Abstract:
Today unfortunately, all over the world, the employee turnover rate in the
hospitality industry is very high in Sri Lanka Hoteliers are complaining about the
labor turnover ratio in Sri Lankan hotels also being unbelievably high. Rewards
have much impact on hotel employees, which increase the level of job satisfaction
and job performance (Tahir et al, 2019) and retain well performing employees for
long-term. This is more desirable in the hospitality industry in Sri Lanka because
the industry is highly standardized and the rewards are competitive tool to
optimize employee performance and it determines quality of the service. Most of
the organizations in the hotel industry are unable to identify the types of rewards
which are best affected to enhance employees‟ performance. This study was
conducted to investigate the relationship between rewards (financial and nonfinancial) and operational level employees‟ performance and it is impact. The
researcher has selected thirteen numbers of three, four and five-star hotels in
Central Province which are registered under the SLTDA. The data was collected
from 121 numbers of operational level employees and 13 number of supervisors
those who are currently employed in those hotels. Simple random sampling
method was used as a sampling technique. The data was collected by using selfadministrated questionnaire which was filled by respondents in the sample and
interview was utilized for collecting data from supervisors in their hotels. Three
hypotheses were assumed and had been tested in this research. Descriptive
statistics, correlation and regression analysis techniques were used to analyze the
data with the support of SPSS 22 version. Descriptive statistics has presented
existing level of rewards management and operational level employees‟
performance. Correlation analysis has exposed strong positive relationship
between of rewards management and operational level employees‟‟ performance.
Since the study found the non-financial rewards highly impact on the operational
level employees‟ performance than the financial rewards. The recommendation
was thus made for the hotels to change their reward management and policies in
order to align the reward management practices according to their respective
correlation to employee performance. The researcher recommended for hoteliers
to establish the combination of various strategies that would optimize employee
performance.
