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Engagement and Motivation of Hospitality Industries in Douala, Cameroon: Filling Gaps and Removing Traps for Sustainable Enterprise Growth

Engagement and Motivation of Hospitality Industries in Douala, Cameroon: Filling Gaps and Removing Traps for Sustainable Enterprise Growth

Mahbosung Colins Latu1, Ndoh Mbue Innocent2*

1Dubai Hotel, Cameroon 2National Higher Polytechnic Institute of the University of Douala

*Corresponding author

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.70534

Received: 11 March 2023; Accepted: 28 March 2023; Published: 31 May 2023

ABSTRACT

No other form of human resource management has had as widespread detrimental effect on the growth and reproductive capacity of industries as employee engagement. Engaged employees are innovative and always have an idea or two about what they can do better. Their quality of being collaborative and enthusiastic towards work, allows them to complete their workplace goals more effectively; which leads to increased workplace productivity. Data was collected from 120 workers of Government and private hotels using self-administered questionnaire. Regression analysis was applied to find the effect of employee motivation on employee’s engagement involving four variables employee motivation, engagement, intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. The results showed a significant and positive relationship exists between employee motivation and engagement. It is also concluded that intrinsic rewards have significant positive relationships with employee performance and employee motivation. The study endorses the notion that a motivated workforce could be the key to enhanced organisational performance

Keywords: Employee Motivation, Employ engagement, Intrinsic Rewards, Extrinsic Rewards

INTRODUCTION

The success of any organization depends on the performance and work engagement of its employees (Lee and Ok, 2016).Motivation is considered to be the driving force behind an individual engaging in any activity. Manifesting itself in the manner and to which employees become more dedicated or feel passionate about their jobs (Sarangi, 2012), more committed to the organization (Gupta, 2015),and put discretionary effort into their work, employees engagements are innovative and always look at the whole of the company and understand their purpose. It therefore becomes important to understand the concept of work engagement, its meaning for employee, and implications for employers. Employee quality of being collaborative and enthusiastic towards work, allows them to complete their workplace goals more effectively, leading to increased workplace productivity. As organizations have realized this requirement, employee engagement has become an increasingly popular topic for researchers and practitioners in recent years (Smith &  Macko, 2014; Sinha & Trivedi, 2014).

Current literature on employee engagement have either focused on their impacts on organizational effectiveness (e.g. Schau & Bakker, 2004);knowledge, emotion and behavior of employees (e.g., Cha, 2007; Muhammad Hamid et al., 2018); or the positive effects of employee engagements (e.g., Xu et al. 2013; Xiao and Duan2014, Liu 2016). A number of authors have attributed employees engagement  to either task characteristics, role characteristics, work interaction, group and inter-group dynamics, management style & process, organizational norms (Kahn 1990); work environment, direct supervisor, senior management team, colleagues (e.g., Harter et al. 2002),  job control, job participation, job feedback, job rewards, job security, supervisor support (e.g., Salanova and Schaufeli2008), job enrichment, rewarding co-worker, supportive supervisor and self-consciousness (e.g., May et al. 2004),  support, sense of fairness, interpersonal consumption, and conflict (e.g., Zhang and Gan (2005), or  neuroticism, extraversion and mobility (e.g., Langelaan et al. 2006).

While ability of employees can be improved by providing training and additional resources, motivation is the inner force of the employees that drives them to achieve their organizational goal (Flippo, 2001;Kiruja and Elegwa 2013). It is generally considered to be, “anenergiser of behaviour” (Reber & Reber, 2001); “the propensity of an individual to expand effort at work” (Heery & Noon, 2001), “the reasons underlying behaviour” (Guay et al., 2010), and “the attribute that moves employees to do or not to do something” (Gredler et al 2004). Whereas motivation is sometimes simplified and referred to as a unitary phenomenon that varies only in amounts or levels, it is clear that employees not only have different levels of motivation but also different kinds (Ryan & Deci, 2000). We hereby distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. While intrinsic motivation is driven by forces from within oneself, extrinsic motivation is driven by outside forces (Giancola, 2014). Employees are intrinsically motivated when they seek enjoyment, interest, satisfaction of curiosity, self-expression, or personal challenge in the work (Amabile1993; Ryan & Deci, 2000). In contrast, employees are extrinsically motivated when they engage in the work in order to obtain some goal that is apart from the work itself.

Evidence at academic and practitioner level propose that employee motivation can make a difference to the engagement of individuals, teams and organization (McBain, 2006)especially in the hospitality industries (Macey and Schneider, 2008; Lee & Lee, 2013), where there have been challenges throughout the years in terms of managing, retaining, and motivating its human capital (Enz, 2001).Fairlie (2011) also suggest that meaningfulness of work motivation and employee performance is overlooked in organizations. These evidences suggest that,understanding motivation in the workforce is a crucial step toward creating a dynamic work environment that enriches and fulfills workers. Taking the hotel sector in Douala, Cameroon as an example, the study aims to answer the following questions:

  1. What are the key engagement factors that employers in the hospitality industry can leverage in their organizations?
  2. What are the key motivation factors structuring employee engagement in the hotel sector of the hospitality industry?,  and
  3. From (1) and (2), what strategic recommendations can we offer to managers in the sector that can help in filling gaps and removing the traps for sustainable growth?

We adopt an employee perspective approach wherein, the conditions in which they are committed to their organization’s goals and values are motivated to contribute to organizational success, and offer more of their capability and potential with an enhanced sense of their own well-being are identified.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study Area

The city of Douala (210 km2/80 sq mi) is the capital of the Littoral region of Cameroon. It is Cameroon’s economic capital, the richest city in the whole CEMAC region of six countries,   located on the banks of the Wouri River, at 4°02′53″ N, Latitude 9°42′15″ E Longitude, situated in the Wouri division at an average elevation of 13m above sea level. Five urban municipalities (also known as districts) and one rural municipality form the urban community of Douala: the town districts of Douala I whose headquarters is at Bonanjo, Douala II whose headquarters is New Bell, Douala III whose headquarters is at Logbaba, Douala IV whose headquarters is at Bonassama, Douala V whose headquarters is at Kotto, and Douala VI whose headquarters is at Manoka. Douala is also an industrial city and one of the fastest developing urban areas in Africa and ranks first at national level. According to the 2005 population estimate, Douala has a population of 1.907 million (UN data, 2013) and according to estimates from the Douala urban council, the average population growth rate is 1.8%. The present growth is attributable to various factors such as industrialization, expanding educational institutes and information technology (IT) companies and establishments of various government organizations. This growth reflects the complexity of issues facing the development of the city.

Methodology

Research Design

The descriptive survey was chosen considering the purpose of the study, the research questions and the magnitude of the target population. It has an advantage of producing good amount of responses from a wide range of people, and it can also be used with greater confidence with regards to particular questions of special interest or values to a researcher. However, the method has some weaknesses such as time consuming to ensure that sample is representative, designing and piloting data collection instrument and trying to ensure a good response rate. In order to have broad purposes of breadth and depth of understanding and corroboration, the mixed methods research strategy (Burke et al., 2007) was used.

Population and Sampling

The population of informants were personnel of the hotel industry in the Douala municipality. Convenience and purposive sampling were used in the present study in a two-stage process:

  • At the first stage, three of the five urban municipalities that make the Douala municipality were conveniently chosen based on the concentration of hotels in the areas, the accessibility of these municipalities (given that roads are deplorable).
  • In the second stage, four hotels each were purposively selected from the five of the six municipalities that make up the Douala municipality and questionnaire administered.

A total of 120 employees occupying various positions in the institutions were selected. The departments selected ranged from human resource, accounts, to logistics. Workers of these different departments served as sample points.

Data Collection

Workplaces of hotel institutions located in the Douala municipality were visited from February to March 2015. Secondary data was from desktop review, different reports, published and unpublished documents, presentations, from individuals, experts and organizations. The primary data were collected from self-administered questionnaire, administered to employees of the selected institutions. For linguistic consistency, before data collection, the questions were translated from English to French. Because of job constraints, the questionnaire was collected after varying periods ranging from two weeks to one month. The questionnaire consisted was close ended having a five point Likert scale designed with support from literature. All responses were given to the scale anchored by 1 “Strongly Disagree”, 2 as “Disagree”, 3 as “Neutral”, 4 as “Agree” and 5 as “Strongly Agree. The different types of variables and how they measured are shown (Table 1)

Table 1: Operationalisation of variables

Intrinsic Motivation
Variables Code Number in Questionnaire
Interesting Work JW 1.      I am interested in my work
Job Appreciation JA 2.      I often receive appreciation for good work.
Job Satisfaction JS 3.      Working for the organisation give me a sense of satisfaction.
Empowerment & Autonomy EA 4.      I am encouraged &allowed to take personal responsibility for any improvement.
Recognition 5.      Trust, Respect And High Expectation
Extrinsic Motivation
Variables Code Number in Questionnaire
Job Security JS 6.      Job security will give me a sense of engagement in my job
Good Wages GW 7.      My salary is satisfactory in relation to what I do..
Promotion & Growth PG 8.      Promotion and Growth.
Good Leadership Relations GLR 9.      Management provides me with the supports  needed such as helping me with job related problems, good communications
Drivers of Employee Engagement
Variables Code Number in Questionnaire
Interest in wellbeing EW 10.   Management interest in employee well being
Skills and capabilities OSC 11.   Opportunities to improve skills and capabilities
Reputation OR 12.   Organization’s reputation
Support &recognition SR 13.   Manager-employee relationship & the formal and informal rewards that an employee is given for his or her efforts.
Decision making DM 14.   Employee’s ability to input into decision making

To ensure confidentiality, names of respondents were never disclosed.

Data Analysis

The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20, thematic and content analyses were used for data. Different statistic was used to respond to each research question (Table 2).

Table 2: Statistic used to respond to each research question

Objective Method of Data Analysis employed
1.      What are the key engagement factors that employers in the hospitality industry can leverage in their organizations? Regression Analysis Correlation analysis Descriptive statistical analysis
2.      What are the key motivations factors structuring employee engagement in the hotel sector of the hospitality industry? Regression Analysis Correlation analysis/PCA Descriptive statistical analysis
3.      From (1) and (2), what strategic recommendations can we offer to managers in the sector that can help in filling gaps and removing the traps for sustainable growth? Thematic and content Analysis

Descriptive statistics (Graphs, frequency tables, Pearson correlation coefficient), and inferential statics (t-test and multiple regression) were used to determine the relationship between the sub-groups of the sample. Significance levels were set at p <0.05.The reliability coefficient, Chronbach’s α (Chronbach, 1951), was used to test the reliability of a scale values of 0.70 or greater.

Chronbach’s ∝=kr/(1+(k-1)r)(1)

Where:

 k= the number of items (variables) in the scale, and

R = the average correlation between pairs of variables or items

Cronbach‟s coefficient gives indication about the average correlation among all of the items in the scale. Cronbach‟s coefficient alpha value lies between 0 and 1 (Pallant, 2005). A Cronbach’s coefficient alpha greater than 0.9 shows an outstanding internal reliability, if this value is greater than 0.8 than it is consider Good, if it is 0.7 it is considered as satisfactory, if  0.5 is consider poor and less than 0.5 is unacceptable. Generally, results of Chronback alpha exceeding or equal to 0.5 are retained (Mallery 2003). However, Cronbach’s alpha in the high 0.90s might indicate multicollinearity (the questions on an instrument are measuring exactly the same thing and not different dimensions of the same variable).In order to avoid this problem, we adjusted and deleted a few questions for every section to obtain a much reliable inter-item measurement.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Reliability Analysis

The response rate of the workers was 100%. The internal consistency of the instrument checked through Chronbach’s alpha is acceptable (Table 3).

Table 3: Reliability Analysis

Item Number of items Chronbach’s alpha
Intrinsic Motivation 8 0.757
Extrinsic Motivation 8 0.686
Employee performance 4 0.666

Socioeconomic Characteristics of Respondents

The 120 respondents included in the study comprised 70 females (58.33%) and 50 males (41.67%). The modal age range is 21-30 years (45%) and most of them were single (Table 4).

Table 4: Respondent distribution by socioeconomic characteristics

Respondent characteristics Frequency Percentage of respondents
Gender Male Female 50 70 41.67 58.33
Age (years) 20 – 30 31 – 40 41+ 78 74 32 45.00 33.33 21.67
Marital status Single Married Divorced Widow(er) 78 32 6 4 65.00 26.67 5.00 3.33
Educational level HND B.Sc Masters 74 31 15 61.67 25.83 12.50
Average monthly income (FCFA) ≤ 100,000 100,001 – 150,000 150,001 – 200,000 > 200,000 76 32 10 2 63.33 26.67 8.33 1.67
Years of experience in current organisation 0-2 2-4 4-6 6+ 63 31 16 10 52.5 25.83 13.33 8.33

 1USD equivalent to 500FCFAas at 2015 (Field Survey, 2015)

Gender is used to know the contribution of male and female in the hotel sector. This information will help management to consider the importance of gender participation in motivation and performance. It also helps management to know the kind of motivation to be assigned per gender. The fact that the sector is dominated by females suggests that management could lay more emphasis on female employee motivation and engagement. An age range of 20-30 years indicate that majority of the hotel workers in the region are in their active working ages.

The purpose of using marital status was to know how many respondents are supporting their families and how many do not. Therefore, most people first try to get good job, secure it and then get marry. The results show that 42 (26.7%) employees were married as opposed to 78 (65%) that were single. These figures indicate that a reasonable fraction of the employees support their families, which is a moral right. Therefore management should provide opportunities to all those employees to retain them for long through motivation and engagement.

In an era of competition many employers are willing to go in for the most competent employees so as to obtain the best results. Therefore we decided to know the educational status of the respondents. Of the 120 data points, (61.67%), irrespective of sex and institution had atleast a Higher National Diploma (HND) or its equivalence. The nexus between educational level and management techniques is understandable given that hotel management is a long term phenomenon that can only be apprehended and understood with time and practical experience. Also, literacy permits access to modern/strategic management information not usually available to non-literates.

Perceptions of employees on Intrinsic Motivational Factors

Of the 120 respondents, 60% agreed (26.7 = strongly; 33.3% = Agree) that they were interested in their work while only 40% disagreed with this statement, and management ease work by introducing unique job contents. It can be inferred from the results that most of employees in hospitality industry in the Douala municipality are passionate about and energized by their work, find meaning and purpose in their jobs, feel that they can express their complete selves at job and feel connected to those with whom they work and elaborate it, contains physiological arousal, positive effect, a belief that one’s work makes a contribution, a sense of connection to others and a common purpose, a sense of perfection and transcendence.

On job appreciation, we found that many of the employees (68%) were quite positive, enthusiastic and engaged. Job appreciation (Fagley, 2012) refers to the degree of acknowledgement of the value and meaning of an event, a person, a behavior, an object and feeling of positive connection to it. On the whole, the results show that most employees of the hospitality sector in the Douala municipality get appreciation for good work and most of them also believe that feedback would increase their interest for more hard work.

With regard to job Satisfaction, 63(53%) agreed that they were satisfied with their jobs, 52(43%) disagreed and 5(4%) were neutral. The results suggest that, on the whole, employees are very satisfied with their jobs. Herzberg’s motivation theory emphasiseson the need for motivational factors that have the probability of raising job satisfaction. In comparison to motivation factors, such hygiene factors can only be used to preclude dissatisfaction and can therefore not be used as incentives to create satisfaction (Steers and Porter, 2011). An employee may therefore be very well be satisfied with his/her overall working conditions, but not especially motivated to work and perform to his/her full potential (Storey, 2013).Overall, the perceptions of how intrinsic motivation influences employee engagements were similar between all the managers.

Perceptions of employees on Extrinsic Motivational Factors

An overwhelming 75% of the respondents were of the opinion that job insecurity will demotivate them. On the other hand, 95% of the respondents agreed that insecurity of job will decrease the quality of their work and only 9% disagreed with this statement. Building a work environment that attracts, focuses, and keeps talented employees will lead to company growth and success. In other words, if employees are satisfied with the environment, they will be motivated to show up to work, get committed and perform at a level of excellence.

Of the 120 employees who were asked if they were getting promotion on fairly basis or not, 40% agreed, 36% disagreed, and 24.17% neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. When asked about training development, 19% of them agreed, 71% disagreed while 13% were neutral (Fig 1a&b).

Respondents perceptions on staff , and Promotion and growth

Figure1: Respondents perceptions on staff , and Promotion and growth

Some managers stated that employees have the ability to suggest things for their own training and development in forms of courses, conferences, and personal development goals, which is engaging as their own aspirations and personal goals are taken into account by the manager and organization. Due to the advancement of technology, employees are forced to learn new things to work more effectively for growth and promotion on their jobs (training and career development). From the results it is concluded that most of employees could be getting promotion but are not getting training from their organizations.

Good Wages: Fluctuation in wages may change employee’s motivation level because it is serve to fulfil their basic needs. Keeping in mind this importance employees are asked whether they are satisfied with the wages they get from their organization or not. The results show that 16.8% respondents agreed that their salary is satisfactory in relation to their duties, while 83% recorded disagreement with this statement. Ina second question respondents were asked whether they earn the same as compared to other people on same job. Over 68% disagreed that they got the same salary as compared to other people on the similar job; only 17% agreed with the statement. Fluctuation in wages may change employee’s motivation level because it serves to fulfil their basic needs. Keeping in mind this importance, employees were asked whether they were satisfied with the wages they got from their organizations or not. However, if management put this kind of money focus in a company it will have employees protecting their knowledge, not sharing their knowledge. Negative things that have been observed with bonus programs for managers is that it is driving towards sub-optimization: an employee reaches his/her target, but the company target is not met. Bonus programs are driving towards sub optimization: I reached my target, but the company target was not met.

 Recognition: Most of the respondents (62.5%) strongly agreed that recognition is an effective method for employee motivation and 23.3% disagreed with this question. Secondly employees were asked if they often get bonuses for good work. An overwhelming 79% disagreed that they often get bonuses for their good work, whereas, 17% agreed with this statement (Fig 2).

Respondents perceptions on employee recognition

Figure 2: Respondents perceptions on employee recognition

Recognition is the manager secret tool for motivation. Some individuals when recognized do much more than if they were financially rewarded. This can be achieved through  several ways, for example, get the employee name on the wall as of employee of the month or the year, award a trophy or a memorial gift for the efforts done, putting the employee achievements in the company’s newsletter.

Employee Performance Evaluation

Employee performance refers to the employee willingness and ability to contribute to company success, through putting extra time, brainpower and energy to their work. Employee performance is the dependent variable of the study. Four questions were asked from respondents regarding employee performance: whether they got any opportunities at work to learn and grow, their feeling about their organization, involvement in designing job duties for them, and whether they feel engaged or not while performing their duties.

With regard to whether they got any opportunities at work to learn and grow and feel proud to be a part of the organization, most of the respondents answered in the affirmative (Fig 3a&b).

(a):Have opportunities at work to learn and grow    (b):Feel proud to be a part of  organization

Whether employees had opportunities at work to learn and grow and feel proud to be a part of organization

 Figure3:Whether employees had opportunities at work to learn and grow and feel proud to be a part of organization

Results of both of these questions show that most of employees of the hospitality industry of the municipality are happy for their organization. These results are surprisingly different from what we were thinking; it shows that employees are now engaged in their duties.

In the third question we sort to know about employee’s involvement in designing job duties for their organisations. The percentages of survey results indicate that 39% respondents were neutral regarding their involvement in designing duties, 20% agreed and 27% disagree with the statement (Fig 4a&b).

(a)Involved me while designing job duties for me   (b) Feel engaged while performing my duties

My organization involves me while designing job duties for me

Figure4: My organization involves me while designing job duties for me

The last question was asked to know that whether hospitality employees feel engaged or not while performing their duties. The results show that 56% respondents agree that they are engaged when they perform their duties whereas, 17% respondents disagree and 27 % were neutral about the statement.

From these results it is concluded that most of employees neither agreed nor disagreed about their involvement in designing duties. The percentages of agreement and disagreement are also very high as compared to other questions. These results also indicate that most employees feel that they engaged while performing their duties.

The Influence of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation on Employee commitment

Univariate analysis indicated that men were significantly more likely to approve of the extrinsic motivation factors (59%) than were women (30%), χ2(1, N = 315) = 25.68, p < .001, that those who approved of extrinsic motivation factors  were significantly less idealistic (M = 5.87, SD = 1.23) than those who didn’t (M = 6.92, SD = 1.22), t(313) = 7.47, p < .001, that those who approved of extrinsic motivation factors were significantly more relativistic (M = 6.26, SD = 0.99) than those who didn’t (M = 5.91, SD = 1.19), t(313) = 2.71, p = .007, and that the omnibus effect of scenario fell short of significance, χ2(4, N = 315) = 7.44, p = .11.

A t-Test analysis showed that extrinsic factors (M = 3.66, SD = .40) reported significantly higher levels of employee engagement than intrinsic factors (M = 3.20, SD = .32), t(1) = 5.44, p < .05). Furthermore, men (M = 4.05, SD = 0.50) and women (M = 4.11, SD = 0.55) did not differ significantly on levels of perceptions, t(1) = 1.03, p = n.s. However, female employees focused more on interesting work (M = 4.06, SD = 0.93) than male employees (M = 3.93, SD = 0.97). Non-married employees focused more on feelings of being involved (M = 4.04, SD = 0.88) than married employees (M = 3.90, SD = 0.87).

Correlation analysis shows a significant and positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and employee performance (r = 0.514, n= 120 p < 0.01), and a strong, positive correlation between employee performance and extrinsic motivation (r = 0.755, n=120, p<.01).The results indicate that extrinsic motivation tends to contribute higher employee performance compared with intrinsic motivation.

A multiple regression was further conducted to test if intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors predicted employee performance in the hospitality industry. Using the enter method it was found that intrinsic and extrinsic level explain a significant amount of the variance in employee performance (F (2, 117) = 859.383, p < .05, R2 = 0.785). It was also found that extrinsic motivation factors significantly predicted employee performance (β = .854, p<0.001), as did intrinsic motivation factors (β = 0.526, p<.001) showing that both of the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations predictor for employee performance.

It follows from the table that,

Y= -4.267+0.526x1+0.854x2………………………….(2)

Where:

Y = Employee performance,

x1 = Intrinsic motivation factors

x2 = Extrinsic motivation factors

It follows from (2) that, with no motivation employee performance is expected to drop by four units. Nevertheless, employee performance is expected to increase by 52.6% and 85.4% respectively for each unit change in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors.

Job motivation and employee performance scores used in this report represent aspects of the job satisfaction and performance domain that we believed were most likely to be affected by stress. They were not designed to represent the entire job satisfaction and employee performance domain or even theirs most important elements. Consequently, one wonders whether aspects of these variables that are affected by stress make a meaningful difference in overall job effectiveness. This, however, may depend on the job and passion of employee for the job as dictated by her/his level of education. For some jobs, it might not be particularly relevant whether incumbents effectively perform interpersonal and cognitive/motivational behaviors like those measured in this study. The findings of this study confirm that occupational stress acts as an important determinant of job satisfaction in the organizational sector sample, and that job satisfaction automatically leads to employee performance and vice versa. This result is consistent with the studies by Antoniou et al. (2003) and Aworemi et al., (2011) who also suggests that interesting work, job appreciation; good wages, promotion and growth, and satisfaction are the important factors for employee motivation.

When intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors were compared, the findings suggested that in order to ensure employee performance in their job, management need to pay more attention to extrinsic motivation as compared to intrinsic motivation. More specifically management has to take job security, good wages, promotion and growth, and recognition in consideration while making any extrinsic compensation plan for their employees. According to results of our study most of employees wants to attain job security at their first place, most of them are attracted by good wages, most of them wanted to get promoted and trained to perform more better, and most of them expect recognition in the form of rewards, bonuses etc. Maskach and Leiter (2008) also identified six factors of work-life that can lead to engagement; one of them is reward and recognition. Gallup surveys also used job security, good wages and promotion and growth as employee performance drivers. Therefore, management needs to consider these issues to engage their employees in their work. As the results of the study considered extrinsic motivation more strong predictor of employee engagement, therefore more consideration should be given to its factor as compared to intrinsic motivational factors.

With respect to the robustness of research methodology, the survey questionnaires that were developed based on the information gathered from the occupational stress literature, the in-depth interviews and the pilot study had exceeded a minimum standard of validity and reliability analysis. Thus, it could lead to the production of accurate and reliable findings.

In terms of practical contributions, the findings of this study can be used as a guideline by the management to overcome occupational stress problems in organizations. The objective may be achieved if management considers the following suggestions:

  • Employ and apply the doctrine of strategic human resource management,
  • Update the content and training method. For example, the content of training programs need to emphasize more on soft skills, especially emotional intelligence. Exposing employees with the concept and principles of emotional intelligence will increase their capabilities in using, regulating and managing emotions to control physiological and psychological stress symptoms in performing job. The content of such trainings will be easily implemented if employees are trained using proper case studies and role play techniques,
  • Management could encourage employee participation in teamwork. For example, involving employees in teamwork planning and administration will help them to increase positive socialization, improve career and increase psychosocial well-being, and
  • Encourage employee assistance program through professional consultants or internal counselling and guidance unit.

The findings of this study have managerial implications. At a micro level, organisational performance may be accelerated by positively adjusting the levels of employee motivation factors, which are predictors of organisational performance. In addition, these factors qualify as diagnostic mechanisms for organisational performance problems in organisations. Management practitioners and turnaround strategists would be able to address performance problems by checking to see if there are any shortfalls within any of the eight employee motivation factors used in this study.

This study is not without implications for further research. Firstly, it would be interesting to refine the findings of the current study by conducting similar studies along socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender and educational levels of respondents. Secondly, similar studies could also be conducted using an amplified scope that is not limited to hotels. Finally,  future research could employ a longitudinal design to gain further insights into the effects of frequently occurring stressors over an extended period of time. Continuing study of the same sample over time could yield answers relative to how prolonged exposure to stressors affects job satisfaction and employee performance. Such information would be vital for designing stress intervention and management strategies, which could in turn effectively increase job satisfaction and overall performance.

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