Current State of the Hospitality Workplace: Addressing Mistrust of Senior Management, Direct Supervisors

Throughout the Great Recession, companies have laid off thousands, cut workers’ salaries, and eliminated bonuses, leaving employees to wonder – what next? Some might speculate people still standing after workforce layoffs should be grateful and happy to simply have a job. But for those of us who have lived through it, we know this may not always be the case.


Maritz Research recently conducted its annual study on workplace attitudes within the hospitality industry, surveying 1,000 full-time employees on a wide variety of workplace issues. Consistent with other published studies on employee engagement, Maritz found that employee engagement is at an all-time low in a wide variety of areas. One major contributor to the decline in morale is the fact that one-third (31 percent) of respondents work for companies that have experienced significant workforce reductions in the past six months. This, along with other findings, paints a dire picture of what Hospitality companies face – lack of trust, threats of unionization, and poor customer service. So much for being grateful.

A major casualty of the past decade has been workplace trust. This includes mistrust of senior leaders, direct supervisors, and even co-workers. Maritz began observing this decline of trust in the early part of the decade, following the headlined corporate scandals that plagued companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco. Employees became extremely skeptical of their leaders. In the past year, there has been a constant flow of stories of leaders continuing to draw high salaries, with lower level employees losing their jobs, or at least taking significant pay cuts. Currently, only 12 percent of those employed in the hospitality sector consider their company’s leaders to be completely ethical and honest. This is consistent with other business sectors that report similar percentages. Fewer than one-in-ten (nine percent) trust their management to make the right decisions in times of uncertainty, with nearly three times as many disagreeing. Only seven percent of hospitality employees ‘completely trust their employers to look out for their best interests’ and believe their senior leaders actions are ‘completely consistent’ with their words. More than five times as many hospitality employees actively disagree with those statements.