Abstract:
Employee job tenure is important for the existence, growth and development of any
organization. It is more important to the larger tourism and hospitality sector, since it
relies heavily on people to offer services to customers. The sector is particularly
attractive to young employees, also known as Generation Y. However, these
employees are known to exhibit short job tenure at work as well as moving from one
organization to another, which can destabilize the work environment. This study
aimed at establishing the determinants of Generation Y job tenure in selected star
rated hotels. Specifically, the study sought to establish the relationship between
Generation Y employees‟ work values, perceived leadership traits, the perception of
their supervisors‟ support, to establish the moderating influence of supervisors‟
perception of Gen Y employees and to compare job tenure antecedents and Gen Y
employee job tenure among star rated hotels in rural and urban Kenya. Hertzberg two
factor theory, theory of planned behavior and theory X and Y guided the study.
Positivism informed the study. An explanatory research design was adopted for this
study. The target population consisted of 1,226 Generation Y employees and 117
departmental supervisors in hotels. Sampling was done in three phases: cluster and
stratified sampling to select five hotels and lodges each from Nairobi and Maasai
Mara National Reserve, proportionate and systematic sampling to select 264
Generation Y employees and a census survey of 117 departmental supervisors in
hotels were interviewed to determine perception of Generation Y employees.
Questionnaire survey was the primary instrument of data collection. Quantitative data
was collected and analyzed descriptively using distribution, measures of central
tendency, skewness, frequency and percentages. The data was also analyzed
inferentially using hierarchical regression analysis to determine levels of significance
between the study variables. The study found that the employee work values,
(p=0.000) and Generation Y employees‟ perception of supervisors‟ support (p=0.023)
were predictors of job tenure. On the other hand, perceived supervisors‟ leadership
traits (p=0.877) was not predictors of job tenure. Further, the moderating influence of
supervisor perceptions on the identified determinants were found not to moderate the
determinants and job tenure among Generation Y star rated hotels and lodges in
Kenya. The study concluded that the perception of supervisors as conservative and
rigid and the feeling by the supervisors that Generation Y possess unrealistic
expectations and have little respect for authority markedly reduced the tenure of the
latter. In addition, shorter working hours and a democratic as opposed to authoritative
leadership increased Generation Y tenure. The study therefore recommends that
retaining Generation Y employees in the service industry requires the cultivation of an
environment of mutual understanding and respect between employees and
supervisors, where the employees are given room to be creative and innovative
without necessarily being told what to do
