Working Overtime and Job Satisfaction in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao

[pic] Working overtime and Job satisfaction in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao Name: Yujie Hou Relation No. 74759 Mentor: Sandy Loup Internship in Front Desk & Executive Lounge, Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao, China Stenden University Leeuwarden The Netherlands Bachelor of International Hospitality Management September, 2012 Table of content Declaration of own work3 Introduction4 Chapter 1. Company Description5 Chapter 2. Project Exploration8 Chapter 3. Literature Review9 3. 1 Working overtime9 3. People who work overtime12 3. 3 The reasons of working long hours12 3. 4 Job satisfaction and working overtime13 3. 5 Conceptual model. 15 3. 6 Problem definition16 Chapter 4. Methodology16 4. 1 Research design16 4. 2 Instrument design17 4. 3 Limitations of Research Methods17 4. 4 Data Analyze18 Bibliography19 Appendix 1. 21 Appendix 2. 22 Declaration of own work 1. This work is composed by me. 2. This work has not been accepted in any previous application for a degree or diploma, by me or anyone else. 3. The work of which this is a record is done well and truly by me. 4.All verbatim extracts have been distinguished by quotation marks and the sources of my information have been specifically acknowledged. Date: September 01, 2012 Name: Yujie Hou Signature: Introduction In 1993-1994, 23% of females and 27% of males claimed to have worked unpaid overtime (Bell and Hart, 1999). The Beijing Bureau of Statistics said employed people in China's capital worked for 5. 9 days, or 47. 2 hours, a week on average (Xinhua News Agency, 2006). An online survey of 15,000 people from a well-known Chinese job-hunting website shows a shocking figure that over 40% of the respondents worked vertime without paid. An incredible reality from Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions reported that more than 50% of Hong Kong women who have full-time jobs work overtime at least two hours every day. Why do Chinese people work overtime become an ordinary phenomenon? How do they feel about working overtime? How do Chinese feel about having to work overtime? Do they feel happy? Can the company get more benefits from employee working overtime? The relationship between overtime working and job satisfaction and how working overtime involves in job satisfaction could be discovered.On behalf of understanding, measuring and improving job satisfaction is an advantage competitive in hotel management team. Therefore, this project mainly focuses on figuring out how working overtime impacts on job satisfaction, and in order to help managers in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao to get a better method of measuring working overtime and improving employee satisfaction. First of all, a company description is given in the report. In this chapter, not only the general knowledge of the company itself will be introduced, but also the figures of staff turn over, salary of employees and a SWOT analysis are given.The following chapter Project Exploration high lighting the purpose of this management project, furthermore, the litterateurs are reviewed in the following chapter, a conceptual map is drawed into detail points, problem statement and research questions are mentioned as well. Last but not least, the chapter of Methodology decribes a method of research method, instrument design, data collecting, data measuring and analysing. Chapter 1. Company Description The full name of the company is Shanghai Hongqiao Yuanyi Hilton, which is a joint venture business with Yuanyi Group and Hilton Worldwide.Yuanyi Group is the owner of hardware facilities and real estate, Hilton hotels ; resorts is a managerial role in the property. The company is a sub-brand of Hilton worldwide, which is Hilton hotels ;amp; resorts. It is a full service five star hotel which opened in October of 2010. The facilities of the hotel are complete, plush and luxury. The company is located in Hongqiao Economic and Technical Development Zone, is just 15 minutes from Hongqiao Airport (Terminal I) and 13km from People's Square in the hea rt of Shanghai.Apart from the above events, there is a buffet restaurant Essence indulging in fine Pan Asian and Mediterranean cuisine at the all-day and sample authentic Cantonese dishes at Yue Xuan which is an a la cart restaurant. Additionally, Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao provides a business center, lobby lounge Pulse, Delicatessen, Vine Bar, fitness center and a stay connected Executive Lounge to satisfy the diverse needs of the guests The company places marketing emphasis on both business travelers and leisure travelers, and also Japanese guests which is a main market for the company itself.There are over 500 work members in this company, which including foreigners, locals and also staffs from other cities in China. Most of the head office managers and directors are foreigners. Full-time contract employee accounts for 72. 8%, and the part-time contract employee takes up12. 4 percentage in this company mostly in banqueting and Essence restaurant and the trainees occupy 14. 8 percen tages. The company is a newly opened hotel, and the executive building was just partly open in April, 2012.The biggest problem of the Human Resource Department is the talent gap. In order to attract more new interviewees, every Wednesday is the company Open day and people can go to the Human Resource department to hand in their CVs without an appointment. Through the monthly employee party, it can be seen that there are always new staffs join in the Hilton family. As the information shared from the HR assistant manager, the staff turn over of year 2011 was 13. 1%, it is higher than the average hotel staff turn over rate which is 10% in Shanghai (Fang Xu, 2010).The turn over of head office employees in this company is also very high, during the period of the author's internship, the General Manager, Director of Finance, Director of the operation, Director of business development, F;B manager, Front Office Manager, three Duty managers played job-hopping to another company. There are 1 1 levels accounted in Hilton, such as GM is the highest level which is 11 and trainee is level one. The salary of the trainee is 1,000RMB, around 120 per month. The biggest employee amount is level three, the average salary is 2,800RMB (=â‚ ¬346) per month, supervisors are at level 5 which can own 3,400RMB (=â‚ ¬419. ) per month. As an example gave within duty managers, the salary of foreigner' is three times than the Chinese employee in the same level position. A following SWOT analysis table shows an overall idea of the company's both internal and external conditions. The internal part includes Strengths and Weaknesses. The Strengths are more focuses on the company facilities and around the environment. For instance, the golf court is a big strong point of Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao, which is just in a walking distance. The weaknesses are mostly from the guest complains.For example, the 80RMB of parking fee is a big guest complains in this company and it happens almost everyda y. Three separated buildings are a weak point because it is very complicated for the guests to find the direction. The service quality is a frequent criticism object from customers. The external part is focused on the financial environment and competitors. Shanghai attracts 215 million domestic tourists and 8. 5 million foreign tourists in 2010. In addition, tourism revenue of Shanghai in 2010 is 305. 3 billion RMB (Shanghai tourist development report, 2012).There are 44 five-star hotels and 64 four-star hotels in Shanghai and 11 five-star and 7 boutique hotels are building up. Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao won the ‘Top Seller' in September 2012 in Asia Pacific area. The company has a lot of opportunities and it is a great time, but also it is facing with various challenges. Table 1. Chapter 2. Project Exploration During a period of 10 months, it turned out that it apparently it was difficult for employees to finish their tasks within the required time resulting in having to work o ver time.In hotel operation departments, there are three shifts, in general, morning shift staffs working from 7am till 3pm, the afternoon shift from 3pm till 11pm, and the rest hours are evening shift. However, most of the employees in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao will spend quite long time in the shift turnover period, and it leads directly to work overtime in everyday and in every department. Furthermore, these over hours will not be counted into paid overtime working. Front office is not the only department, but it apparently most frequently in the company.Moreover, as it was written in the previous chapter, the turnover rate in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao is higher than the average rate. Especially in front desk department, since 2011 November till 2012 September there were 5 employees quitted their job who had worked there over one year and 9 trainees had not worked over 6 months which means they quit before they became a formal staff. It be seen through the first two sentences writt en in the introductory chapter that working overtime is very normal in China and the reality shows it is a truth in Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao.This project is trying to identify the relationship between working overtime and job satisfaction, and enhance to give the managers of Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao a further consideration of monitoring overtime working and improving employee satisfaction. Meanwhile, job satisfaction is a source of long-term competitive advantage in the hospitality industry, by the core values of Hilton Worldwide which is described as Hospitality, Integrity, Leadership, Teamwork, Ownership and Now, each values have a strong connection with job satisfaction.For the Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao, this management project could be a helpful way to get more involved into employee satisfaction and measuring overtime working as well. Chapter 3. Literature Review This chapter concentrates in working overtime and job satisfaction. Figure has an intuitive feeling to compare the di fferent hours of working overtime in different places, so the first paragraph research figures to give an overview of working overtime in selected places and according to law and compare with China's situation.The following two paragraphs are in an attempt to find out who works overtime, and the reasons of people work overtime. Furthermore, the job satisfaction of different genders, the importance of job satisfaction and the relationship between job satisfaction and overtime working will be reviewed in the last paragraph. Last but not least a conceptual model covers the main point which includes the literature review. 3. 1 Working overtime In this part, the definition of working overtime is given, and some figures of overtime hours in different countries and a table of standard and maximum working hours for comparison.Working overtime is normally approved in advance by the Head of Department and is agreed in order to complete work for a deadline or to meet additional demands. Howeve r, the initial periods of less than half an hour are not classified as work overtime. Additional hours or overtime will not qualify for payments until the member of staff has worked to their number of basic contractual weekly hours (Working additional hours and overtime, 2011). Pascal and Damien (2000) found that about 20% of European employees work 45 or more hours a week, and about 13% of the full-time employee's weekly work over 50 hours.Long work hours are also a common phenomenon in the United States: more than 1/4 of US men and 11% of women work more than 50 hours a week (Jacobs ; Gerson, 2004). In addition, extreme overtime work is pervasive in Korea and Japan where many employees work more than 60 hours a week (Amagasa, Nakayama, ; Takahashi, 2005). A reach showed that there are only 13. 7 percent worked for no more than eight hours a day in China, 40. 3% worked eight to nine hours, 23. 48 percent put in nine to 10 hours a day and 22. 0 percent worked more than 10 hours (Xin hua News Agency, 2006). In generally overtime work is a common phenomenon in both Asian and Western countries. Working overtime also occurs in developed countries both in Asia and Western. Moreover, China has the most numbers of populations who work over 8 hours everyday which accounts at 86. 3%. The following figure gives a clear picture of the standard working hours in selected places, and the maximum overtime hours allowed in the law and also the overtime pay rate. |Table 2. | | | |Selected places |Standard working |Maximum overtime hours allowed |Overtime pay rate | | |Hours | | | |Finland |8 hours/day |Up to 138 hours within a period of 4 months |1. 5 times of the regular rate of pay for the first two hours | | |40 hours/Week |Up to 250 hours during a calendar year. |2 times for any extra hours. | | |The yearly maximum can be exceeded at 80 hours on a local agreement. | | |France |35 hours /week |Up to 220 hours per year. |Each hour of overtime is payable at 10% to 50% higher than the | | | |This limit may be exceeded with a collective agreement between the employer |regular hourly rate, depending on the cumulative total overtime | | | |and employee. |hours worked. |Ireland |48 hours /week |No specification of legal maximum overtime hours The actual working hours |No statutory obligation on employers to pay employees higher rates | | | |may fluctuate considerably as long as the average working hour per week is |for overtime works. | | | |not more than 48 hours over 4, 6 or 12 months (depending on circumstances) | | |Japan |8 hours /day |Up to 2 hours per day for jobs this may cause harm to health. No lower than the rate stipulated by Cabinet Order within the range| | |40 hours/week | |of no less than 25% and no more than 50% over the normal wage per | | | | |hour or per day. | |Malaysia |8 hours /day |Up to 4 hours per day except under special occasions. |1. 5 times of the regular rate of pay. | | |48 hours /week | | | |Singapore |8 hours /day |Up to 72 hours per month |1. 5 times of the regular rate of pay. | |44 hours/week | | | |South Korea |8 hours /day |Up to 4 hours per day |1. 5 times of the regular rate of pay. | | |40 hours /week |Up to 12 hours per week. | | |Taiwan |8 hours /day |Up to 4 hours per day and 46 hours per month. |; 2 hours, at least an additional 1/3 of the regular hourly rate. | | |84 hours two week | |2