Employee Retention in the Canadian Gaming/Casino Industry: A Study of the Effects of Customer Service Aptitude, and Essential Skills Math on Short Term Employee Retention

Employee retention in the Canadian gaming/casino industry is an important consideration that allows organizations to maintain stability in a highly competitive hospitality environment. The purpose of this quantitative research was to determine if there was a relationship between employability skills, in the form of customer service aptitude and essential skills numeracy, and employee retention in the gaming/casino industry. The literature review supports the notion that hiring people with the correct person-job fit (P-J fit) has a high probability of retention (Edwards 1991). The current study looked at 298 employees hired by Manitoba Lotteries casinos (data supplied by Manitoba Lotteries Corporation) and applied bivariate analyses and a binary logistic regression analysis to identify if the customer service aptitude and numeracy assessments are useful tools in predicting employee retention in the gaming/casino industry. This approach encompassed information that identified customer service and numeracy/math skills as being critical to the successful performance of duties for a large number of gaming/casino employee positions. The results of the analysis were unable to provide evidence that high levels of customer service aptitude and numeracy/math assessment results significantly contributed to short term employee retention. However, significant relationships were identified between casino department and retention and between gender and numeracy scores. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed