The Great Resignation and Intrapreneurship as a strategy to attract and retain staff in services

Abstract

Many employees from the Millennials and Gen Z cohorts are abandoning the hotel industry after COVID-19. The dissatisfaction of hotel workers with their working conditions has accelerated the Great Resignation, a term used to refer to the higher-than-normal quit rate in an industry. Consequently, the number of unfilled jobs is high, and attraction and retention have become a strategic concern for the hotel industry. Considering that Millennials and Gen Z are entrepreneurial-oriented, in this paper, we study how intrapreneurship, an approach that encourages employees to develop innovative ideas and solutions within a company, is one of the ways hotel companies attract qualified people. The study is qualitative, and data was collected through the recruitment sites of the leading hotel companies worldwide since these websites provide distinct information to potential job candidates beyond the available job descriptions. The hotel industry is highly competitive, with several brands, each with unique characteristics. However, they depend on their employees to materialise their brand's promises. To ensure personal-organisational fit, companies should give the right signals when presenting to potential candidates so that they may decide when receiving and interpreting these signals if they fit the organisation and are aligned with what that company offers and demands. Findings enhance our comprehension of the use by large hotel companies of employees' preference for behaving intrapreneurially as a strategy to attract and retain qualified staff. Results may also guide human resources practices in hotel companies and other service industries that seek to attract and retain talented professionals in an intensely competitive market. In addition, the results may serve as a basis for future studies on intrapreneurship in service companies. In an era when service companies struggle to attract and retain workers, this paper highlights how intrapreneurship may be a solution with a double benefit – staff attraction/retention and innovation. Although the study focuses on hospitality, the contribution is relevant to most services.