“MyJourney”: a Gen-Z-centric digital innovation to improve job engagement and decrease turnover intention in the hospitality sector

The Malaysian hospitality sector has constantly encountered profound difficulties in reducing the high turnover rate among Generation Z (Gen Z) staff, especially at the non-managerial level, who have continuously exhibited confusion about potential career pathways, low engagement, and unaligned organisational values. The high turnover rate has compromised hospitality service quality and elevated operational expenditures. Simultaneously, conventional Human Resource Management strategies could not effectively fulfil Gen Z employees’ anticipations and motivations. The current study proposed MyJourney as a prototype digital platform catered to Gen Z non-managerial employees in the hospitality industry by incorporating two primary dimensions, namely an augmented reality (AR)-based storytelling framework and a career pathway customisation interface. MyJourney, which was developed based on the Social Exchange Theory (SET), could encourage Gen Z hospitality staff to share personal experiences with Human Resource Management strategies through an immersive and interactive manner while depicting attainable career developmental paths within the organisation. The storytelling framework could also enable Gen Z hospitality staff to anonymously describe positive and negative job experiences, which could contribute valuable insights into person-environment (P-E) fit. Furthermore, the career pathway customisation interface could assist Gen Z hospitality staff in designing career growth trajectories and boosting perceived organisational support and job motivation. As such, MyJourney demonstrated high potential to enhance Gen Z hospitality staff members’ job engagement and overall work experience while decreasing early turnover intention. The innovative application illustrated how HRM practices could be digitally adapted to support employee retention by aligning Gen Z workers’ anticipations, values, and career aspirations.