Employee Motivation and Satisfaction Practices: A Case from Iceland

This chapter sheds light on some of the human resource (HR) challenges that are related to job satisfaction and motivation among front desk hotel employees in Iceland. It reviews which employee motivation and satisfaction practices are being used, and how employees and managers view the role of the HR department dealing with these challenges. Findings, based on interviews with both managers and employees from a hotel chain in Iceland, suggest that the HR department seems somewhat distant from the mundane work. There is no universal approach or system in place to monitor or manage job satisfaction and motivation that applies to all hotels within the chain and the practices that are applied are developed mostly by individual hotel’s management rather than centrally.