Employee’s motivation is important to the competitiveness and success of companies, especially during the current difficult economic condition. The main reason that managers should motivate workers to give their best efforts towards, is because it relates to the organizational outcomes. However motivating workers to do their best at work is not an easy task for managers. This is because managers must know factor that can be used to motivate them to do their best or to work hard.
However all companies may have motivation policy that might not satisfy all workers. This is especially true for companies in hospitality segment. Many small and modern sized hospitality companies in hospitality segment in Nigeria appear to think that financial related rewards are the main factors that motivate workers to do their best. This study aims to investigate employees in the hotels. Thus the main purpose of this chapter is to give information on research aims and research background as well as rationale for conducting this research project.
There are many hospitality companies in Nigeria. Comprising of large and small, medium sized firms. Most large hospitality chains in hotels, pubs and restaurant segments appear to have a more professional human resources management system to motivate workers to work with their best effort or retain them (gill and mathur 2007). Also when compared to small and medium sized companies large hospitality companies also have more resources like attractive pay package, flexible working time and well designed career growth and development programs to attract workers with exceptional skills and experience to join them. In other words larger firms are able to give what employees want as they have more resources.
Many studies in the past showed that small and medium sized companies in hospitality industry tend to give only the hourly minimum wage of their workers and other additional benefits are given based on what is required by employment law (lewis of al 2003). However there is hard evidence from recent studies to show that “small is beautiful” in terms of employee motivation in hospitality companies (AKSU 2005). This is because many small and medium sized and private owned hospitality firms, especially those in the hotel and accommodation segment have been working with large companies before they start their own business. This enables them to adapt what they have learnt from the best people into their business practice in addition as compared to larger firms small and medium sized hospitality companies have fewer numbers of workers and this in turn helps managers to find out factors that can motivate them to work hard and gain their commitment. Thus, this enables them to implement what they have to attract and retain workers as good as what larger firms can do.
However, financial related rewards are not the best motivation factors that influence them to stay with the company. It is revealed that job satisfaction and career growth and development opportunities are the main factors that can generate a commitment after an annual pay reaches at certain level (DESMETTE AND GAILLARD 2008). However, this is rather limited in small and medium sized hospitality firms. This is because many of them have only one or a few branches while larger hospitality firms may even have international outlets. Thus many of employees may finally decide to leave the company for other firms. Therefore as small and medium sized hospitality companies have limited resources, especially in terms of financial related rewards, to give workers to motivate them to work with their best efforts. It is necessary to find out factors that can be used to influence employees in this type of organization. And once these employees are motivated to the state of giving their best effort it also influence the economic and financial state of the company thereby causing the boosting in income generation also in outlets based on the contribution and effort given by employee just because they have being motivated for the best result.
Nike lake resort hotel came into existence in the year 1988 during the time of Ibrahim babaginda who was the president of the federal republic of Nigeria. It was built under the Anambra state government which was later divided and was put under Enugu State government. Is situated at Abakpa, Enugu north of Enugu state. It has being run by different foreign tourism and hotel establishments. It was previously run by the protea group before being handed down to the present runners of the hotel. The African sun is the present runner of Nike lake resort hotel. They are tourism and Hotel Company from Zimbabwe.
The Nike lake resort hotel is a hotel that renders different services that is under the hospitality industry. It has two hundred and sixteen (216) well appointed and furnished rooms and suites suitable for all tastes and budgets. All the rooms and suites have either a garden or lake view and each room provides the ultimate in comfort and luxury that you can expect from an African sun hotel.
It is a very high class five star hotel which provides high qualities and standard service and also endowed with a natural tourist resource. Nike lake resort prides itself on being able to cater for any type of guest that stays the night, with any request never being too march. The hotel property houses ten (10) self catering villas comprising of 5 bedrooms bungalows all tastefully furnished and fully equipped.
Room types and qualities.
Each room has facilities such as
The hotel also provides families services such as
The hotel is made up of different departments which
This study will look into the impact of motivation on the performance of hospitality industry employees and productivity of the employees. Further, this study will establish the relationship between motivation and turnover rate. Because of high turnover and high absenteeism within the hospitality industry service managers now realize the importance of employee motivation to retain quality staffing. When employees maintain a high level of motivation, quality service will result.
This research aims at finding the impact of motivation to employee performance in the hospitality industry then to be able to know how motivation of employee influences the hospitality industry business as a whole. Motivating employees to work at their best effort is important to the success of the small and medium sized firms as it relates to organizational outcomes and operations management. At the same time investigating factors that can motivate workers in this type of organization should also help small and medium hospitality industry to reduce the rate of staff turnover or prevent head hunting practice of larger firms.
However the objective of the study is enumerated as follows:
The following are key research questions that this study should attempt to answer in order to achieve this research aim and objectives
The hospitality industry is very competitive in the modern world, therefore all hospitality industry are trying to achieve competitive advantage from different aspects.
But real competition can be achieved through providing standard and quality service to the guests.
The service standard and its quality depend on the employees who are working in the hotels. Thus employee’s performance and job satisfaction are really practical and also these two factors directly influence the standard of service and quality. The research finding will help to know the impact of motivation on employee’s performance in the hospitality industry. Then the organization can develop particularly in motivational strategies to improve organizational performance and achieve competitive advantage in the industry.
This aims at investigating factors that can motivate workers and what can be used to gain their commitment from employee perspective. By investigating employee motivation issues in small and medium hotels from employee perspective will only help the company to understand the perception and attitude of workers towards current motivational practice in the company they work for but also enable employers in this segment to find out strategies to motivate, to work hard and retain them.
The research is conducted under the rules and regulation of hospitality industries, so these limitations create inaccessible points in the data collection and therefore finding will be focused on limited area. There are many companies under the hospitality industry spread around Nigeria and the world as a whole. The researcher cannot have access to all hotels and do the research therefore the selection of three or four hotels from large number is also a major limitation of this research. But will be more concerned of one particular research hotel.
The impact of motivation cannot be measured in terms of numbers, it will not be ethical. The record of data collection is unethical in some organizations. This is also creating problems of data collection from telephone interview and face to face method. The question must be prepared within a particular framework by considering time constraints. Thus the time creates limitations in response for the data collection methods. The selected sample size may not be large enough to represent the whole population of the research also creates limitations to research findings.
For the purpose of clarification in this study, the following terms are defined for better understanding of the hospitality organization.
Hospitality industry: This is defined as the industry segment pertaining to guests and treatment such as hotels, restaurant, attractions etc.
Motivation: This is defined as the result of processes, internal or external to the individual that arrives enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a certain course or action.
Turnover: Is defined as when an employee leaves and is replaced by another employee.
On-the-job-training: Is defined as training of employees to perform work under the supervising and guidance of the supervision
Morale: Is defined as the feeling an employee has about all aspects of the job.
Union: Is nothing more than a group of employees that feel that they can obtain, from management what they want more effectively as a group than an individual. By bargaining as a group, they have more power and management is more likely to listen to them.
Absenteeism: is defined as regular absentee from work without a good reason.
Upward communication: Is defined as a communication that comes from the lower to the top level such as from the employees to the managers.
Fringe benefits: Are defined as service or advantage that employees are given with their job in addition to pay.