Low-Skilled Employee RetentionPractices in the Fast Food Industry : A study of retention practices within the Verhage FastFood franchise

Sammanfattning: Employee turnover can cost an organization a significant amount of money. In addition, retention of employees can beneficial towards to an organization as it e.g. allows to save costs related torecruitment and training of new employees. The fast food industry is recognized as an industry which employs low-skilled employees and is especially in the United States known to be prone to high employee turnover. With regards to Europe, only little information is available in the field of low-skilled employee retention in the fast food industry. Looking towards the Netherlands, there has been no conducted research concerning this topic from a manager’s perspective allowing to identify the best HR practices to limit employee turnover in the organization. Our purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of the practices on employee retention of low-skilled employees in the Dutch fast food industry. To be able to meet this purpose, the following research question was developed “How do managers address retention of low-skilled employees in the Dutch fast food industry?” To be able to answer this research question, a multiple case study was conducted to study several franchises of the Dutch fast food organization “Verhage fast food”. We chose to conduct a qualitative study by developing semi-structured interviews. The empirical material was collected by interviewing an HR manager and the CEO of Verhage to develop an overview of the organization. Furthermore, we conducted five interviews with franchisees of Verhage. These franchisees were chosen based on four criteria being location, variety in experience, amount of employees, and amount of franchises owned. These four criteria ensured that the chosen franchisees in our study are active in different environmental settings. These interviews were conducted with the aim to find out how these franchisees perceive low-skilled employee retention and to identify how these franchisees address retention through the implementation of HR practices. Our study provided a contribution that shows the most effective HR practices in the fields of recruitment and selection, training and development, career development, and recognition and rewards are depending on the situational factors. Whereas one franchisee needs to pay well above minimum wage to attract low-skilled employees, another franchisee can easily pay the employees minimum wages without the need to worry for job applicants. Another contribution based on the outcome of our study is that the provision of training and responsibilities besides being done to benefit the company in e.g. productivity it also results in more engaging employees with a higher intention to stay.