Understanding precedents for frontline employee turnover in luxury hotels: Emotional intelligence as a unifying factor

Current turnover research fails to serve the needs of an industry that is long plagued by employee turnover. Existing literature focuses more on evaluating bundles of human resource practices and fail to provide precise and clear guidance for practitioners. This study proposes that emotional intelligence (EI) unifies sufficient individual factors and organizational factors that affect employee turnover and serves as a single significant precedent for turnover. Data were collected from frontline employees at eight luxury hotels. The direct, indirect, and total impacts of employee EI on employee turnover were tested by structural equation modeling and bootstrap tests. The results suggest that EI has significant indirect impacts through the mediation of perceived organizational support, pay satisfaction and job burnout, and significant total impacts on turnover. Implication suggestions include integrating EI into the recruiting process for new employees and providing training opportunities for current employees to improve their EI.