The impact of COVID-19 on turnover intention among hotel employees: A moderated mediation model

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, working, and life situation of employees in the Swedish hospitality industry

Introduction

Previous studies reported that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of employees in the hospitality industry internationally, however, its effect in Sweden has not been studied. Unlike several other countries, Sweden never enforced a lockdown. Restaurants, bars, and hotels could remain open and host a limited number of guests but had to abide by certain restrictions.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was distributed among hospitality industry employees containing questions regarding the perceived effects of the pandemic on the respondents' working and life situations and their physical and psychological health. The sample consisted of 699 individuals, with a response rate of 47.9%.

Results

Although several respondents had been laid off or furloughed, the majority of the sample remained at the same employer. However, more than half of the respondents reported that their economic situation had deteriorated. Compared to before the pandemic, 38.1% experienced elevated levels of stress, 48.3% experienced elevated levels of worry, and 31.4% reported worsened mood. A deteriorating personal economy and difficulty in following COVID-19-related restrictions at work were associated with the worsening of these three mental health aspects. While the fear of becoming infected with COVID-19 was related to higher levels of stress, the fear of infecting others was related to higher levels of worry.

Conclusion

Although Sweden imposed less strict measures than most other countries, the personal economy and mental health of hospitality workers were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Managing knowledge loss: a systematic literature review and future research directions

Purpose

Job market shifts, such as workforce mobility and aging societies, cause the exit of knowledgeable personnel from organizations. The ensuing knowledge loss (K-loss) has broad negative effects. This study analyzes the knowledge management literature on K-loss published from 2000 to 2021 and identifies fruitful directions for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of 74 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2021. These articles were retrieved from ProQuest Central, Science Direct, EBSCOhost and Emerald databases. The analysis utilizes Jesson et al.’s (2011) six principles: field mapping, comprehensive search, quality assessment, data extraction, synthesis and write-up.

Findings

Three sub-topics emerge from the systematic literature review: K-loss drivers, positive and negative impacts of K-loss and mitigation strategies. Over half of the literature addresses mitigation strategies and provides solutions for K-loss already in progress, rather than proposing preventive measures.

Research limitations/implications

This study has limitations related to the time span covered. Moreover, it focuses on articles published in refereed journals. Therefore, important contributions from conference papers, books and professional reports were excluded.

Originality/value

This research comprehensively synthesizes the K-loss literature and proposes future avenues of research to address under-investigated areas and potentially lead to theoretical and empirical advancements in the field. This study also provides suggestions for improving managerial practices.

Effective machine learning, Meta-heuristic algorithms and multi-criteria decision making to minimizing human resource turnover

Employee turnover is one of the most important issues in human resource management, which is a combination of soft and hard skills. This makes it difficult for managers to make decisions. In order to make better decisions, this article has been devoted to identifying factors affecting employee turnover using feature selection approaches such as Recursive Feature Elimination algorithm and Mutual Information and Meta-heuristic algorithms such as Gray Wolf Optimizer and Genetic Algorithm. The use of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques is one of the other approaches used to identify the factors affecting the employee turnover in this article. Our expert has used the Best-Worst Method to evaluate each of these variables. In order to check the performance of each of the above methods and to identify the most significant factors on employee turnover, the results are used in some machine learning algorithms to check their accuracy in predicting the employee turnover. These three methods have been implemented on the human resources dataset of a company and the results show that the factors identified by the Mutual Information algorithm can show better results in predicting the employee turnover. Also, the results confirm that managers need a support tool to make decisions because the possibility of making mistakes in their decisions is high. This approach can be used as a decision support tool by managers and help managers and organizations to have a correct insight into the departure of their employees and adopt policies to retain and optimize their employees.

A Parallel Mediation Analysis on the Effects of Pandemic Accentuated Occupational Stress on Hospitality Industry Staff Turnover Intentions in COVID-19 Context

The purpose of this research was to analyze how different effects of the COVID pandemic, expressed through pandemic accentuated occupational stress, perceived job insecurity, occupational safety and health perception and perceived organizational effectiveness, may impact turnover intentions of the personnel in the hospitality industry. Our research team designed an online questionnaire which was analyzed with network analysis to depict the relationship between factors, and, then, a confirmatory factor analysis was employed to confirm the distribution of the items to the envisaged five factors. Based on a sample of 324 randomized Romanian hospitality industry staff, the results of our cross-sectional study revealed that occupational safety and health perception, perceived organizational effectiveness and perceived job insecurity in the pandemic accentuated occupational stress to indirectly and significantly impact hospitality industry staff turnover intentions (TI). The results indicated that, while the total effect of PAOS on TI was significant, the direct effect was still significant, while all three mediators remained significant predictors. Overall, mediators partially mediated the relationship between PAOS and TI, indicating that employees with low scores on occupational safety and health perception (OSHP), and perceived organizational effectiveness (POE) and high scores on perceived job insecurity (PJI) were more likely to have higher levels of TI turnover intentions.

The Impacts of Environmental Dynamism on Chinese Tour Guides' Sustainable Performance: Factors Related to Vitality, Positive Stress Mindset and Supportive Policy

Although previous research shows great interest in improving the sustainability of organizations' performance, little is known about individual sustainable performance, especially for special groups such as tour guides. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study aimed to investigate the effect of environmental dynamism caused by COVID-19 on tour guides' sustainable performance and mediating role of vitality and intervention mechanism in this relationship. Adopting a quantitative research method, we collected data from 382 professional tour guides in China via three surveys. The Structural Equation Model (SEM) and PROCESS were used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that: (1) environmental dynamism was negatively related to tour guides' sustainable performance and (2) vitality at work mediated this negative effect; (3) a positive stress mindset moderated the relationship between environmental dynamism and vitality; (4) supportive policy's moderating role in the relationship of vitality and sustainable performance was not significant. The above conclusions contribute to the literature about the external environment, emotional state, performance management and application boundary of COR theory in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.