Millennials' work values towards hospitality industry

Abstract

Millennials represent an important percentage of the current and future workforce that companies from all the sectors continuously look for, being the case for the Tourism Sector and especially the Hospitality one. It has been proven that there is a real ignorance problem in the Hospitality Industry on how to retain the young workforce that is currently entering the labour market. This concern comes from different perspectives and needs from both sides, recruiters and job aspirants, so the aim of this research is to provide to the hospitality companies with best practices in order to satisfy the wanted students’ values when looking for a job in the Hospitality Industry. To be able to reach the main research goal, the literature review based on academic articles has been focused on three different pillars. First of all, the origin and precedence of the values concept has been understood, followed by getting to know more about the Millennial generation characteristics at the same time that analysing the generational changes. Lastly, the Hospitality Industry characteristics from a human resources point of view and its current practices to retain their employees have been studied as well. The results from this study have been obtained thanks to the methodology used, the creation of two interviews. Diverse opinions from students and human resources professionals have been taken into account, and these have shown that there is a real gap between what Millennials are looking for in their future workplaces and what are the companies actually offering them. In fact, most of the hospitality companies are still using old practices or not even doing anything, without adapting to the new generation that is defining itself as not committed to the companies and being really demanding. To conclude, after all the analysis of the interviews’ outcomes, this research offers suggestions, recommendations and best practices to the Hospitality Companies, so that they can improve their employee retention and commitment, thus reducing the organizations’ turnover.