a

number of service based industry, but in the field of hotel industry there is no such

study conducted in India, so this paper tries to investigate the root cause of employee

turnover in the hotel housekeeping department and tries to overcome with the problem

by adopting 8D model. The 8D model has following subsections: Build the team;

Describing the problem; Implement a temporary fix; Identify and eliminating the root

cause; Verify the solution; Implement a permanent solution; Prevent the problem from

recurring & Celebrate team success. It is the Ford Motor Company who developed 8D

(8 Disciplines) Problem Solving Process, and it is published ford manual 1987. It is a

"Team Oriented Problem Solving (TOPS).” & frequently used by many organization for

problem solving. The present study is conducted in the selected hote ls in Delhi and

Rajasthan ranging from five star to budget categories.

4. Data Analysis In the present research, the data has been collected from the selected hotels in Delhi

and Rajasthan ranging from Budget to Five Star category. Table 1 shows the profile of

the respondents with their number and valid percentage.

From Table 1, it is clear that in all 180 respondents were taken 60 from 5 star, 60

from 3 star & 60 from budget hotel. Out of which fifty percent were from Rajasthan &

fifty from Delhi states. Majority of the respondent were male (89.4 percent) and most of

them were plus two (49.5) Further majority of respondent were working at junior or

supervisor level (62.6 per cent).

Table 1: Profile of the respondents

Type of Hotel 5 Star 60 (33.3)

3 Star 60 (33.3)

Budget 60 (33.3)

State you belong to Delhi 90 (50)

Rajasthan 90 (50)

Age Below 20 15 (8.3)

20-30 80 (44.4)

30-40 60 (33.3)

40-50 22 (12.2)

50 and Above 3 (1.7)

Education 10+2 89 (49.4)

Graduation 57 (31.7)



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Post-Graduation 34 (18.9)

Gender Male 161 (89.4)

Female 19 (10.6)

Dep

artm

en

t

Related to H.K

department

Executive Housekeeper/Deputy

Housekeeper

30 (20.0)

Housekeeping Supervisor. 30 (20.0)

Room Attendant 90 (60.0)

Related to other

department

General Manager 20 (66.7)

Human resource Manager 8 (26.7)

Assistant Human Resource Manager 2 (6.7)

Industrial Experience 1-2 Years 20 (11.1)

2-3 Years 51 (28.3)

3-4 Years 58 (33.2)

4-5 Years 15 (8.3)

5 Years and Above 36 (20.0)

Years of Working With

Same Hotel

1Years and below 122 (67.8)

2Years 38 (21.1)

3 Years 8 (4.4)

4 Years 2 (1.1)

5 Year and above 10 (5.6)

Further, from the above table 1, it is also clear that majority of them are having 3-4

years (33.2 per cent) of industrial experience & 122 (67.8 per cent) were working for

less than one year in the same organization. This also reflects that majority of house-

keeping staff (88.9 percent) leaves a hotel within the span of two years.

REASON OF EMPLOYEE TURNOVER IN HOUSEKEEPING DEPARTMENT

OF A HOTEL

Based on secondary data, a number of reasons for employee turnover were identified.

The analysis is presented in table 2. Respondents were asked questions on 5 point

Likert scale. Factor analysis method is used to reduce these variables to limited number

of factors. The analysis is done with the help of principal component analysis and

varimax rotation matrix. 18 variables were identified based upon secondary researches

for turnover. The output of principal component analysis shows Eigen value of four

factors are more than 1 explaining 77.71 % percent of total variance thus reducing 18

variables to underlying four factors. These are:

Table 2: Reason of Employee Turnover in a Hotel Housekeeping department

Component

1 2 3 4

Poor social life .742

Less social life

.697

Poor health .674


6

Poor leadership .633

Quality of coworkers .596

Poor safety and hazard mgt. .559

Low chance of promotion .554

Ineffective communication .523

Change in field .429

Less job security .613

Family reason .559

Advancement of career

.518

Family transfer

.505

Offer from other hotel .499

Poor salary .482

Poor working environment .560

Further study .503

Quality of supervision 473

The following four factors are:

Factor 1: Poor quality life: 9 variable were loaded in this factor these were Poor

social life(.742), Less social life (.697), Poor health (.674), Poor leadership (.633),

Quality of coworkers (.596), Poor safety and hazard management (.559), Low chance of

promotion (.554), Ineffective communication (.523) and Change in field (.429)

Factor 2: Poor salary & less chance of career advancement, 6 variable were

loaded in this factor these were Less job security (.613), Family reason (.559),

Advancement of career (.518), Family transfer (.505), Offer from other hotel (.499) and

Poor salary (.482).

Factor 3: Bad working environment, 1 variable was loaded in this factor that is

Poor working environment (.560)

Factor 4: Bad supervision and future study related issues, 2 variable were loaded

in this factor these were: Further study (.503) and Quality of supervision (.473).

REMEDIES FOR EMPLOYEE TURNOVER IN HOUSEKEEPING

DEPARTMENT OF A HOTEL

Based on secondary data, a number of remedies for turnover were identified. The

analysis is presented in table 6. Respondents were asked questions on 5 point scale on

different remedies to reduce turnover. Factor analysis method is used to reduce these

variables to limited number of factors. The analysis is done with the help of principal

component analysis and varimax rotation matrix. 19 variables were identified based

upon secondary researches for turnover. The output of principal component analysis

shows Eigen value of four factors are more than 1 explaining 81.23% percent of total

variance thus reducing 19 variables to underlying four factors. These

Table3Remedies for Employee Turnover in Hotel Housekeeping Department

Component



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The following are the four factors:

Factor 1: Efficient HR practices, 12 variable were loaded in this factor these were

Healthy Promotion (.804), Good Management Commitment (.802), High Recognition of

Work, and Balance in Personal Life (.766) Job Security (.761), Clear Definition of

Responsibilities (.757). Reward for good Work (.755), Good Relationship with

Colleagues (.752), Employee Development Program (.592), Recreational Activities

(.538), Salaries and Motivation (.484) and Right People on Right Job (.346).

Factor 2: Strong and friendly association among staff members, 5 Variable were

loaded in 6this factor these were Recognition of good work (.743), Strong association

(.667), and Helping nature of senior staff (.659), Friendly environment (.636) and

Benefit compensation package (.632).

Factor 3: Job enrichment, 1 Variable was loaded in this factor that is Challenging

job to prove themselves (.591)

Factor 4: Hiring experienced staff, 1 Variable was loaded in this factor that is

hiring experienced staff (.469).

From the above analysis it is clear that employee turnover is a big problem in

housekeeping department of hotel as from the profile of respondent also it is visible that

67.8 per cent of employee were working for less than one year in the same organization.

Thus, this show that people are moving from one hotel two another. To ensure a

systematic and orderly way of solution to the problems, the 8D model was applied for

better understanding the problem & finding solution to the same. the main advantages

of the model is that it is easy and logically method & clearly shows next steps of

problem solution; often this is a required method of documenting the correction action

1 2 3 4

Healthy Promotion .804

Good Management Commitment .802

High Recognition of Work .791 .

Balance in Personal Life .766

Job Security .761

Clear Definition of Responsibilities .757

Reward for good Work .755

Good Relationship with Colleagues .752

Employee Development Program .592

Recreational Activities .538

Salaries and Motivation .484

Right People on Right Job .346

Recognition of good work .743

Strong association .667

Helping nature of senior staff .659

Friendly environment .636

Benefit compensation package . .632

Challenging job to prove themselves -591

Hiring experienced staff . .469


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for the stake holder; it is also an excellent way of reporting nonconformance’s.. 8D uses

composite problem-solving methodology, it take into account tools and techniques of

various approaches on the PDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Act) cycle.

Table 4 shows the systematic solution to the employee turnover. For which a team of

experts have to be created in which General managers, Housekeeping managers &

human resource managers has to created, further based on primary research the 8D

model was implemented.

Table 4: 8D model & Employee Turnover in Hotel Housekeeping Department

USING 8D MODEL OF PROBLEM SOLVING

IDENTIFICATION Employee Turnover in the housekeeping department of hotel

industry in India.

DESCRIPTION Employee Turnover is a ratio of employee to be replaced from

an organization in a given time period

IMMEDIATE

ACTION

Proper investigation by human resource department of hotel in

regard to Employee turnover by conducting exit interview &

job satisfaction interview.

CAUSES Based on research following factors are causes of employee

turnover these are Poor quality life; Poor salary & less

chance of career advancement; Bad working environment

& Bad supervision and future study related issues.

CORRECTIVE

ACTION

Based on research following factors are remedies of employee

turnover these are Efficient HR practices; Strong and

friendly association among staff members; Job enrichment

&Hiring experienced staff.

MEASURINGOF

EFFECTIVENESS

Constant check on remedies implemented.

EXPANSION If remedies are effective in curtailing employee turnover the

solution can further be used in other departments

CONCLUSION The employee turnover is such a burning issue that it should be

take care with up most sensibility so as to overcome from this

problem.

5. Conclusion It is very difficult to investigate the reasons of employee turnover of the employees in the

hotel industry, that’s why the remedies for the problem are not so much easy. Because there is

no proper solution for that, so it is the duty of the human resource department to look into the

matter seriously. In the other service industries 8D model for problem solving is working

effectively. In the hotel industry too we can adopt the model and it can be a positive attitude

for the solution of the problem. Finally it is envisaged that the 8 D model of problem solving

can be very helpful to find out the solution for the problem of employee turnover in

housekeeping department in hotel industry. Though the study is confined only in Delhi and

Rajasthan region, but still it can be helpful for the scholars and researchers who are doing

research in the relevant field by applying the same model in a vast area. The researcher can

indicate a wide range of variables related to the reasons of employee turnover and can find

out the effective solution for that problem and do the potential research.

6. References



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Documents

IMPLEMENTING 8D MODEL OF PROBLEM SOLVING IN EMPLOYEE TURNOVER: A STUDY OF SELECTED HOTELS IN DELHI AND RAJASTHAN