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turnover and wastage of many well-trained and
experience personnel (Doherty, Guerrier, Jamie-
son, Lashley & Lockwood, 2001). Kulsuvan and
Kulsuvan (2002) found that, in Turkey, workers
or interns in the hospitality industry claimed that
their negative attitude towards tourism careers and
intention to leave were impacted by the nature of
work in the industry.
or moderated by the levels of support employees.
Namasivayam and Zhao (2007) and Karatepe and
Uludag (2007), together with Rowley and Purcell
(2001) argue work and family conflict does influ-
ence employees' organizational commitment and
ultimately lead to employee intention to leave.
2.4
Retention
Attracting and retaining well-educated, skilled,
enthusiastic and committed workers is a chronic
problem in the hospitality and tourism industries
(Lucas & Johnson, 2003). With the lack of expe-
rienced and knowledgeable employees, the tourism
and hospitality industry runs a risk of having prob-
lems in generating profits, and hindered growth.
Due to this, the issue of retention is considered vital
for any player in the industry. Therefore, the tour-
ism and hospitality organizations are being forced
to rethink their human resource policies and strate-
gies in variety of areas, including training, recruit-
ment, and compensation and scheduling.
Previous works have focused on the important
roles that appropriate recruitment plays in retain-
ing good staff (Collins, 2007; Dermody, Young
& Taylor, 2004; Martin, Mactaggart & Bowden,
2006; Reynolds, Merritt & Gladstein, 2004).
Improving the quality and quantity of tourism and
hotel employees leads to improving the image of
the industry, together with more strategic ways of
managing work rosters and workloads.
2.2
Generation-Y
Over the past decade, new generation of employee
has entered the workforce. This generation is
known as generation Y who were born in year
1981-1999. Generation Y has dramatically dif-
ferent expectations of the work environment and
industry compared to their predecessors (Chen &
Choi, 2008; Gursoy, Maier & Chi, 2008).
Generally, it can be said that generation Y has a
strong sense of morality, is willing to fight for free-
dom, is sociable, and values home and family. Besides
that, generation Y are seen to have high expectation
of job compare to previous generation, including
high expectation of pay, conditions, promotion, and
advancement. In addition, generation Y also tends
to want an intellectual challenge, needs to succeed,
strives to make a difference, and seeks employers
who will further their professional development.
The Generation Y cohort is accustomed to being
active in family decisions. Thus, they are more likely
to expect a similar amount of authority or ability to
contribute to decisions in employer organizations
(Johns, 2003). In the workplace, Generation Y favors
an inclusive style of management; they tend to dis-
like slowness, and desire immediate feedback about
their performance (Francis-Smith, 2004).
3
HUMAN RESOURCE CHALLENGES
IN TOURISM
Human resource management plays a major role in
assisting organization to attract and retain employ-
ees. It is important to understand the needs of Gen-
eration Y as they are the generation who are going
to take over the workforce in the future. As stated
by Morton (2002), generation Y employees show a
tendency towards valuing equality in the workplace
and they seek for positions that offer reasonable
wages and good opportunities for career advance-
ment. In addition, the Y generation respects man-
agers who empower workers and who are open and
honest with employees. New employees or fresh
graduates are eager to start work in hospitality and
tourism, however it seems the hospitality industry
work environment is not well prepared for the new
arrival (Richardson, 2010a, 2010b). Thus these
would lead to shortage of skilled workers in the
industry (Ferris, Berkson & Harris, 2002; Freeland,
2000; Hinkin & Tracey, 2000) and cause organiza-
tions having difficulties in several aspects related
to economic and performance of the business
organization, including delaying in developing new
2.3
Work life balance
The issues relating to obtaining a work life balance
(WLB) have received substantial attention over
recent years, especially in the area of hospitality
and tourism. Work in long hours is consistently
associated with worse work-life outcomes and all
our work-life measures (Pocock, Skinner & Wil-
liams, 2008). Thus, the authors suggest that there
is unhealthy acceptance of long working hours,
especially in service industries. In addition, for
young workers, as they are seeking for work life
balance and flexibility in work, these longer work-
ing hours that offered by hospitality and tourism
industry is unsocial in the way that such workers
conduct their social or family lives. Likewise, the
most significant predictor of turnover intentions
was the job burnout dimension of cynicism (Lee
& Shin, 2005). Mulvaney, O' Neill, Cleverland,
and Crouter (2006) suggested that the levels of
conflict between work and family will be impacted
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