The job stress in aircraft service international in Vietnam airlines caterers

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Gian Hong Phi THE JOB STRESS IN AIRCRAFT SERVICE INTERNATIONAL IN VIETNAM AIRLINES CATERERS MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – 2019 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Gian Hong Phi THE JOB STRESS IN AIRCRAFT SERVICE INTERNATIONAL IN VIETNAM AIRLINES CATERERS MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: Dr Nguyen Phong Nguyen Ho Chi Minh City – 2019 SUPERVISOR’S REPORT ON THE THESIS PROPOSAL SUBMITTED FOR DEGREE OF MASTER of BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION The thesis proposal title: THE JOB STRESS IN AIRCRAFT SERVICE INTERNATIONAL IN VIETNAM AIRLINES CATERERS Student Name: Gian Hong Phi - Student ID: 22150050 Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Phong Nguyen General comments:  Remarks on the student’s attitude: ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………  Remarks on the assignment’s academic quality: ………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………… Overall assessment:  Meet requirement for submitting  Not meet requirement for submitting Other remarks:  Did the student follow the report schedule?  Yes  No  Other…………………………  The Turnitin plagiarism percentage: Supervisor’s signature Table of Contents Background: 1.1 Company background: 1.2 Symptoms: 1.3 Initial cause effect map: 1.4 Update cause effect map: 19 1.5 Potential problem of interest: 22 Problem Justification 23 2.1 Central problem definition 23 2.2 Problem existence: 23 2.3 Problem importance: 25 Causes validation and solutions: 27 3.1 The Real Causes of Central Problem List: 27 3.2 Set of solution: To find my solution used and running to following 28 3.3 Recommend solution: 32 References: 39 Executive summary In a long time, Aircraft Services International section (ACSI) in Vietnam Airlines Caterers (VACS) is known as a section with high number of staff leaving the job, especially in new employees However, the situation become worse in recent years As a result, ACSI is always in lack of manpower situation In the contrast, the number of international flights has increasing dramatically in same time Therefore, VACS should recruit new employees for ACSI continuously The high turnover rate is not only increasing the cost for company but also reducing the quality services of ACSI By using the interview method, some main reasons for this problem are listed: the job stress, the job dissatisfaction and dissatisfied in career development However, because of the limitation of this thesis, as well as the possible of the solutions, this thesis will focus on the job stress factor, which is already as a result of various minor causes For example: poor management skills, job dissatisfaction… By providing some potential solutions for reducing the job stress, it is expected to decrease the turnover rate as well as to improve the working environment in ACSI Background: 1.1 Company background: Vietnam Airlines Caterers (VACS) is a company processing inflight meals and providing catering services to airlines at Tan Son Nhat International Airport since 1993 Vietnam Airline Caterers is also a subsidiary and head catering quarter of Vietnam Airlines After 24 years of growth, Vietnam Airlines Caterers has been received many certificates and awards For examples: ISO9001:2008 Certificate, HACCP Certificate, The Catering Award "Best Performance of 2016" from Asiana Airlines… Vietnam Airline Caterers now is the largest airline caterer company in Vietnam and provides about 23,000 meals per days for both Vietnam Airlines and 22 international airlines in Tan Son Nhat International Airport 1.2 Symptoms: In Vietnam Airlines Caterers, the Aircraft Service International section (ACSI) of Operation Department is responsible for loading the in-flight meals for international airlines According to manager of this section, the ACSI had a high turnover rate in recent years However, the problem became more serious since last year, when the number of international flights has increased dramatically For more detail, the ACSI now is lack about 10 staff to cover all the operation activities and fulfill all the days off for employees At the moment, over 50% employees are new persons, who have less than years working in company After collecting the data from company, a report of turnover rate in ACSI are made by myself However, because of the limitation of data, in the thesis, I will choose the time from May 2015 to May 2017, when I begin working in VACS, and this is the time having the high turnover rate in ACSI In this period, the flights of present customers and new customers have increased dramatically For example: -China Southern increased from flights/day to flights/day -Eva Airlines and Korean Air increased from flights/day to flights/day -All Nippon Airways and Philippine Airlines added more flight per day -China Air, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines added more flights per weeks -New customers are Turkish Airlines, Hongkong Airlines, Jetstar Airways, Air New Zealand and Xiamen Airlines Each airline is operating about to flights per week Totally, the numbers of new flights increased about 103 flights per week According to meal daily report from Production Department last week, the number of international flights now about 250 flights per week It means there are increased from 150 per week in 2015 to 250 flights per week in the present It is about 67% increasing in years In the contrast, the total of employee in ACSI increased from 41 in 2015 to 47 official staff in the present It is only about 15% increasing in years Table 1.1: The increasing of flights per week and number of ACSI staff May - 2015 May – 2017 % Increase Flights per week 150 250 67% ACSI Staff 41 47 15% Compared increasing 250 150 41 47 MAY 2015 MAY 2017 Flights/Week ACSI staff After collecting the data, the statistical analysis of the turnover rate in ACSI section is about 21.2% from 2015 to 2017, while the turnover rate of employees who leave after less than year is about 71% which is explanation by the calculation below: Calculation of turnover rate: 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚 = Employee separations for the period Average number of the employee during the period Employee separations for the period from May – 2015 to May – 2017 are 25 Average number of the employee during the period - May – 2015: 41 employee - May – 2017: 47 employee  Average number of the employee during the period: (41+47)/2 = 44  Turnover rate: 25/44 is nearly 57% According to Nahar, Islam (2), the acceptable turnover rate is about 25%, but for the low skill job like on ACSI, the turnover rate can be exceeding 50% normally (6) The turnover rate for ACSI employee is nearly 57% and this rate is extremely high Moreover, the number of flights also increases 67% from 2015 as mentioned above These factors lead the result that the ACSI managers are impossible to ensure having enough manpower for operation activities daily, as well as schedule enough the day off and vacation for all employee Therefore, employee in ACSI sometimes have only days off in a roster - week The situation has become so serious that company decided to pay money for permission days for all employee in ACSI in 2016, because the manager reports that he could not handle to set up permission days for his staffs This situation is still serious in the present, and it is predicted by the ACSI manager that company should pay money for the permission days on 2017 1.3 Initial cause effect map: In order to preparing the initial cause effect map for the reason of high turnover, some short interviews are conducted with present staff and formers staff in ACSI Table 1.2: List of interviewees ORD Name Year of Length of Leaving Service Education Position Nguyen Thanh Ki Bachelor Staff Not Nguyen Le Anh Quang Bachelor Staff Not Nguyen Hong Bang Bachelor Staff 2017 Tran Quoc Vinh Bachelor Staff 2016 Nguyen Hoang Duy College Staff 2016 After conducting with them, some their reasons and opinions are shown in below table Table 1.3: Cause of high turnover rate Name Main reasons Nguyen Thanh Ki Details Imbalance work life -Imbalance work life -Lack of day off -Job stress Job stress: -Poor communication -Heavy workload among other sections -Unfair treatment Nguyen Le Anh Quang -Imbalance work life Imbalance work life -Job stress -Unstable working time -Limited career growth Job stress: -Low salary -Heavy workload 10 Causes validation and solutions: 3.1 The Real Causes of Central Problem List: In order to find out list of real cause, the literature have been searched and I found potential causes of job stress In addition, I conducted direct interviews with 05 staff working in ACSI section and explore factors effecting job stress - Work overload: this is the extent to which individuals feel that the demands of their workload and the associated time pressures In catering industry, employees must face consequently heavy workload because they must take caring standards, delivery on-time and customer satisfaction Overloads in workplace has been cited the main causes of job stress and let employees leave their job (12) Workload has significant impact on the performance of employees The heavy workload extends low performance of employees, increasing job stress and burnout and promote turnover rate (13) - Imbalance work-life: The demands of work have the potential to spill over and affect personal and home life and so put a strain on relationships outside work Hsieh and Eggers (14) summarized the characteristics of hospitality work, such as long working hours, shifts on weekend and stressful working condition These characteristics left hospitality employees limited time for other non-work related issues, especially family activities As a result, the imbalance between work and life created negative issues, for instance, dissatisfaction with personal life, marriage and family - Unfair treatment: many authors suggest that unfair treatment by others is a real problem for workers Such experiences are very stressful and negatively affect worker well-being Unfair treatment by more powerful persons in the company may be damaging for lower 27 status employee or person in service roles because they are often unable to retaliate and may have to hide any negative feelings (15) - Poor communication and resources: to perform a job effectively, individuals need to feel that they have appropriate training, equipment and resources They also need to feel that they are adequately informed and that they are valued Stress may result from lack of: information about what is going on in the organization, feedback on performance, adequate training to the job and equipment or resources to the job (16) -Poor motivation: it has a relationship between job stress, job motivation and job satisfaction While motivation is positively related to job satisfaction, stress has a negative influence on job satisfaction It is possible that a motivated manager or supervisors can decrease the amount of perceived stress, by giving employees more autonomy on the job (17) 3.2 Set of solution: To find my solution used and running to following  The tools of the quantitative researcher: questionnaire surveys - Questionnaire design: have two parts with 10 questions:  First part (question 1-5): question about factor make work stress  Second part (question 6-10): question about what company/yourself need to reduce work stress  Size of the sample: choose random sampling 10 people are working at ACSI section in VACS  Analyzing quantitative research: Use statistics method 28 Part 1: The factors make work stress: Question Category Work overload Person Percentage 10 100% Disagree 0% Neutral 20% Agree 20% Completely Agree 60% Imbalance work-life 10 100% Disagree 0% Neutral 10% Agree 60% Completely Agree 20% Unfair treatment 10 100% Disagree 0% Neutral 10% Agree 30% Completely Agree 60% Poor communication and resources 10 100% Disagree 20% Neutral 20% Agree 40% Completely Agree 20% 29 Poor motivation in section 10 100% Disagree 10% Neutral 50% Agree 20% Completely Agree 20% Part 2: What way decrease stress: Question Category Building an efficient program to hire new staff Person Percentage 10 100% Disagree 0% Neutral 20% Agree 40% Completely Agree 40% Building a reasonable work shift schedule 10 100% Disagree 0% Neutral 30% Agree 30% Completely Agree 40% 10 100% Building an efficient program to training new staff Disagree 0% Neutral 30% Agree 30% 30 Completely Agree 40% 10 100% Be sure the workload is suitable and fair to all members of staff Disagree 10% Neutral 20% Agree 30% Completely Agree 50% 10 Increase motivate in section 10 100% Disagree 10% Neutral 70% Agree 10% Completely Agree 10% Based on the collecting data and analyzes by qualitative research and quantitative research, there are many factors that affect the work stress at ACSI Standard deviation and mean to evaluate and are summarized in the table below: Part Part People 1 4 10 3 3 2 4 2 4 4 3 4 3 3 2 31 10 4 4 4 3 3 4 4 2 2 4 4 4 2 3 4 4 4 3 4 0.84 0.63 0.71 1.07 0.97 0.79 0.88 0.88 0.82 0.79 3.4 3.2 3.5 2.6 2.5 3.2 3.1 3.1 3.3 2.2 Standard deviation Mean Factors affect work stress at ACSI: work overload, imbalance work life, unfair treatment The solutions decrease work stress from survey results show that four ways to reduce stress: building efficient program to hire new staff, building a reasonable work shift schedule, building an efficient program to training new staff, be sure the workload is suitable and fair to all members of staff 3.3 Recommend solution: In order to reduce the stress in workplace as well as the high turnover rate in ACSI, I provide a step by step solutions as follow: Step - Building efficient program to hire new staff: 32 The candidates not know exactly about the job It is not an office job It is a hard job require you working on shift schedule, outside on the airport, high pressure Some candidates are disappointed on the first training day and quit the job immediately Therefore, I recommend VACS should provide more information about disadvantage as well as the benefit for this position on recruitment information and before the interview day For example: the staff in ACSI will work outside, on the air ground, under the sunny or rainy environment, loud noise from the airplanes, poor physical working condition… Thus, the candidates can understand what the job is and they want to apply the job or not We can delist the number of candidates, only interview and hire the person who really need this job By this way, we can reduce the number of people who quit on first day or first week after the recruitment Step - Building an efficient program to training new staff: This position is an on-the-job training A new staff will be trained by an experience staff However, but the old staff now are extremely busy with their job in working time, so they are lack of time to train new comer carefully An old staff confess that as a trainer, he will need more time to explain carefully for new comers about the procedure and how-to-do the job But he still should his own work on the shift, which are already very heavy Thus, many old staff avoid to train the new comer or cannot train them carefully as in the past After one-month training, the new employees need to prepare and load the inflight meals by themselves However, as a result of unwell training, they are poor working skill staff and usually make many mistake in working and need other co-workers help them to fix the problem In addition, because of high turnover rate, some staff with only some month 33 experience can be a trainer for a new staff As a result, the new staff cannot be training well Therefore, I suggest manager of ACSI need to produce a new training program Some good experience workers can be chosen to become trainers, and they should have less work on their shift, so they can coach the new employees carefully In the case someone is so bad or not good enough, he should be trained one more month or fired, to ensure that all new workers can work well after training time This solution will help increasing the working skill of all new workers Although they need more time to work everything smoothly, but at least they will not make pressure to other members on working time Step - Be sure the workload is suitable and fair to all members of staff In a shift time, the on-duty team-leader will assign work for all member of staff in this shift time and he should it fair But sometime, the on-duty team-leader will assign other team leader or some his close co-worker work less than other team members in the same shift time It means that the other staff in that shift should more work because of this unfair treatment ACSI should training their team leader about this problem The team leaders should understand the consequences of the unfair treatment to the organization The lazy team leaders or workers should be warning and supervised In order to ensure that this problem will be solve, a monitoring mechanism should be established The purpose of a monitoring mechanism is to further the effective implementation of the rules, to ensure the workload is suitable and fair to all members of staff The monitoring mechanism can be managed by a supervisor, and all staff can report to him directly if they are treated 34 unfair The supervisor can warn the team leaders or find a solution for specific case If he cannot handle it, he can report to higher managers to find a solution Step - Building a reasonable work shift schedule The schedule is produced by the key supervisor himself, and it is cost a lot of time However, sometimes, it has some errors like as: not enough or so many workers in a shift, the worker not have enough time to rest before shift (at least 12 hours) Actually, with the lack of manpower in his section and the booking day-off by his staff, it is very difficult for him to produce a schedule by himself to satisfy all the members Therefore, I suggest he can use a software to help him producing schedule A professional software which can manage a shift schedule for 50-70 members will cost around 50 to 100 USD per month However, these software has a lot of functions, which can help him produce schedule more efficient, less error For example: Basecrop app – a Vietnamese app for set up schedule and manage team member – is charge about one million VND per month In addition, when new employees join the section, the key supervisor should ask their schedule The key supervisor can ask each of them to see if they like to work on a specific day or shift Some people may like to night shifts or weekends He should allow them to work according to flexible and appropriate timetable instead of fixing schedules rigidly Of course, he will be hardly follow every employee's requirements, but at least show that you are willing to accept their opinions in this regard Action plan Action plans for making recruitment process 35 Objective Actions Who is Target date responsible Building efficient Preparation of the job OPS supervisor Immediate program to hire new description and and specification details staff Providing detail HR starting Specialist job OPS supervisor On interview date description, and HR disadvantage as well as Specialist the benefit for this position Designing an effective HR specialist Immediate application starting form and preparing a short list Building an Selected the good efficient program to experience staff for training new staff OPS key Immediate supervisor starting Revised trainer team the list each training time Plan a new training OPS key Immediate program for trainer team supervisor and starting and apply other for next supervisors recruitment Do review and feedback OPS trainer Immediate on new staff and key starting and supervisor continuously maintain weekly in one month training 36 Do final evaluate and OPS key Immediate feedback on new staff supervisor and starting, and individual performance manager continuously in the end of training maintain time OPS key Immediate workload is suitable leaders supervisor or starting, and and outside trainer continuously Be sure fair to the Training the team all maintain yearly members of staff Established a monitoring OPS supervisor Immediate mechanism to anti unfair starting treatment Building a Summarize the OPS supervisor Immediate reasonable work shift requirement of all schedule starting and employee for schedule continuously maintain weekly Find some suitable IT specialist software to build Immediate starting schedule for shift workers List 2-3 potential software Test trial 2-3 software to OPS After IT list some find the most suitable software for OPS supervisor, key supervisor and IT specialist Do review, compare the All ACSI software Decide to members After trial time purchase the software or not Make an application for OPS key After decide to 37 purchase the software supervisor and and submitting to the manager, IT director specialist Purchase the software IT specialist and apply officially buy the software After having the acceptance from director Benefit: The benefits of implementing the above solutions: Firstly, it is expected to help decrease the turnover intention of the new employee, from recruitment step, training them carefully, try to assign them a schedule suitable for their requirement, treat them fairly with other members on section In addition, for the old staff, the new co-workers will not be nightmare like before If company can hire more employee and they can work longer in ACSI, the labor shortage and work overload in ACSI will be improved The department will have more men to set up day-off for employee Their job stress and turnover intention will be decreased, while job satisfaction as well as their work performance will be increased, thereby reducing the customer’s complains, raising the company image 38 References: Ongori H A review of the literature on employee 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