Guidelines for promoting hotel employee engagement by using compensation, benefit and rewards system

Abstract

The current research sought to identify the factors associated with hotel employees’ motivation, specifically in relation to compensation, benefit and rewards system and to explain the ways their motivation affects their organizational engagement. It was anticipated that the findings can be used to develop guideline for promoting hotel employee engagement by using compensation, benefit and rewards system.

The research applied qualitative research method by using the semi structured in-depth interviews with a total of 20 hotel employees who were currently working in a four stars hotel located in Bangkok, Thailand. They represented hotel employees of three departments; front office, housekeeping and food and beverage. The qualitative data was analyzed by triangulation method which specifically to compare and cross-checking the data from the hotel employees from three different departments and from five different four stars hotels. The results were constructed and explained by following three major theories; Super (1957)’s career development theory, Generation theory and Herzberg (1959)’s two factors theory.

The research findings identified various factors affecting the hotel employees’ work motivation including salary, service charge, working hours, useful feedback from supervisors or managers, good teamwork and colleagues. The research also stressed that these factors were perceived to be more or less important depending on the age and career development stages of the employees. In addition, the findings revealed that compensation, benefit and rewards system could have either positive or negative impacts on the employees which subsequently affected their work motivation and organizational engagement.

Thus, the research findings suggest that when hotel business develop compensation, benefit and rewards system in order to promote employee engagement, the hotel management should recognize the importance of employees’ career development stages that influence their expectations about their jobs and organization. Nevertheless, the findings are applicable for hotel business management and other service business operators, which human is primary element in production process, in developing compensation, rewards, and benefits policy to effectively drive employees’ motivation and their organizational engagement.