Staff Turnover in Dublin’s Food Sector: Job Satisfaction and Culture

This dissertation is a holistic study taken of cafés and restaurants in the Dublin city centre area. The study aims to provide an insight into the challenges that organisations in the food industry are faced with in terms of staff turnover. The study is inspired by personal experience in this industry and the challenges that business owners and managers face in regards to staff turnover. As staff turnover appears to hinder business growth and performance further investigation into how businesses manage this phenomenon can provide solutions for the industry as a whole. Most research done about staff turnover focuses on the knowledge industry, and although a few studies have been done in hospitality the studies tend to focus on employees who have attended some form of schooling in hospitality. Very little research, especially post-boom studies have been done on this sector, and even less so in Ireland. The demographic of workers in this sector in Ireland is quite different from the knowledge industry. Additionally while most studies have used surveys, this study will contribute to new knowledge using interviews and inductive reasoning to find new knowledge. Interviews were used to find out how employers managed staff turnover. Two solutions were found; organisations can provide rewards and promotional opportunities that overcome the prejudices of and preconceptions of the industry or they can adapt to the nature of the industry and find the silver lining in staff turnover. The silver lining for one organisation is that new employees bring new passions and ideas to the business. Providing a platform for employees to share those ideas means that the business can constantly improve and develop. As these organisations are still quite new further case studies would truly demonstrate the potential success of each model