Arbete med retention i hotellbranschen - En kvalitativ studie om hur hotellbranschen kan arbeta med att behålla personal

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate and describe how hotel companies in Sweden are working to retain their staff. The focus will be on analyzing how the hotels work with retention in practice and which retention strategies can be used in the industry. The study questions are the following: How does the hospitality industry work with retention in Sweden differ from the theory? What does previous research about retention in the hospitality industry say? How does Swedish hotel companies work with retention in practice? Previous research in the field has been done in Asia, USA, Australia and just a few studies in Europe. There are therefore few studies done on retention in the Swedish context, this is where our study wants to contribute. The method we used in this study is qualitative with data from semi-structured interviews with ten respondents from two different hotel chains. All the interviews were held with respondents in leading positions, the interviews were then transcribed, coded and analyzed based on Armstrong's retention strategies. The theoretical framework for this study is Armstrong's (2006) retention strategies, which are competence 3 and learning, motivation and commitment, communication and community, recruitment and selection, work environment, introduction, work-life balance and leadership. The result of the study shows that the hospitality industry works with certain parts of the retention strategies but that they do not use them fully. By using Armstrong's (2006) strategies, the hospitality industry can clearly identify their needs in retention. Our conclusion is that the hospitality industry would succeed better with the work with retention if they used all the strategies. The discussion therefore stresses the importance of continuously working with all the strategies to succeed with retention.