Performance, labour flexibility and migrant workers in hotels: An establishment and departmental level analysis

• Significant relationships between performance, flexible working and migrant workers.
• Evidence of different relationships between performance, flexible working and migrant employment at the establishment, rooms and food and beverage departments.
• Different operating conditions at the establishment and core departments.
• Important differences between physical and financial performance.

This paper analyses flexible working, and the employment of migrants, as determinants of performance in hotels, utilising a highly disaggregated data set of actual hours worked and outputs, on a monthly basis, over an 8 year period for 25 establishments within a single firm. It examines not only inter-establishment, but also intra-establishment (departmental) variations in performance. The analysis also systematically compares the findings based on financial versus physical measures, against a background where existing research has utilised diverse and, sometimes, hybrid measures of performance and productivity. While generally confirming significant relationships between performance and flexible working and migrant employment, the findings also emphasise that the types of flexible working practices are important. It also identifies complex variations at the departmental level: substantially different relationships between flexibility and migrant employment, and performance are identified for rooms versus food and beverage departments, reflecting different operating conditions.