Introduction
Radisson Hotel is located in a number of the developed countries across the globe. In a bid to provide guest with maximum satisfaction, the hotels experience a number of challenges, with high level of competition in the hotel industry being the major concern, especially in Dubai.
This has influenced the position of Radisson Hotels in the range of the most successful hotels in the country as well as across the globe (Soltani, 2003, p. 349).
This challenge is associated with the issues of the hotel management, as well as the implementation of suitable programs that are able to facilitate customers’ support.
Therefore, the major aspects of this problem necessitate a general program of improving the principles of management and services at Radisson Hotels in order to be in line with the peculiarities of the region (Soltani, 2003, p. 352).
But how does improving the principles of management and services in Radisson Hotels relate with the local peculiarities and problems experienced in Radisson Hotels in Dubai as well as across the globe?
Literature Review
Motivation is an aspect that is inherently held by people and it normally steers them to action. It varies from one individual to another and can also be regarded as the willingness to take action at a particular degree of effort.
It appears in literature out of set objectives, values and ambitions. As motivation comes from leaders, there is need to direct and cultivate the incentive that the employees already have (Kingir & Mesci, 2010, p. 65).
The success of an organization is influenced by a number of factors, one of which is employee motivation. An organization can only perform well when its employees are well motivated.
This is one of the main tasks of every manager; employee motivation leads to job satisfaction, which in turn leads to enhanced productivity. The nature of employee motivation depends on the type of business and the products it offers (Lu, 1999, p. 63; Kingir & Mesci, 2010, p. 61).
Radisson hotel in Dubai too is not left out in this issue of employee motivation. The managers of Radisson are out to motivate employees to work harder in the hotel.
For that reason, the main challenge facing the managers is to identify the most important factors, which can motivate their workers to improve the company’s performance (Maxwell & Knox, 2009, p. 57; Kingir et al., 2010, p. 62).
Motivating employees in Radisson hotel has a positive effect on the productivity of the hotel. Motivation leads to proper utilization of human resources in the hotel. Motivation enables the hotel to achieve its targets as it endeavors to build a good working relationship between employees and the managers of the hotel.
Lastly, motivation can make the hotel to enjoy a stable workforce since motivated employees are also likely to remain loyal to the hotel (Lu, 1999, p. 63; Maxwell et al., 2009, p. 59).
Motivation also plays an important role in boosting performance. This relationship was recently explored by Maxwell and Knox (2009) through a qualitative method to deeply analyze the two most important terms used in HRM, which include pay roll and organizational reward system.
Their conclusion was that different motivation factors can be used by an organization to enhance performance and efficiency of employees. These findings confirm an earlier suggestion by Lu (1999) who proposed that motivation leads to greater work performance.
There are several ways through which Radisson management can motivate its employees. Firstly, the managers can resort to issuance of various forms of gimmicks to employees.
Secondly, training the employees on how they can manage stress, assigning additional responsibilities to employees who are hard-working will definitely make the others work harder. It has also been proved that cultivating the spirit of team work among employees has the effect of influencing them to work more (Naon, 2010, p. 42; Lu, 1999, p. 63; Maxwell et al., 2009, p. 62).
There are many theories that have been developed and which offer a good explanation regarding the factors relating to employee motivation in an organization.
This review will only address about seven of the following factors: training the employees, creating a good work environment, assigning of new responsibility, offering rewards, on-the-spot appreciation, encouraging team work and enhancing communication between the management and the employees.
From the literature review, it is clear that ensuring good communication between employees and the hotel managers is an aspect that highly motivates the employees. The communication may include meetings between the two parties and the interaction also helps in solving and clearing ambiguities in the hotel (Wang & Krakover, 2008, p. 127; Naon, 2010, p. 44)
The direct interaction between the two groups helps the employees to receive the actual information from the management team. The information received assists in eradicating rumors in the hotel.
These aspects of the hotel may include the condition of the company, current changes, expectations of the hotel and issues concerning job security and payment among others. In fact, job safety assurance is an aspect that can make employees to give up other benefits to work hard, in order to help the hotel achieve its objectives (Soltani, 2003, p. 349; Merwe, Basson, & Coetzee, 2009, p. 75).
Assigning of additional responsibilities to employees who show signs of employing more efforts to the hotel may also help motivate the employees to work harder. The factors which may lead the management to give additional responsibilities to a particular employee include: the autonomy of additional responsibilities that are likely to come up, the employee’s ability to handle the job effectively and the importance of the new tasks to the employee and the hotel at large.
Job redesigning has similar effects as additional responsibilities. The two strategies can be done under the process of career management. Additional responsibilities and job redesigning can influence other employees to work harder so that they too can get the chance to be rewarded (Merwe et al., 2009, p. 76; Harrington & Ottenbacher, 2011, p. 441).
Creating a good working environment within the hotel can influence the employees to work harder as a form of reciprocation. This environment can be made by increasing wages and salaries of the employees, and offering cash bonuses and allowances to them.
However, these monetary strategies may be short-term plans that have to be repeated regularly. A strategy with long-term effect is one that encourages employees to identify themselves with the hotel and its policies, and identify the ones in they feel comfortable with (Merwe et al., 2009, p. 79; Harrington et al., 2011, p. 444).
Delegating more trust and authority to employees can also help managers create a good working environment in the hotel. Many employees will work harder when they are accorded more trust and authority.
In fact, majority of the employees who quit their jobs do so because of the restrictions that such organizations impose on them. Therefore, increasing the level of freedom will certainly increase the level of employees’ input since most of them like working independently (O’Cass & Grace, 2004, p. 259; Kingir et al., 2010, p. 62).
A well fostered relationship between employees and the managers also creates a good environment in which the employees feel happy while working in it. For instance, the gesture of a manager openly showing interest in an employee’s work is enough to motivate him/her to continue working hard so as to maintain such applause.
This kind of environment is also enough to convince the employees that they are actually an integral part of the business. It is more effective than the monetary motivations (Wang & Krakover, 2008, p. 135; Merwe et al., 2009, p. 82).
Managers can also create a good working environment by engaging in the activities that positively impact on the employees’ personal lives. For instance, the hotel can decide to be paying the housemaids who work for the employees or offer medical attention to the employees’ close relatives.
This has been proved to yield good results as far as employees’ motivation is concerned (Merwe et al., 2009, p. 82; Harrington et al., 2011, p. 449).
Another major factor involves offering training to the employees on new contemporary aspects of the hotel industry. Having training as a permanent component of the hotel development strategy helps ensure employees have sufficient skills that correspond to the tasks they are given.
These training activities are conducted by the middle managers who have direct contacts with the employees. These managers understand the employees and so, they know their weaknesses and strengths (Shivers-Blackwell, 2004, p. 614; Maxwell et al., 2009, p. 64; Schroll et al., 2011, p. 475).
As technology advances, Radisson hotel should make the training sessions as exclusive as possible to conform to the changes in technology. Training helps the employees acquire new skills, hence making it easier for those of them who are willing to expand the services they offer to the hotel.
It is also important when it comes to job rotation and assigning of new responsibilities to a particular employee (Wang et al., 2008, p. 138; Merwe et al., 2009, p. 82).
Radisson Hotel should also motivate its employees by offering them fringe benefits such as food vouchers and gifts. Employees regard these kinds of gifts with a lot of significance. As a result, the employees are always willing to work hard whenever they receive these gifts.
The employees value these items because they receive them free of charge and the gifts are also exempted from taxation. Apart from the tax issues, these gifts are internationally recognized and so, can be used in any part of the globe (Shivers-Blackwell, 2004, p. 615; Maxwell et al., 2009, p. 67; Schroll et al., 2011, p. 481).
At times, the food vouchers carry with them other benefits such as unusual offer coupons especially for consumer products, travelling insurance, books and grocery among others. These extra items are important when it comes to motivating the employees.
People are always willing to pay for anything that is given to them. In the case of Radisson, the only way that the employees pay for these gifts is by working harder (Maxwell et al., 2009, p. 61; Kingir et al., 2010, p. 68).
Theoretical Framework
This study will focus on several issues that contribute to the literature. First, there will be a provision of additional evidence establishing reward allocation and employee motivation as distinct work related attitudes. This means, if these two job attitudes are different, they should relate to varying work outcomes.
This will be important, especially because of the concern in the literature that these attitudes are often treated as distinct without enough evidence of this distinctiveness. A second intent of this study will be to provide additional knowledge into the correlation between employee participation and motivation since the study on this area is incomplete.
Therefore, this calls for a new model that can investigate how employee motivation and job enrichment are related to each other. In general, the study intends to look at the correlation between independent and dependent variables given by the model: y = ax where y is our dependent variable represented by employee motivation while x is our independent variables representing reward allocation, participation and job enrichment.
Hypothesis Development
To be able to accomplish this study, the researcher has proposed four hypotheses:
- There will be a significant relationship between branding and employee motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between technological innovation and employee motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between service processes theory and employee motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between teamwork, as a motivator, and employees’ motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between applause and employees’ motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between good working conditions and employees’ motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between work promotion and employees’ motivation.
- There will be a significant relationship between work rotation and work redesigning and employees’ motivation
- There will be a significant relationship between training and employees’ motivation.
Research Design
Purpose of the Study
The management of Radisson Hotel in Dubai would like to know if the performance of the hotel will increase with a big margin if they increase employee motivation.
In other words, the management is seeking to establish the kind of the relationship that exists between employee motivation and the general performance of the hotel by testing the hypothesis: If employee motivation is increased, then the performance will also increase.
Type of Investigation
With respect to the nature of study, this research will be a casual investigation that will be backed by literature review, which will seek to establish the correlation between employee motivation and Radisson Hotel’s performance. The leading question in the investigation will be; does employee motivation increase performance in the Radisson hotel?
Study Setting
This study will be a contrived one since such setting will enable the researchers to have full control over the participants who will be filling the questionnaires. The researchers will be able to gather information required as soon as possible. The respondents will be required to answer only the questions posed in the questionnaires.
Research Interference
In this study, the researchers will ensure that interference is minimized as much as possible. The financial motivation that is normally given to employees will not be tested as one of the variables. This will certainly interfere with the general flow of the investigation. For that reason, the researchers will use a contrived form of investigation.
Unit of Analysis
This study involves only one unit of analysis; an organization, which is the Radisson Hotel in Dubai. The researchers are seeking to establish factors, which can be implemented in the hotel in order to motivate employees and hence improve the hotel’s performance.
The researchers have anticipated that non-financial motivations such as employee applause, job rotation and promotions will be effective in motivating the employees.
Time Horizon
This cross sectional study will be conducted for a period of 6 weeks, and all answers to the survey questions and interviews will be reviewed at the end of the study. The formulation of questionnaire will be based on the qualitative studies emanating from articles that are grounded with theories of branding, innovation, service processes, as well as motivational theory.
A Likert 5-level scale will be used to assess the questionnaire, and this will measure the attitude of the participants with regard to the relationship between the dependent variables mentioned above and employee motivation.
Measurement of Variables
The dependent variable, the employee motivation will be assessed using several independent ones such as employee appreciation, work redesign, work rotation, compensation and training among others. The validity and the reliability of this design will be carefully established in order to ascertain that the study holds a clear objective in either accepting or denying the hypothesis.
Motivation of Employee against Appreciation and Reward Allocation
Appreciation and reward allocation will be assessed using a two point scale. The respondents will only be required to pick a yes or a no from the questionnaire.
Employee motivation majorly depends on the manager’s appreciation of an employee’s work. Employee feel highly motivated whenever managers appreciate their work. On the other hand, failure of a manager to appreciate what an employee has done demoralizes the employee (Kingir, & Mesci, 2010).
Employee Motivation measured against Active Participation and Recognition
The independent variables, which include active participation and recognition, will also be measured on a two-point scale. The respondents will be asked if they can work more if they are incorporated in the decision making process and if their effort are always recognized by the managers.
Active participation greatly influences this dependent variable. When employees are involved in active participation, they feel motivated and are willing to work for more hours. They feel that they part of the hotel system (Lu, 1999).
Employee Motivation measured against Job Redesign, Job Rotation and Promotion
Job redesign, job rotation and promotion will be measured using a five point scale that includes the levels excellent, better, average, poor, and very poor. The respondents will be asked to rate how the three independent variables can motivate them.
It has been proved that when a company uses the three factors to motivate their employees, the results are always promising. For instance, when a company promotes some of the hard-working employees, the rest will strive to get the same (Kingir, & Mesci, 2010).
Sample Size
The studies described in the literature reviewed in this work have an average of one hundred participants. The participants will be purely employees drawn from companies found in hotel industry. This sample size represents approximately one eighth of the total number of employees.
Data Collection Method
The data collection will involve entirely questionnaires. Every participant will be given a questionnaire to give his/her responses to the questions, which will be contained in the questionnaires. The participants will be requested to demonstrate the highest level of honesty while answering the questions. To avoid bias, the participants will be picked at random.
Discussion of Expected Results
The managers and economists of Radisson Hotels in Dubai will analyze the expected results of the strategy, which will be used in concluding the processes of decreasing the level of guests’ satisfaction. The results should be consistent with Wang and Krakover (2008) findings: that there is a positive correlation between services processes theory and employee motivation.
These findings are unsurprising because service processes theory does not only take into account the physical features of the hotel but also other service processes. As such, increasing the level of service for the employees in the Radisson Hotels entails employee motivation, customers’ satisfaction, and delivering the pledge.
There is a positive correlation between job redesign, training, applause and team work employee motivation. This stems from the fact that these variables help to differentiate one company from the rest in cases where there is stiff competition since it acquires core values that are in line with the cultural heritage of a given place (O’Cass & Grace, 2004).
Moreover, there is a positive correlation between technology innovation and workers’ satisfaction, perhaps due to the fact that enhancing employees’ interaction through the social media depicts that the firm is closely associated with the activities of the people and that the company does not only consider its customers as assets, but people who are attracted to innovation.
The results, however, are likely to show a negative correlation between financial motivations and employees satisfaction. These findings are consistent with some empirical studies, reporting that a number of employees are not interested with relationship-oriented work because at the end of the day, performance is always evaluated at an individual level as opposed to a team level (Soltani, 2003).
Conclusions and Recommendations
Developing appropriate working environment is the major force, which drives the motivation of employees in Radisson Hotel. It creates a state in which employees can discover their natural potential. It helps the hotel management to prevent the emergence of an environment in which employees feel frustrated and underrated, and as a result they lose the sense of belonging to the hotel’s system.
The latter kind of environment can cause unpleasant working conditions, which can impose negative impacts on employees’ performance (Naon, 2010, p. 49). The hotel needs to take care when creating good working environment. Otherwise, there could be a possibility that the improvement of working conditions may fail to yield the desired results.
The hotel managers’ appreciation and the employee’s fulfillment result in overall good performance of the hotel this in itself is a motivating factor to the employees. Recognition of an employee’s work and instant rewarding of such work are important in motivating employees to work harder in the hotel (Kingir & Mesci, 2010, p. 73).
This implies that failure to reward good performance at work is a way of de-motivating employees. In fact, employees will consider the failure to reward their work as ignoring them.
They will not see the difference of working harder and just sitting back and watch things happen. For that reason, the hotel management should always thrive to ensure that every effort of an employee is rewarded (Kwortnik, 2008, p. 290).
It is common knowledge that well designed work procedure will always yield good results that are remarkable. Good results are motivational factors. To ensure that the hotel registers such kind of outcome, the management offers appropriate training to the employees.
Training equips employees with skills that enable them to perform better by doing things in the most effective way (Lu, 1999, p. 71). In addition, the management has to create an environment in which employees can acquire autonomy, control and responsibility.
These three factors can create a free working environment in which employee can work independently. It is easier to perform better in a surrounding that is not governed with restrictions.
Limitations
Even though the study will attempt to employ casual investigation of the problem using a user-friendly approach that would encourage the participants to be open to each other, some of the research studies are likely to remain imperfect because some respondents are always uncooperative.
This is normally evident when it comes to discussing teamwork as a motivational factor, perhaps due to the sensitivity of this area because some responses can be termed as biased when one tries to challenge the employees who have no talents at an individual level.
References
Harrington, R. J., & Ottenbacher, M. C. (2011). Strategic management: An analysis of its representation and focus in recent hospitality research. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 23(4), 439 – 462.
Kingir, S., & Mesci, M. (2010). Factors affecting hotel employees’ motivation. Serbian Journal of management 5(1), 59-76.
Kwortnik, R. J. (2008). Shipscape influence on the leisure cruise experience. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 2(4), 289- 311.
Lu, L. (1999). Work motivation, job stress and employees’ well-being. Journal of Applied Management Studies, 8(1), 61-73.
Maxwell, R., & Knox, S. (2009). Motivating employees to live the brand: A comparative case of employer brand attractiveness within the firm. Journal of Marketing Management 25(9/10), 55-71.
Merwe, W., Basson, J. S., & Coetzee, M. (2009). Non-financial recognition: Exploring employees’ preferences in a South African information technology organization. South African Journal of Labor Relations, 33(2), 75-99.
Naon, R. C. (2010). Modalities of non-financial motivation of employments within organizations. Annals of the University of Petrosani Economics, 10(4), 41-54.
O’Cass, A., & Grace, D. (2004). Exploring consumer experiences with a service brand. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 13(4), 257–268.
Schroll, A., & Mild, A. (2011). Open innovation modes and the role of internal R&D: An empirical study on open innovation adoption in Europe. European Journal of Innovation Management, 14(4), 475–495.
Shivers-Blackwell, S. L. (2004). Reactions to outdoor teambuilding initiatives in MBA education. Journal of Management Development, 23(7), 614 – 630.
Soltani, E. (2003). Towards a TQM-driven HR performance evaluation: An empirical study. Employee Relations, 25(4), 347 – 370.
Wang, Y., & Krakover, S. (2008). Destination marketing: Competition, cooperation or coopetition? International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20(2), 126 –141.
Appendix
The study will involve collecting sufficient information that could help ascertain the relationships that exist between work redesign, good work environment, employee applause, financial motivations and training and employee motivation. The questionnaires will contain following questions.
- Would you work more if you were promoted?
- Would you feel motivated if you were trained in other areas of work?
- How would you feel if your manager constantly appreciated your work?
- What would you do if the hotel compensated you for good performance?
- Would you be happy with the idea of job rotation and job enlargement?
- Would you work more if the hotel created an environment with favorable working conditions?
- Would you be motivated to work more if the management allowed you to participate in making decisions concerning issues affecting the hotel?