The role of HRM practices on employee performance, engagement and retention: A case study on public-oriented tourism start-ups

Retaining employees is one of the challenges for start-ups, and employee engagement affects employee retention. The purpose of this study is to identify critical HRM practices of public-oriented start-ups in employee engagement that improve employee retention. The authors used a qualitative research method with the case study strategy. The research participants consisted of 5 managers and entrepreneurs from a start-up who were selected by non-probability purposive sampling. The data was obtained through interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The result of using theme analysis method identified seven themes consisted of recruitment and selection practices in employee engagement, training and development practices in employee engagement, performance appraisal practices in employee engagement, compensation and reward practices in employee engagement, role description practices in employee engagement, working conditions practices in employee engagement, and employee relations practices in employee engagement. Because exploratory studies in the field of human resources in public-oriented start-ups are few and limited, therefore, this research is considered as a new work in terms of the application of case studies in public-oriented start-ups in the field of human resources and one of its distinctive results is that Employee engagement and studies in the field of start-ups can be very different from traditional businesses. The results highlight the importance of HRM practices in employee engagement, which improves employee retention in public-oriented start-ups.