Executive Summary
Third party providers of proposition player services are a nascent, but a highly promising segment of the United States gambling business industry. There is much strong evidence suggesting that the number of casinos and other gambling establishments in the country is dynamically increasing. Thus, the importance of providers of third party proposition player services will be increasing simultaneously.
At the same time, the practice shows that there are serious human resources problems in this area. In particular, the employee turnover rate in this industry is unusually high, sometimes reaching 35%.
This research proposal provides a comprehensive introduction into the research problem. The introductory section explains why the problem is relevant and what the impacts of failure to implement adequate human resources policies may be. Additionally, this section lists research questions, which will be explored in the course of the future research project. The literature review section provides major theoretical findings in this regard, identifying the main assumptions and directions of the future research. Finally, the methodology section says what research methods will be employed to accomplish its objectives.
Introduction
Gambling business is one of the largest and, at the same time, dynamically developing industries in the United States of America. Generating over $95 billion annually, the casinos in the United States provide more than 350, 000 jobs, as well as this industry contributes to over $6 billion of federal and state taxes. The analysts say that after the aftermath of the 2008-2010 global financial crisis is over, a gambling boom will occur. The chances are increased by the fact that in many other countries gambling becomes a heavily regulated area of commerce, while the United States approach to regulating this industry remains comparatively flexible.
At the same time, the one should never forget that the large gambling machine has many small cogs, which are often imperceptible to a regular observer. One of these cogs is the area of third party proposition players providers. The companies, specializing in this industry, train and provide professional staff for the needs of the casinos. Considering various human resources challenges faced by the American casinos, the providers of proposition services are extremely useful for the gaming community in the United States. The practice shows that during the ‘hot seasons’ in Las Vegas or in other major gambling destinations employee burnout rates are extremely high. Professional productiveness of the in-house staff of many casinos become extremely low. At this stage, there is no other viable alternative for them, but to recourse to the services of third party proposition services.
However, despite the fact that these companies are extremely selective in their approaches to hiring, their staff remains vulnerable to burnouts and other aspects, which lead to high turnover in this small industry. In accordance with the report published by PT Gaming, which is one of the largest proposition service provider in the United States of America, almost 35% of the company is replaced within a year. At the same time, PT Gaming is known to be one of the best employers in the industry, providing the best compensation benefits, corporate perks and promotion opportunities. Furthermore, the company has one of the most experienced human resources departments, which is particularly skilled at developing various incentivizing mechanisms and retention increase programs. Yet, despite all these efforts, the staff keeps on leaving.
Unless a serious action is taken, a deep human resources crisis is imminent to the industry. However, before any corrective program starts, it is necessary to understand the underlying causes of the problem. Thus, it is necessary to understand why the people, who work in this industry, decide to leave prematurely. Then, when the problems are identified, developing comprehensive human resources methodology is necessary. Failure to accomplish these objectives will lead to continuation of this negative trend. Furthermore, taking into consideration the fact that the domestic economies are becoming unprecedentedly vibrant, the demand for professional and committee employees will keep increasing, and, if the causes of high turnover rates are not removed, the turnover may dramatically increase in the future.
It is commonly agreed among the human resources practitioners that high turnover rates is one of the key factors, which substantially reduces performance of a company, as well it seriously increases its overheads. Severance pay for the people, who are leaving, as well as entry costs for the newbies are seriously increasing the operational costs of a company. Therefore, reducing its rates is an important objective in every business setting.
The purpose of the future work is multifold. Generally, the research will seek to identify the causes of high turnover rates in the field of third party providers of proposition services. Specifically, the future proposal will help to clarify the following issues:
What is employee turnover rate? How it is calculated in the gambling industry?
Despite the fact that the concept of employee turnover is relatively well understood by the business professionals, different academic definitions are available. Thus, before the paper is advanced further, understanding the concept and the key features of this phenomenon is necessary.
Once the concept has been developed, it is necessary to understand what approach to calculating the turnover rate is important. Among the multitude of different techniques, which exist nowadays, the most accurate and applicable to this particular industry method should be chosen.
Is the employee turnover rate indeed high in the industry of third party player proposition services?
As it has been highlighted before, in accordance with the findings of PT Gaming, the turnover rate of the company staff almost reaches 35%. Seemingly, this figure is high. However, neither the statement of PT Gaming has been verified, nor it is clear whether this figure is high. To be more specific, for different industries different employee turnover rates are acceptable. Because there is strong evidence demonstrating that working in gambling (especially on the junior non-managerial positions) is viewed as a temporary career option only, the fact that the turnover rate is so high may be justified by the various external economic factors.
What are the causes of high employee turnover rate in this industry?
Provided that the employee turnover rate is indeed high, understanding its causes is necessary. This section of the research will help to understand why so many employees decide to quit.
What are the impacts of high employee turnover?
Although it is commonly agreed in the business communities that high turnover rates of the employees are necessary, understanding specific negative consequences is necessary to include whether the impact is harmful.
What strategies can be applied by the companies to reduce employee turnover and increase the corresponding retention rates?
The key value of the future research is developing a series of the relevant human resources strategies, which may be applied to reduce the turnover rate and to increase employee retention and engagement.
The purpose of this part of this research proposal is to provide a comprehensive literature review and methodology sections of the future study.
Literature Review
The following publications have been used for getting contemporary scholarly insights about the problem at hand, and formulating the relevant assumptions.
Anderson, P. M., & Meyer, B. D. (1993). The extent and consequences of turnover. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Microeconomics, 177-248.
In their co-joint study, Anderson and Meyer provided a detailed analysis of the major consequences of employee turnover. Specifically, they authors argued that employee turnover is a negative operational aspect across all industries in the United States and worldwide. They strongly advocate the opinion that not for a single organization employee turnover may good. In addition to that, the authors emphasize that failure to implement adequate human resources policies and to create a conducive business environment may lead a serious decrease in organizational productivity and deterioration of the organizational culture.
In addition to that, this work emphasize that employee turnover happens across the organizations with different approaches to management. The authors emphasize that both in the organizations with laissez-faire human resources strategies, as well as in the purely authoritarian organizations the turnover rates are often quite similar.
Campion, M.A. (1991). Meaning and measurement in turnover: Comparison of alternative measures and recommendations for research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 199-212
In his work, Campion provided an unparalleled analytical review of the different methods to measuring employee turnover. The author pinpoints that there are four basic methods of calculating the amount of employee turnover. In addition to that, Campion stresses that once an organization decides to use a particular approach to calculating the turnover rate, this approach should be used consistently in order to ease comparison and future analysis.
The four methods used in calculating employee turnover are accession approach, separation approach, replacement and flux method. The author provides a vivid description of each of the methods, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. The work also provides a list of recommendations, discussing which method of measuring a turnover should be applied in a particular working scenario. Finally, the work concludes that the methods of calculating the turnover rates are dynamically evolving, seriously changing the working patterns across different industries.
Cotton, J. L., & J. M. Tuttle. (1986). Employee turnover: A meta-analysis and review with implications for research. Academy of Management Review, 2, 55-70
The key objective of Cotton and Tuttle work was to provide current observations in relation to the problem of employee turnover. The key message made by the explorers in this work is that it is hardly possible to make generalizations about the causes of employee turnover. Particularly, the authors provide strong evidence that although some patterns may be similar in the same industry, in reality the causes of employee turnover are individual in each company. Furthermore, the authors also emphasize that individualism is gradually becoming a notable characteristic of the today’s workplace. Thus, in future it will be comparatively difficult to develop comprehensive retention policies that shall be equally effective for the different companies operating in the similar industries. However, it is also argued that today’s workplaces are more or less homogenous, thus concluding that general strategies may still be effective.
Hammersley, M. (2013). What is qualitative research? London, Bloomsbury.
Because this research heavily relies on the various qualitative research methods, understanding specific features of this approach to research, as well as understanding the nature of each qualitative research method is important. In addition, not only this study explains how to make a qualitative research study impressive, reliable and credible, but also it provides a useful toolkit for taking practical data collection methods.
In particular, this work reveals how to choose the sample group appropriately, what questions should be asked and how to increase willingness of the targeted cohorts to take part in a research. One of the sections of this book deals with the methods of digital data collection and interpretation, demonstrating that collecting the data in the global web is possible.
Harkins, P.J., 1998. Why Employees Stay--or Go. Workforce, 77(10), 74-78.
The findings of this research study is of primary importance for the needs of the future research study, because the primary purpose of the Harkins work is identification of the major causes of employee turnover and retention. The author analyzed more than a hundred organizations, trying to understand why employees leave, and what successful organizations do to ensure high employment retention rates. After a careful examination, the author concluded that the most important issue in this regard is constant communication between the human resources practitioners of the organization and its staff. The author puts into spotlight the fact that the human resources officers should be more proactive, trying to ascertain the factors, which may lead to employee turnover, and they should develop and implement the policies, which may be helpful for reducing outflow or the workforce.
Heneman, H. & Judge, T. (2006). Staffing organizations. Middleton, WI: Mendota House.
In their joint study, Heneman and Judge provided a comprehensive description of strategies, methods and approaches, which should be followed by effective and successful organizations to ensure that they hire the best talents, as well as that they manage to retain these talents. This work provides a number of useful insights into the effective approaches, which are used for motivating the staff, ensuring its loyalty and enhancing its productiveness.
Joshi, A., Liao, H., & Martocchio, J. (2011). Research in personnel and human resources management. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald.
The work of Joshi, Liao and Martocchio is important for the future research project because it reveals the main cause of employee turnover, with the focal point of the study made on the importance of adequate organizational environment. The authors aptly suggest that the primary reason why many people quit is not that financial compensations are not significant (although quite often it is the reason as well), but because the managers fail to create a favorable environment. The key aspect in this regard is to make everyone in the company feeling comfortable. However, organizational policymakers should remember that for each employee the list of requirements is entirely individual.
At the same time, the authors also recognized the importance of secondary factors, which urge the staff to quit. Thus, among the most popular causes of high turnover are insufficient compensation packages and workplace conflicts.
Lazear, E. (2000).Performance pay and productivity. American Economic Review, 90, 1346-61.
As far as the importance of Lazear’s work is concerned, it is the only study in this list, which attempts figuring out the correlation between productivity of employees, and the pay, which they receive. The authors concluded that despite huge criticism, the amount of compensation remains an important criterion in deciding on a particular workplace. Furthermore, Lazear also concludes that productivity of an employee is strongly dependent on the amount of compensation they receive. Long-term ups and lows in salaries exercise positive and negative effects on their performance correspondingly. At the same time, the author also found out that in the organizations with patriarchal approach to corporate governance, the employees are less vulnerable to problems in performance if their pay decreases for short-time periods.
Yet, the main conclusion made by the author in the course of this study is that merit-based approach to calculating yields the best returns in terms of employee productivity.
Morrell, K. Loan-Clarke J., &Wilkinson A. (2001) Unweaving leaving the use of models in the management of employee turnover. International Journal of Management Reviews 3(3), 219-244.
The work of Morrell, Loan Clarke & Wilkinson stresses the importance of prediction and prevention of employee turnover in the workplace. It is suggested that although the causes of employee turnover are different across different industries, some similar trends are nevertheless discernible. By analyzing these trends and finding similarities, the managers can understand the main cause of employee turnover, which main emerge on their business horizon in the future. The work concludes that this kind of managerial vigilance is the key aspect of the favorable working environment.
Shaw, J., Delery, J., Jenkins, G. and Gupta, N. (2001). An Organization-level analysis of voluntary and involuntary Turnover. Business School Research Series
One of the most important themes in the future research will be the difference between voluntary and involuntary turnover. The study completed by Shaw and his associates is therefore important for the future research because it provides a number of useful illustrations with regard to the fundamental conceptual and practical differences between the voluntary and involuntary turnover. It is also suggested that different types of turnover require different remedies, which efficiency should be analyzed in each individual case.
Research Methodology
The research methods used in the future research study are prevalently qualitative. Taking into consideration time, budget and other relevant constraints, the use of literature reviews, interviews (both real life and digital), experimental studies and making observations. The combination of the used qualitative research solutions makes the future research phenomenological in nature (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).
Research Design
The future research project will be a mixture of descriptive cross-sectional survey and case study, meaning that the data will be collected from representative sample of the main stakeholders, involved in the discussed industry, at a specific point of time. The essential purpose of this research will be to provide descriptive features of the discussed cohort of professionals working in providing of third party player proposition services.
Research Instruments
Analyzing literature
As discussed before, a number of useful studies have been composed on the subjects, which border the future research study, although not a single research study has been conducted to understand the causes of high employee turnover rates in the discussed industry. Generally, the use of different scholarly works, reports of the NGOs and think tanks will be helpful for getting the relevant background data, which will be later used as the assumptions. Despite the fact that analyzing literature remains an important element of the future research, it is important remembering that the scholars are prone to various academic and personal biases, and thus, not all findings should be taken for granted.
Making interviews
Another effective approach for data collection is interviewing those, who are engaged in this sphere of business. Specifically, it is important to receive first-hand evidence from the managers, the former and the current employees. Those, who have already left the organization, will reveal the causes, which compelled them to leave, while the mangers will help to understand what methods the organization uses to reduce employee turnover rates, and to comprehend whether these methods are effective.
Observation
In addition to making interviews, making observations is also important. To be more specific, it is frequently argued that the primary cause of the high turnover rates in this industry is abnormal working conditions, inflexible working hours and inadequate compensation. However, these statements mainly belong to the former employees, who may be biased against their former employers. Thus, coming to the casino in disguise and observing how what the real working conditions are is necessary.
Sampling and Measurement
As far as sampling and measurement techniques are concerned, the following approach will be used. Firstly, the analyzed cohort will be chosen from the twenty largest providers of proposition player services, registered by the Californian Gambling Control Commission. The sub-categories of the analyzed cohort include registrant supervisors, licensed players and licensed supervisors. The possibility of data errors is minimal, because the information records will be taken from the Californian Gambling Control Commission, which uses one of the rigorous control and monitoring procedures nationwide.
Sampling Unit
The sampling unit will include current and former employees of the Patrick (PT) Gaming Company, which is currently the largest provider of third party proposition services. Fully licensed by the California Gambling Control Commission, the company provides proposition services in 14 large gambling establishments within the state.
Data collection technique, sample sizes and sampling unit selection
The data will be collected with help of the instruments described above. It is also worth emphasizing that getting first-hand evidence is important, therefore, the use of interviews with different members from the industry will be used as the main research solution.
The sampling method will be stratified, i.e. the research team will randomly select 20 different employees from each casino. The cohort will include two supervisors, the employees, who worked for the PT Gaming in the past and fifteen, who are working for the company. The total sampling unit will comprise 280 individuals.
Timeframe
References
Anderson, P. M., & Meyer, B. D. (1993). The extent and consequences of turnover. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Microeconomics, 177-248.
Campion, M.A. (1991). Meaning and measurement in turnover: Comparison of alternative measures and recommendations for Research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 199-212
Cotton, J. L., & J. M. Tuttle. (1986). Employee turnover: A meta-analysis and review with implications for research. Academy of Management Review, 2, 55-70
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). The SAGE Handbook of qualitative research. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Hammersley, M. (2013). What is qualitative research? London, Bloomsbury.
Harkins, P.J., (1998). Why Employees Stay--or Go. 17. Workforce, 77(10), 74-78.
Heneman, H. & Judge, T. (2006). Staffing organizations. Middleton, WI: Mendota House.
Joshi, A., Liao, H., & Martocchio, J. (2011). Research in personnel and human resources management. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald.
Lazear, E. (2000).Performance pay and productivity. American Economic Review, 90, 1346-61.
Morrell, K. Loan-Clarke J., &Wilkinson A. (2001) Unweaving leaving the use of models in the management of employee turnover. International Journal of Management Reviews 3(3), 219-244.
Shaw, J., Delery, J., Jenkins, G. and Gupta, N. (2001). An Organization-level analysis of voluntary and involuntary turnover. Business School Research Series
