Will we have the same employees in hospitality after all? The impact of COVID-19 on employees' work attitudes and turnover intentions

Dunja Demirović Bajrami; Aleksandra Terzić; Marko D Petrović; Milan Radovanović; Tatiana N Tretiakova; Abosa Hadoud

doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102754

Will we have the same employees in hospitality after all? The impact of COVID-19 on employees' work attitudes and turnover intentions

Int J Hosp Manag. 2021 Apr:94:102754. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102754. Epub 2020 Nov 10.

Authors

Dunja Demirović Bajrami^{1

2}, Aleksandra Terzić¹, Marko D Petrović^{1

2}, Milan Radovanović^{1

2}, Tatiana N Tretiakova², Abosa Hadoud³

Affiliations

¹ Geographical Institute "Jovan Cvijić", Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Djure Jaksica 9, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
² The South Ural State University, Institute of Sports, Tourism and Service, Sony Krivoy Street No. 60, Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation.
³ Faculty of Geography, University of Belgrade, Studentski Trg No. 3/3, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.

Abstract

A crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic affected the whole world leaving long-lasting effects on almost every aspect of human lives. The aim of this study was to test how different effects of COVID-19, expressed through job insecurity, employees' health complaints occurred during isolation, risk-taking behavior at workplace and changes in the organization, may impact work-related attitudes (job motivation and job satisfaction) and turnover intentions of the employees in hospitality industry. Based on the data collected from 624 hospitality workers from Serbia, the results indicated that job insecurity and changes in the organization were predictors of all outcomes, in a negative direction, while risk-taking behavior acted as a predictor of job satisfaction only, also in a negative direction. The significance of demographic characteristics, as control variables, showed that age and marital status had significant impact on job motivation and turnover intentions. The theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Keywords: COVID-19; Employees; Hospitality industry; Turnover intentions; Work related attitudes.