An experience sampling study of hotel employees' subjective well-being: The job demands-resources approach

To capture the dynamic nature of frontline employees’ subjective well-being (SWB) and turnover intention in the hotel industry, this study used Affective Events Theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and the unfolding model of employee voluntary turnover (Lee & Mitchell, 1994) to argue the short-term variability in SWB and turnover intention. Using the job demandsresources model (JD-R model) as the framework, this study examined the role of daily job

demands (challenge stressors, hindrance stressors, and emotional dissonance) and the role of daily job resources (supervisor support, coworker support, and job autonomy). Given that hotel employees work with different supervisors and co-workers and face various guest situations during each shift, these employees may face high work stress and workload. Furthermore, employees in this industry are often requested to perform non-routine tasks. Therefore, their work is highly associated with high job demands and resource variability. Moreover, the study results stress the importance of the moderating role of day-level job resources and the multilevel moderating effects of employees’ individual levels of resilience and self-efficacy.

The design of the study employed an experience sampling method. Participants were employees who are in guest-facing positions from food & beverage and front office departments in full-service or luxury hotels in the United States. Sixty-five participants completed a one-time baseline survey and a daily diary study twice per day for at least five working days, resulting in a total of 416 day-level observations. The data structure is day nested within each person. The multi-level data was analyzed by using multilevel linear modeling.

In summary, this study shows that SWB and turnover intention may not always be stable phenomena among hotel employees due to the daily influences of job demands and job resources. In addition, both personal resources and daily job resources were found to mitigate the negative daily influences of job demands. This study helps managers to better understand employees’ feelings on a daily basis and apply strategies for daily management of employee SWB and turnover intention.