Retaining talented employees in the hotel industry in Stavanger: An interview-based qualitative study

Abstract

The aim of this research is to go deeper into what managers in three different organizations in the hotel industry in Stavanger are doing in retaining talented employees. With the literature reviews as a basis this research will therefore look into different manager’s subjective perspectives and their measures in retaining the talented employees that belongs to their respective organization. As this research is a qualitative study the data was gathered by conducting interviews. The sample size was eight in total distributed on three organizations, and where the participants consisted of four leaders and four employees within the hotel industry in Stavanger. The findings of this research shows that in the effort of retaining employees the managers are focusing on developing the employees’ skills and abilities, this through tasks and challenges in their daily workday. However, the main challenge in retaining talented employees, this according to all the managers in all three organizations, seems to lie in the fact that the salary are too low. In addition to this a further challenge lies in each of the three organizations being located in Stavanger and in the oil industry, which is seen as a great contributor for employees in the hotel industry being attracted to a higher salary. But when it comes to the employees themselves their greatest motivational factor for staying in an organization seems to lie in having the opportunity to grow and develop. The limitations for this research lies in the uneven number of participants, this in terms of the number of participating employees interviewed in the tree organizations but also in the participating managers and their distribution of roles within the organization. But considering that a conclusion must be drawn out from between the perspective of the managers compared to the perspective of the employees, this also show that these two perspectives doesn’t always go well together.