Staff retention in the luxury hotel sector in Australia: essential but not necessary!

In the context of an increasingly tight labour market, the issue of not only attracting but, more importantly, retaining staff is becoming more pronounced. These issues have been well publicised in such sectors as health and mining, where the skills shortage has been instrumental in attracting skilled migrants. However, hospitality is one sector that has experienced voluntary, high labour turnover for quite some time. Many jobs are short term, unskilled and contingent, so turnover is to be expected. However, in the 4/5 star hotel sector, dominated by multinational corporations, there have been concerns raised within the industry around staff recruitment and staff retention. Previous studies (Knox & Walsh 2005; Timo & Davidson 2005) have highlighted a paradox that appears to be evident, while the industry makes such claims, labour use strategies are generally centred on cost minimisation and labour flexibility strategies that in themselves are not inimical to staff retention. Drawing from information generated by industry reports, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data and workplace agreements in the hotel sector, this paper provides a closer look at the reasons for staff turnover within the industry and whether the concerns about staff retention are matched by the workplace agreements. The paper presents a preliminary investigation into the strategies (or not) that the larger industry players are employing to facilitate staff retention.