THE IMPACT OF BENEFITS AND SERVICES ON MANAGER ENGAGEMENT AND MANAGER RETENTION IN TOURISM INDUSTRY: ENHANCED BY THE EFFECT OF MANAGEMENT LEVEL

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Manager engagement and retention are vital to the success and organizational performance of manyservice sector organisations. Maintaining manager retention is a major challenge that many hotelenterprises face today. It is critical that organizations give greater importance to manager engagement,motivation and retention and therefore establish an efficient benefits and services strategy for retainingthese core managers for the persistence and achievement of the organization. Employee motivationand retention have gained even more significance as a result of the heightened dynamism in hotelbusiness within the tourism sector. As the focal point of Turkish economy, recent developments in thetourism and hotel enterprises have caused organizations to accelerate their human resources activitiesand accordingly more attention has been given to the employee satisfaction practices in this industry.Herzberg, in his hygiene-motivation theory, classifies the factors that maintain job satisfaction under twogroups as motivating and hygiene factors 1. Herzberg says that benefits and services are hygiene factorsbut they do not have motivating effect. Mottaz (1985:375), in his study conducted among 1385 servicesector employees in the USA, indicated that motivating (intrinsic) factors have greater effect on employeemotivation than hygiene (extrinsic) factors. DeVoe and Iyengar (2004:47), in their study conductedamong 1760 service sector employees of a global company operating in Northern USA, Asia and LatinAmerica demonstrated similar results. Brislin et.al., (2005:97), with their study conducted among 623service and different sector employees in Japan also indicated that motivating (intrinsic) factors havegreater effect on employee motivation than hygiene (extrinsic) factors. This study, in contrary, aims toidentify and study the effect of benefits and services on manager engagement and retention in hotelorganizations in Turkey. The study was conducted among three different levels of hotel management,namely, top level, middle level and operational level managers. The results of the study show thatwhile there is a positive and significant relationship between Benefits and Services and ManagementEngagement, there is no relationship between Benefits and Services and Management Retention.