1. Workplace Violence: An Empirical Study on Hospitality Industry Employees
Erdal ARSLAN & Meryem Akoğlan KOZAK
Graduate School of Social Sciences
Abstract
The past 10 years have witnessed a growing interest in studies of violence in the field of service industry though there are not sufficient study conduct on workplace violence in the context of hospitality industry. The incident of workplace violence are been raised by years particularly in the hospitality industry. This study was conducted to reveal the experience of workplace violence of hospitality industry employees from Eskişehir and Antalya region and to investigate the effects of violence on their psychological state. Current study presents the results of a study of 468 hotel employees and results was assessed in this context. The prevalence of workplace violence was almost fifty percent and the most common types were verbal and mobbing. Perpetrator of physical, verbal, psychological violence were mostly male whereas females were the perpetrator of sexual violence. Psychological state of employees that exposed to violence were found deteriorate in terms of depression, anxiety and stress and employees seemed not worried about become a victim of workplace violence.
Keywords: hospitality, employees, workplace violence,
Results
Table 1: Demographics and Work Characteristics of Study Participants Table 2: Characteristics of exposure to workplace violence
Characteristics N %
Age
18-29
235
50,2
Type of hotel
Apart hotel 6
1,3
30-39
149
31,8
3-star
156
33,3
40-49 65
13,9
4-star 81
17,3
>=50 19
4,1
5-star
225
48,1
Gender
Male
263
56,2
Departmant
Front office 98
20,9
Female
205
43,8
Service
109
23,3
Marital status
Married
242
51,7
Housekeeping
126
26,9
Guest relations 17
3,6
Single
226
48,3
Education
Primary/Sec. school
113
24,1
Kitchen 55
11,8
Accounting 26
5,6
High school
189
40,4
Other 37
7,9
University
166
35,5
Monthly income
<= 950 40
8,5
Work duration in industry (as year)
1-5
252
53,8
351
75,0
6-10 61
13,0
11-15 29
6,2
>=2501 16
3,4
>=16 31
6,6
Position
General manager 13
2,8
Work duration in hotel (as year)
< 1
110
23,5
Departmental Manager 18
3,8
314
67,1 32
6,8
Department Chief 7
1,5
Chief 54
11,5
16 ve + 5
1,1
Employee
354
75,6
Work status
Permanent
407
87,0
City
Eskişehir
292
62,4
Seasonal
Antalya
176
37,6
Physical violence
Mobbing
Verbal violence
Sexual violence N %
Frequency of exposuring to violence
Constantly 1
3,4 8
11,1 10
10,5
6,7
Sometimes 9
31,0 55
76,4 66
69,5 4
28,7
Once 19
65,5
12,5
20,0
66,7
Person who perpetrate to violence
Customer 21
29,2 26
27,4
53,3
Executive colleague 7
24,1 48
57,9 3
Subworker colleague
10,3 -
Counterpart colleague 5
17,2
4,2 15
15,9
20,8
Other
15,8
20,3
Gender of violence perpetrator
Male 38
52,8 62
65,3 6
40,0
Female
34,5 14
14,7
60,0
Male and female
28,4
Sum-type of violence that employee exposed 29
6,2 72
15,4 95
3,2
Total
211 employees
Introduction
Violence in the workplace is a significant occupational hazard and public health problem which increasing by degrees, particularly in service industries such as hospitality. In the past ten years a growing body of literature has examined in the extent of workplace violence and the literature suggests that violence can no longer be seen as an individual issue but must be viewed in terms of a structural problem requiring action at an organisational level (ILO, 2001). Workplace violence has defined as “violent acts, including physical assaults and threats of assault, directed toward persons at work or on duty’’ (NIOSH, 1996, p.1). Workplace violence ranges lt ranges from psychologic and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even sexual harassment. Individual, environmental, biological, psychologic, organizational and working climate factors have significant influence on workplace violence (Spector et al, 2007). Particularly, in hospitality industries where human relations approaches is indispensable, violence may occur and employees may became to a victim by colleague or client. Beside, since hotels provides intense service and seasonality form of the industry may cause to violence. Experiencing any type of workplace violence can deteriorate psychologic states such as depression, anxiety and stress of victim in addition, being expose to violence and working insecure workplace may reduce job satisfaction of the employees (Ashford et al., 1989).
Workplace violence studies in the literature that conducted in the hospitality industry have highly addressed to the mobbing and other type of workplace violence such as physical, verbal and sexual remained a matter of concern. For this purpose, the incident of workplace violence dealt with an integrative approach in other words the most cited four types of violence such as physical, psychological, verbal and sexual perpetration against employees were basic research questions of this study. In addition to that research question this study aims to answer fallowing questions:
What are the characteristics of workplace violence that employees exposed in the workplace?
What are the differences among being exposed to violence and demographical characteristics?
Are there any differences among being exposed and not exposed to violence in terms of depression, anxiety and stress.
Are there any differences among exposed and not exposed to violence in terms of degree of worry.
Results
Table 4: T-Test summary table for depression, anxiety and stress levels of participants exposed and not exposed to violence
T Test Statistics
𝑫𝒆𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏
𝑨𝒏𝒙𝒊𝒆𝒕𝒚
𝐒𝐭𝐫𝒆𝒔𝒔
𝑻𝒚𝒑𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑽𝒊𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝑵 𝑿 𝑺 𝑺𝒅 𝒕 𝒑
𝑷𝒉𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍
𝑬𝒙𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅 29
2,47
1,12
466
3,13
.002
2,16
1,19
2,11
.035
2,61
1,09
1,3
.186
𝑵𝒐𝒕 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅
439
1,97
,81
1,84
,76
2,38
,89
𝑴𝒐𝒃𝒃𝒊𝒏𝒈
𝑬𝒙𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒅 72
2,31
,82
3,41
.001
2,02
,84
1,87
.061
2,58
,95
1,71
.087
396
1,94
1,08
,79
2,36
,90
𝑽𝒆𝒓𝒃𝒂𝒍 95
2,42
5,63
.000
2,14
,88
3,96
2,71
,94
3,90
373
1,89
1,78
𝑺𝒆𝒙𝒖𝒂𝒍 15
2,73
3,43
1,10
3,01
.003
2,83
1,14
1,91
.056
453
,83
,78
Methods
This study was carried out in Eskişehir and Antalya, Turkey from December 20, 2015 to January 25,2016 Workplace were randomly selected from hospitality industries in Eskişehir and Antalya. For the hospitality sector in Eskişehir 292 employees and for the hospitality sector in Antalya 176 employees were participate to the study. Questionnaires were filed out by participant as voluntarily and they were informed about the study. The questionnaire was adapted on the basis of Violence in the Workplace (Aytaç et al., 2011). There were 27 questions: 12 on sociodemographic characteristics and workplace information, and 15 on workplace violence, types of violence, responses to violence, guidelines, training and support from management, job satisfaction, depression, anxiety and stress levels of participants. Analyzing the data SPSS version 20.0 package program was used. Descriptive Statistics were calculated. To see whether the differences among employees exposure to violence and sociodemographic characteristics Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney U tests performed. To compare different depression, anxiety and stress levels of participants in terms of exposed and not exposed to violence T test was performed.
Results
Table 5: Degree of Worry About Being Subjected and Exposure to Violence
Results
Table 3: Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney U Tests Summary for exposed to violence according to demographical and work characteristics
Worry
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Frequently
Always
Total
Violence 𝒏 %
Expossed 61
13,1 18
3,9 12
2,6 3
0,6 94
20,2
Not expossed
211
45,3
102
21,9 39
8,4 9
1,9 11
2,4
372
79,8
272
58,4
120
25,8 51
10,9
466
100
𝑲𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒌𝒂𝒍 𝑾𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒔 𝑻𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔 𝑵
𝑿 Sıra sd
𝑿 𝟐 𝒑
𝑨𝒈𝒆
𝟏𝟖−𝟐𝟗
123
102,92 3
10,36
.016
𝟑𝟎−𝟑𝟗 53
115,83
𝟒𝟎−𝟒𝟗 20
126,63
≥𝟓𝟎 15
69,03
𝑻𝒚𝒑𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒍
𝟑 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫 51
89,19 2
10,08
.006
𝟒 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓 40
94,41
𝟓 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓
120
117,01
𝑫𝒆𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕
𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒆 61
89,37 6
12,74
.047
𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒆 66
103,31
𝑯𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 28
127,75
𝑮𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 5
106,00
𝑲𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒏
113,37
𝑨𝒄𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 11
108,23
𝑶𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 25
110,72
𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒅𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏
𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒍
(𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓)
<𝟏 57
114,01 4
13,674
.008
𝟏−𝟓
136
104,97
𝟔−𝟏𝟎 13
61,12
𝟏𝟏−𝟏𝟓
185,50
≥𝟏𝟔
142,17
𝑴𝒂𝒏𝒏 𝑾𝒉𝒊𝒕𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝑼 𝑻𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔 𝑵
𝑿 Sıra
∑Sıra 𝑼 𝒑
𝑮𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓
𝑴𝒂𝒍𝒆
131
99,12
12985,00
4339,00
.028
𝑭𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 80
117,26
9381,00
𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍
𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒔
𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅
130
101,19
13155,00
4640,00
.129
𝑺𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒆 81
113,72
9211,00
𝑪𝒊𝒕𝒚
𝑬𝒔𝒌𝒊ş𝒆𝒉𝒊𝒓
104
98,24
10216,50
4756,50
.057
𝑨𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒚𝒂
107
113,55
12149,50
𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌
𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒔
𝑷𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒏𝒕
𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒐𝒚𝒆𝒆
159
111,76
17769,50
3218,50
.012
𝑺𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍
𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞 52
88,39
4596,50
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