HOTEL EMPLOYEE RETENTION: DO WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT, LEADER COMMUNICATION AND JOB SATISFACTION MATTER?

Literature suggests that employees are a valuable asset to any organization. Organizations spend a lot of time, efforts and resources in recruiting, inducting, supervising, providing training for and paying employee salary. The investment is vital in ensuring that employees in return, will provide high-quality service and be successful organizational members. In corroborating whether this is applicable across industries, the paper investigates whether work environment, leader communication and job satisfaction influence hotel employee retention. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 550 respondents, comprising of hotel employees working in the Klang Valley area, Malaysia. Three-hundred and twenty-nine questionnaires were analysed using the multiple regression analysis to test the hypothesized relationships. Workplace environment, leader communication and job satisfaction were found to have direct impact on hotel employee retention. The findings were consistent with research being conducted in other industries. It is hoped that the finding will help hotel management to be more aware of the needs and expectations of their employees and further understand the necessary transformation that needs to be done within their organization. This is to ensure that employees are satisfied with their job and have high possibility to retain their job in the same organization for a long period of time. (C) 2021 Published by European Publisher.