Job satisfaction and its relationship to demographics and turnover of hotel food-service workers in Hong Kong

Abstract

A study designed to compare the levels of job satisfaction of hotel food-service workers in Hong Kong based upon differences in demographic variables, and to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and labour turnover. Subjects were 373 food-service workers in 3 first-class chain hotels in Hong Kong. The Job Descriptive Index (JDI) was used for studying job satisfaction. Six months after the survey, turnover data were obtained from the 3 hotels. Thirty-nine employees who had participated in the survey voluntarily terminated their jobs. The results indicated that food-service workers were less satisfied than other types of workers. Satisfaction with certain facets of the job were found to be significantly related to some demographic variables. Over 53% of the respondents ranked pay as the most important aspect of their jobs. Except for the pay scale, stayers were significantly more satisfied than the terminators. The unweighted sum of the satisfaction scores was correlated −0.26 (P < 0.01) with turnover.