16 Proven Ideas to Improve Employee Retention in the Hospitality Industry

It’s hard to keep the good staff you’ve hired in the hospitality industry. People quit jobs much more often in this industry than in many others. Long hours, rotating schedules, and hard, physical work can make people want out.

Evidence shows that most of this turnover can actually be avoided. Here’s 16 proven steps you can take so people remain in your workforce. These aren’t just theories, they're tactics based on hard data from studies.

Each of the points below addresses the real reasons for employee retention and turnover in the hospitality industry. Use them to create a workplace that will keep people for years, not months.

Yes, it is possible to have good employee retention in the hospitality industry.

For example, Hilton is constantly rated as a top place to work, up there with NVIDIA and Accenture. The key is, you need real data driven strategies that work in Hospitality like the ones below, not hunches.

Why Keeping Hotel Staff Is Getting Harder

This line of work can be overwhelming for people. Staff schedules can change each week. There are evening, night and early morning shifts. The work is tiring and physically demanding.

On top of this, restaurant and hotel guests expect perfection every minute of every day. They still demand quality service even when you are understaffed.

Researchers and HR professionals have a term for this: “turnover risk.” This means that your staff are at risk of quitting. This can be the case even when they are paid well and like their supervisor.

The crazy hours start to interfere with all the other things they want and need to do with their lives. They may very easily begin to feel like they can't live the life they want with their restaurant or hotel job. In addition to the hours, the physical aspects of the job can start to make them think about doing something easier.

The hospitality industry’s high turnover rate endures because these problems compound easily. Like dominos. One employee leaves, the rest of the staff have to pick up the slack and end up burning out faster. That leads to more people quitting.

Service industry studies find that once turnover is a regular occurrence in an organization, it becomes hard to break the cycle. That’s why true retention isn’t about ticking off temporary fixes that just bandage symptoms. It’s about putting systems in place that tackle the root causes of the turnover.

What Actually Keeps Hotel Employees Around

Researchers from all over the world have studied thousands of hospitality employees to find out why people quit or stayed. This research has identified which employee retention strategies in the hospitality industry actually work.

You may look at some of these suggestions and think, “lots of these solutions will cost me extra money.” The reality is, turnover is probably costing you more money than fixing the work environment. It’s also causing you extra headaches. 

1. Give Employees Predictable Schedules

Unpredictable schedules are one of the major contributors to employee turnover in hospitality. When people don’t know their hours until a few days ahead of time, they can’t plan their lives.

They can’t arrange child care. They can’t schedule classes. They can’t have normal lives outside of work.

This leads to frustration. Put yourself in their shoes. They may think, “this hourly job is keeping me from seeing my family, going to the gym, from doing my yardwork?!. Nope.”

Harvard researchers found something shocking in their Shift Project study. Among workers who got their schedules at least two weeks in advance, there was a 24% turnover rate. Among those who got theirs less than three days in advance, a 39% turnover rate.

That’s an enormous difference from one small change. You can keep 15% more of your staff by letting people plan their lives. 

Give people their schedules in advance. Stick to them unless there’s a real emergency.

On-call shifts, where staff have to hang by the phone, are deadly for employee retention. This happens even if you don’t end up needing them after all.

Key actions to take:

• Post schedules at least 14 days ahead of time. (Longer if possible)

• Try to give staff consistent schedules week after week.

• Eliminate last-minute changes unless there are real emergencies.

• Ditch on-call scheduling.

• Let staff swap shifts through a transparent system.

2. Adequate Staffing Can Stop the Burnout Cycle

Some companies try to save money by scheduling fewer workers. But when the workload stays high, employees burn out and retention suffers. Losing staff also means paying again for recruiting and training. 

A study of non-luxury hotel staff found that chronic overtime and understaffing strongly increased the risk of staff quitting.

The problem is not always a busy schedule. Most workers can deal with a busy holiday season or a rough weekend. The real damage is when overwork goes on for too long.

Too much overtime leads to long-term stress. Stress impacts sleep. Not enough sleep stops the body and mind from healing. This leads to misery.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Track overtime by job type and location.

• Schedule enough staff to satisfy regular work demands.

• Keep extra flexible staff for busy periods.

• Watch for teams that are often short staffed.

3. Frontline Manager Training Reduces Turnover

Bad managers are retention killers. Gallup research found that half of employees have quit a job to get away from their boss. This means a significant amount of turnover comes down to people managers.

The scary part? The same study mentioned above showed only 18% of managers show natural talent for leading others.

If you haven't invested in making sure your managers are treating your staff right, that's likely a huge issue. Your managers might be great people, but if they are even just creating negative perception in the eyes of their own staff, it may be doing harm.

Most people get promoted because they're good at the job itself. That doesn't mean they know how to lead or develop a team. Without training, managers usually manage the way they were once managed. That often means poorly.

But here's the upside: the same study found that high-talent managers generate 48% higher profits for organizations. Great managers keep people. That cuts hiring costs and keeps service quality high. Teaching your managers the right skills is one of the best things you can do.

What manager training should cover:

• How to give feedback that helps instead of hurts.

• How to lead with empathy and accountability.

• How to manage people without creating unnecessary stress.

• How to handle conflict calmly and constructively.

• How to correct issues without talking down to people.

• Dealing with schedule requests fairly.

• Spotting burnout before people quit.

• Having real career conversations with staff.

4. Give Employees Room to Grow

A basic principle of economics is that most people are always seeking to be better off. That includes wanting more money, and a better work situation.

Dead-end jobs create dead-end retention rates. When workers can't see a future beyond their current role, they start looking elsewhere. Then the moment they get bored or frustrated, they're gone.

A 2024 meta-analysis looked at studies across industries. It sought to find what keeps people in their jobs.

Career development had the largest effect out of any factor. Bigger than pay. Bigger than benefits. Bigger than almost anything else you can offer.

People stay when they believe they're building something. They don't want to just fill time until a better offer comes. They also don't want to waste their lives on a path with no chance of self improvement.

This matters even more for hotel or restaurant industry employee retention. Workers often assume there's no room to grow. Show them the ladder and help them climb it, then they will do so excitedly.

Ways to show career paths:

• Map out clear career paths from entry level roles to management.

• Promote from within when possible.

• Create specialist roles people can get promoted into that don’t require the personality to manage people. Like training lead, scheduling coordinator or project manager.

• Share stories of people who moved up in your company. This can validate to your employees that it's possible to move up.

5. Stretch Onboarding Beyond the First Week

Most hospitality onboarding ends after the first shift or first week. You show someone the basics. You throw them onto the floor. You hope they figure it out. Then you wonder why they quit after a month.

I’ve heard managers say too many times, “you learn best from being thrown into the fire!” You also traumatize and alienate people by “throwing them into the fire.”

Research shows that a good onboarding process lasts 60 to 90 days. It needs to support more than just job skills. Onboarding needs to support social connections and ongoing support from managers. The goal is integration into the organization, not just orientation.

A 2025 study in the Review of Managerial Science found that extended onboarding cuts turnover intention. Workers who got continued check-ins felt more committed. 

The workers received skill-building and relationship support over a three month time span. They knew other people were invested in and cared about their success.

Your 90-day onboarding should include: 

• Weekly manager check-ins for the first month.

• Monthly reviews through month three.

• Assignment of mentors or “buddies.” 

• Ensuring new hires feel connected to the team.

6. Manage Overtime and Shift Lengths

Longer work hours increase quit risk directly, even before burnout sets in. Those are the findings from a study in the Journal of Information Management and Business Review.

Longer hours increase quit risk on their own. For many people, if they are being made to work 50 or 60 hours a week, they’re going to start looking for a new job.

Even if they’re not burnt out yet, they see where they’re headed.

The solution is simple but challenging: you need to control hours. Consider limits on how many hours an employee can work per week. 

Your employees should actually get days off where they don't even have to think of work. Stop treating your most committed workers like robots. They won't be able to work non-stop without falling apart physically and mentally. Also, do you really want to push your best people to leave?

Key Actions to Take:

• Set boundaries around how many hours one person should work in a week.

• Track long shifts before they turn into a normal expectation.

• Don’t burn out your best people by always asking for more.

• Stop calling people in on their days off unless it’s truly necessary.

• Add staffing support early when overtime begins to rise.

7. Be Transparent About Pay (And Fair About It)

Pay transparency has an impact on retention. But not in the way most people assume. Research from the Strategic Management Journal shows that fairness matters more than dollar amounts.

Workers care deeply about whether their pay reflects their contributions and how it stacks up against others.

And as long as they see the system as fair, pay level has a smaller effect on turnover. But if the process feels arbitrary or unfair, even high pay may not keep them.

That’s why secretive pay systems backfire. When workers don’t understand how pay is determined, they may assume the worst.

They imagine favoritism. They worry about discrimination. They may suspect it’s chaos. Shedding light on how you set wages builds trust.

You don’t have to post everyone’s exact salary, but you do need to explain pay ranges for each role. Let people know what drives increases. Help them understand how they can earn more. 

Make the system transparent and apply it equally to all.

Key Actions to Take:

• Make pay ranges and wage structure easy to understand.

• Clarify the factors that lead to raises or bonuses.

• Apply the same rules across teams to reduce favoritism worries.

• Equip managers to have honest pay discussions.

• Monitor pay fairness so the system stays credible.

8. Build Skills Across Departments

Cross-training is more than just a solution for covering shifts when someone’s out sick. 

According to the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, there’s a moderate positive relationship between cross-training and employees’ intent to stay with your company.

When you teach your workers more than one role, you’re helping them cultivate new skills. You’re also giving them the ability to visualize more career paths within your company. 

The person who only knows the front desk may leave to work at the front desk somewhere else for more money. That said, the person who knows the front desk, reservations, customer service and night audits is positioned to rise up into the ranks of management.

People are also less bored when they aren’t forced to do the same task for eight hours straight. It’s mentally taxing, and worse when they’re doing it five days a week. Change things up, and people will stay engaged.

Key Actions to Take:

• Cross-train workers so operations don’t depend on one person per role.

• Help staff expand their abilities across the hotel or restaurant.

• Change up duties to keep work mentally fresh.

• Use new skills as stepping stones toward promotion.

• Reward employees who build value in multiple areas.

9. Burnout Prevention and Well-Being Support

Burnout is one of the strongest predictors of quitting. Let’s look at research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The study reported:

• A large effect size (0.541) for total burnout. This means burnout was strongly connected to quitting.

• Emotional exhaustion was nearly the same (0.511). This means workers who feel emotionally exhausted face a much higher risk of leaving.

This study shows how regulating burnout and emotional exhaustion are crucial. Those factors can change if people stay or leave. You can’t simply ignore it and hope it goes away. 

Turnover at your hospitality company will be high until you address the root causes. 

Many of the common burnout triggers involve: 

• Doing too much work and not enough breaks. 

• Dealing with difficult customers or situations without support. 

• Feeling like management does not care.

Check out our mega post on preventing burnout.

You can address these issues by giving people real time off. Back up your people when customers get abusive. Show you notice when they burn out.

Resources for recovery are critical. Some companies will give mental health days. Others will provide access to counseling. Some provide just a quiet room where people can decompress in between rushes. Small support mechanisms go a long way to help how people feel.

Key Actions to Take:

• Monitor burnout and exhaustion as key retention risks.

• Reduce strain through better staffing, breaks, and workload control.

• Support employees under customer pressure instead of blaming them.

• Make sure employees get predictable recovery time each week.

• Provide basic well-being supports that help prevent burnout from worsening.

10. Reliable, Prompt Recognition

Acknowledging  employee contributions works, but only if you do it properly. 

Employee retention research from Gallup found that: 

• Employees getting high-quality acknowledgment were 45% less likely to change employers.

• Those getting consistent acknowledgment were 65% less likely to be looking for a job. 

That's profound. A simple "thank you" or "well done" could spell the difference in your turnover rate. This could be the reason why you keep someone instead of losing them. 

Note the use of the "consistent" in the findings from the study. Acknowledgement can't be sporadic. It can't only happen in yearly performance reviews. It has to be timely and happen often, when warranted of course.

Here are some tips for when you are acknowledging good employee performance:

• State what it is exactly about their actions that impressed you. Make sure it's genuine and seen as genuine. If not, even real acknowledgement can seem phony and not helpful.

• Teach your leaders to observe and immediately acknowledge good performance. Establish peer acknowledgement programs so coworkers can thank each other. 

• Publicly commemorate successes in team meetings. Make sure gratitude is baked into your culture, it can’t be a “sometimes thing.”

11. Build Better Channels for Employee Communication and Voice

Employees must be able to raise concerns before they resign over them. 

According to research published in the American Review of Public Administration, formal voice mechanisms decrease turnover risk, particularly under high organizational pressure.

Employees with a meaningful ability to exercise their voice are less likely to exit. I want to emphasize “meaningful,” in this context.

A suggestion box might work, but only if someone actually reads the suggestions. Employees need to believe that their concerns will be taken seriously if they speak up. And occasionally (or more than just occasionally), that belief needs to be validated by action.

This is even more important when things get stressful. During the busy season or a staffing crunch, employees at the ground level will notice issues that management does not. If they can raise those issues and get a response, they'll stick around to solve them. If not, they may not.

Hold regular feedback sessions. Use anonymous surveys. Try meetings that allow employees to talk directly to leaders.

And most importantly: actually respond to the feedback you receive. You don't have to act on everything, but you do have to show you've listened.

Key Actions to Take:

• Make employee communication easy before turnover happens.

• Create opportunities for staff to speak directly with leadership.

• Back up listening with visible action when possible.

• Make sure managers take complaints seriously, not personally.

• Let staff speak up anonymously if needed.

12. Reduce Stress from Role Ambiguity by Setting Clear Expectations

Unclear expectations create stress people want to escape from. The Campbell Institute found that role confusion increases turnover intention. So does low psychological safety. So does poor leadership communication.

When workers don’t know what the expectations are, they never know if they’re performing well. This can leave them guessing and second-guessing. Even when they’re doing a great job, they don’t know if their great job is great enough. Because the target always seems to be moving.

The fix starts with clear job descriptions that match reality. Your posted description should reflect what people actually do. Not some idealized job description from five years ago. 

Then for workers you’ve already hired, ensure daily expectations are clear. Spell out who does what, when and how.

Early expectation alignment helps the most. During onboarding and the first few weeks, over-communicate. 

Tell people exactly what makes them successful in this role. Give them examples. Give them models. Check in to ensure they understand.

Key Actions to Take:

• Rewrite job descriptions so they reflect the real work, not an outdated ideal.

• Make expectations clear on a daily basis so employees aren’t guessing.

• Define who owns which tasks and what “done right” looks like.

• Over-communicate expectations during onboarding and the first few weeks.

• Check in regularly to confirm employees understand what “good performance” looks like.

13. Implement Policies Uniformly Across All Sites (Equity in the Workplace)

Consistency in the implementation of rules is important. A study published in PLOS One indicated that organizational fairness has a notable impact on the intention to leave. The study found a fairly strong relationship (effect size −0.435). This means greater fairness was linked to a lower risk of employees quitting.

Both distributive and procedural fairness have a negative correlation with the risk of quitting. Distributive fairness focuses on outcomes. Procedural fairness focuses on processes. 

Employees must believe that there is a single set of rules that everyone must follow. Similar circumstances with different employees must be treated in a similar manner.

In multi-location businesses, this can break down quickly. One store manager allows shift swapping. Another wants no part of it. One location is strict about enforcing the dress code. Another is lax. Employees notice the differences, which creates resentment.

The answer is standardization. Explicitly document your policies. Train all managers uniformly. Audit compliance across locations. When exceptions are made, communicate to all workers why, and show how the same exception would be made in any location.

Key Actions to Take:

• Standardize workplace policies across every site and shift.

• Train managers to apply the same standards instead of creating site-by-site differences.

• Treat similar situations the same way to prevent resentment and turnover.

• Monitor policy consistency so one site doesn’t become “different.”

• Communicate openly when exceptions are necessary.

14. Training That Builds Transferable Skills

Training helps keep employees, but it only works if it builds real skills. A study from 2024 found that good skill building helps keep employees. It's not just a nice thing to offer.

What you teach matters. Training an employee on your company’s software helps with their current work, but not their overall growth. 

What helps them grow? Teaching them skills that translate to their overall career development. Think customer service skills, team leadership skills, sales skills etc. That knowledge can be used anywhere.

Making your employees more valuable to other companies might make them less likely to leave. That sounds wrong, but it’s the truth. 

They’ll feel grateful for the investment in their future and see you as caring about them. When the time for promotion comes, they’ll be ready to move up instead of moving out.

Make your training around career-building skills. Teach them communication, problem-solving, basic management, and even some financial literacy. In addition to job-specific skills, invest in your employees as people.

Key Actions to Take:

• Offer training that helps employees grow beyond their current position.

• Offer development that goes beyond company-specific tools and systems.

• Connect training to internal advancement opportunities.

• Show employees you are investing in their long-term growth.

15. Using Ergonomics to Help Workers Want to Stay Longer

The physical work environment is a direct component of turnover and retention. A study from Sustainability found that: 

• Ergonomic working conditions alone explained 51% of variance in talent retention.

• A composite of factors (including ergonomics) explained 65% of job performance outcomes. 

When work starts to hurt peoples’ bodies, they may leave. It’s just that simple. Cumulative back pain, sore feet and repetitive strain injuries drive talent away.

Look at your physical environment through the eyes of workers. Are they on concrete for eight hours? Do they have to bend and twist constantly? Are they lifting heavy objects without assistance or equipment? Fix these issues and people will stay longer.

Simple changes can make a big difference. Anti-fatigue mats. Proper lifting equipment. Adjustable workstations. Regular physical recovery breaks. The up-front cost is easily repaid in higher retention and fewer injury claims.

Key Actions to Take:

• Look closely at the physical demands employees face each day.

• Reduce fatigue with basic ergonomic tools and better surfaces.

• Use the correct gear and equipment to prevent strain during physical tasks.

• Adjust workstations so employees aren’t forced into awkward positions.

• Build rest and recovery time into demanding physical shifts.

16. Hire the HR Pros When Turnover Gets Out of Control

Sometimes it's not work. It's the know-how. A study of hospitality professionals by Walden University revealed that many leaders can identify retention issues, but have no formal system to remedy them.

You need to bring in a pro when people keep leaving despite your best efforts. HR systems will dramatically lower your risk of quitting. Structured appraisal systems. Appropriate compensation systems. Genuine learning systems.

We're talking employee retention consulting services. These can accurately diagnose what's truly causing people to leave in your specific situation. 

The right consultant can create systems that fit your budget and reality. They can coach your managers on best practice you never would have known.

Don't think of this as a failed operation. Think of it as getting the proper tool for the job so you can focus on other things.

You can get a free consultation here for my employee retention consulting service.

Key Actions to Take:

• Seek outside HR support when turnover remains high over time.

• Use retention consultants to identify the true causes of quitting.

• Treat retention consulting as support, not failure.

How Employee Retention Strategies in the Hospitality Industry Reinforce Each Other

One strategy alone will rarely eliminate all of your retention problems. 

The real power of restaurant and hotel industry employee retention comes from combining strategies. They reinforce each other and tackle several causes of turnover at once.

Picture this: stable schedules become meaningless when workers still get hammered. Training programs become wasted when there's nowhere to advance. Recognition programs become irrelevant when policies are perceived as unfair to certain people.

The most effective approach is to view retention as a whole system. You improve scheduling AND reduce overwork AND train managers AND build career paths. Each component works better with the others.

Companies that combine these strategies reap compounded benefits. Employees with stable schedules and fair workloads don't burn out as quickly. 

Employees with effective managers and clear career paths tend to stay engaged longer. Employees that feel heard and treated fairly become happier and build better cultures.

Start with the biggest pain points in your business. But don't stop there. Add new strategies each quarter. Keep going until you build a real retention system. 

The ROI shows in reduced hiring costs. It shows through providing better service to your guests. It shows institutional knowledge that sticks and doesn't walk away.

Why Retention Pain Points Mean There May be a Structural Problem at Play

Ongoing high employee turnover in the hospitality industry shows that your leadership and operations are out of sync with your workforce. 

And it's not that people are different or lazy these days. It's that your systems haven't evolved to match reality.

Managers pick up on the signs. They just don’t have the frameworks to actually fix them. Even good intentions are blocked by lack of standardized policies. 

Even the best managers are hindered by lack of a manager training system. Even the best people are impeded by no retention analytics or structured workforce planning.

Are you paying competitive wages, treating people well, BUT still losing people at a scary pace? Then you need systematic action. You don’t need a fancy new popcorn machine or stylish break room furniture.

That’s when external expertise makes sense. Outsourcing retention consulting can audit your current reality. It can uncover the actual drivers of your turnover. It can create real, actionable systems that are validated for your unique situation.

Ready to Solve Your Turnover Issue?

High turnover doesn't have to be the norm in the hospitality industry. Having the right solutions alone is not enough. Most companies fail in the execution.

You are caught up with managing the day-to-day. Putting together retention systems from the ground up is a time-consuming process you don't have.

Contact us today for a free retention consulting consultation. Stop losing your best people to preventable issues. Together, let's foster a work environment where talented staff want to stay and build their careers.