EFFECT OF GREEN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND GREEN WORK LIFE BALANCE ON EMPLOYEE RETENTION IN SELECTED HOSPITALITY FIRMS IN LAGOS AND OGUN STATES, NIGERIA

: Employee retention is a strategy of retaining talented employees with a specific end goal to meet business targets. Employee turnover is a symptom of deeper issues that have not been resolved. Hospitality Industry in Nigeria has faced several issues, including poor employee retention and low staff motivation. Part of the reasons for the poor employee retention and high turnover in the Hospitality Sector was owning to issues that border on green human resource management practices and green work life balance, and the inflexible nature of their job. Other certain reasons for poor employee retention include low pay, lack of development opportunities, and bad working conditions with greater efforts by staff and fewer receivables. Therefore, this paper examines the effect of green human resource management practices, green work life balance on employee retention of selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria. The data collected through the primary sources (questionnaire) were analysed using inferential statistics employing regression analysis. The study revealed that Green human resource management practices, green work life balance (green performance management, green employee relation, green disciplinary management, work family balance and work health balance) had a significant and positive effect on employee retention in hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun states, Nigeria ( Adj. R 2 = 0.540, F (4, 669) = 176.897, p < 0.05).


Literature Review
This section discusses green human resource management practices, green work life balance and employee retention.

Green Human Resources Management Practices
The term green human resources management practices have been defined differently by different people but there is a great level of consensus on one thing, which is integrating human resource management with issues relating to environmental management and reinforcing environmental management. Masri and Jaaron (2017) defined green human resource management practices as a reinforcement of environmentally sustainable practices and increased employee's commitment to the issues of environmental sustainability. Similarly, Mwita (2019) further defined green human management practice as a process of making use of human resources at workplaces in order to achieve organisational goals with deliberate efforts to make sure the process contributes towards environmental sustainability. It intends to use HR functions, polices, strategies and practices as mechanisms for environmental management at work places. Hamod and Majeed (2021) explained that the term green human resource management practice has become the most common word in business, and its importance increases over time. This term also has a secured position as a hot topic in modern research work as awareness of environmental management and sustainable development is increasing day by day all over the world. The topic of green human resource management today not only includes awareness of environmental affairs, but also the social and economic wellbeing of both the organisation and employees within a broader perspective (Hamod & Majeed, 2021).
Consequently, this study measured green human resource practices with subvariables green employee performance management, green employee relations and green disciplinary management as measured by different authors in their studies. Rajl and Verma (2019) explained that green employee performance management is to monitor and guide employees' activities to achieve the desired goals of environmental performance while Ahmad (2015) defined green employee relations as the aspect of HRM which is concerned with establishing amicable employer-employee relationship to increase the chances of better green management and Sobaih (2019) noted green discipline management as part of green human resource practices that ensure green employee behavior inside the organisation are known and strictly adhere, to achieve the objectives and strategies of environmental management.

Green Work Life Balance
Bangwal, Chamola and Tiwari (2017) defined green work-life balance as the reconciliation of working life and private life with regard to environmental values, attitudes and behaviour. It comprises mutual enforcement and harmonization of environmental-friendly. The green work-life balance facilitates environmentally friendly behaviour in both life domains and it is perceived as an innovative approach to green environment. The holistic approaches are designed to create a comfortable workplace for employees so that they can be more efficient and productive in their ways of working and in turn improve the organisational health at large. Green work life balance practices are highly commendable in the present context to sustain the intellectual capital in the organisation and they can be instrumental in creating a win-win situation for both the employee and the employer at large (Vasa & Sowdamini, 2017). Madhavi and Durga (2018) noted that the concept of greening in organisations has made green work life balance a way of life in most organizations as it contributes to the feel-good factor at work. Green work life balance refers to the initiatives that are aimed at creating a sound occupational health and organizational health. Green work life balance practices are highly recommendable in the present technological world as it helps employees to gain personal gratification and helps them to concentrate in their workplace better and it encourages family gatherings. Organizations should encourage more family gatherings on events like annual days, and other festive occasions to bond not only with the employees but also with their families.
This study measured green work life balance with the sub-variables work family balance and work health balance. Znidarsič and Bernik (2021) defined work-family balance as a concept that supports the efforts of individuals to divide their time and energy between work and other important roles and responsibilities in their lives, such as family, friends, community, spirituality, personal growth, hobbies, and other personal activities. Gragnano, Miglioretti and Simbula (2020) also defined work-health balance (WHB) as a state in which the worker feels there are able to effectively balance health and work needs, arising from the perception of how much the characteristics of one's work are a barrier to health needs and counterbalanced by the evaluation of the helpfulness of the working environment to meet health needs.

Employee Retention
Priya (2019) defined employee retention as a method in which the personnel are confident to continue with the association or company for the greatest historical occasion or pending the achievement of the project. The biggest challenge that organisations are facing today is not only managing these resources but also retaining them, securing and retaining skilled employees plays an imperative role in any organisation, employees' knowledge and skills are essential to companies' ability to be economically competitive. Kumar and Mathimaran (2017) noted that successful employee retention is essential to an organisation's strength, growth and revenue. A major task faced by employers today is retaining talented employees in their group. In the stage of cut-throat rivalry, every society tries its level best to give the best services to its employees, sustaining human resources remains one of the hardest tasks for organisations expressions in today's business world. Outstanding to competition for scarce skills, the attraction and withholding of quality employees has been seen as the biggest experiment in the organisation. Baskaran, Mahadi, Woo and Yaakop (2020) further defined employee retention as an effort of an organisation to provide and maintain a working environment which will motivate the employee to stay in the organisation. Employee retention is very crucial in an organisation as it will give many benefits to the company. Many companies nowadays are concerned with employee retention policies by addressing their employees' need to improve their work satisfaction and stay in the organisation for a maximum period of time. Mita (2014) also defined employee retention as a technique adopted by businesses to maintain an effective workforce and at the same time meet operational requirements, describing it as a process in which the employees are encouraged to remain with the organisation for the maximum period of time or until the completion of the project. Any organisation that has a high turnover of its skilful employees will be unproductive and suffer losses. Every business manager should be concerned about how to retain his skilful employee for sustained organisational productivity.
Ali, Hussain and Rahman (2020) on the characteristics of employee retention state that a firm creates a physically comfortable and socially enhancing fun atmosphere, increases an employee's commitment to stay, implementation for appropriate scheduling and working hours increase employee retention, the opportunity for employees to learn and grow enhancing their career is one of the most imperative elements contributing to their intent to stay with the organisation. Providing employees with more responsibility and recognition empowers them and thus, is considered a key determinant of retention, factors such a good leadership hinging on the level of quality management, good working conditions or environment and providing for greater work-life balance are considered as some of the variables which attribute to successful employee retention. There is no single strategy or retention plan which may satisfy each and every employee in an organisation, different personalities entail different demands and expectations from the organisation, industry may consider these deliberated enablers as a mean to limit turnover and improve retention. Msengeti and Obwogi (2015) on the other hand noted that employers can seek positive turnover whereby they aim to maintain only those employees whom they consider to be high performers.

Effect of Green Human Resource Management Practices, Green Work Life Balance and Employee Retention
Scholars (Amutha 2017; Madhavi, & Durga 2018;& Bazrkar, Moshiripour, 2021) found that the human resource plays a vital role in managing the employees, it also revealed that the modern human resource managers focus more on incorporating green human resource practices and green work life balance philosophy along with human resource policies and green HRM, green work life balance, green HRM implementations have resulted in increased employee retention, efficiencies, cost reduction, and improved productivity and also other tangible benefits. Benevene and Buonomo (2020) further revealed that GHRM dimensions, green work life balance is frequently linked to significant outcomes. It was seen as a set of financial and non-financial rewards aimed at stimulating green employee behaviors and reinforcing long-term organisational outcomes. Consistently, it reported significant effects of this dimension on organisational sustainability, environmental performance, and green supply chain management. At the same time, all these dimensions have been linked to employee-related outcomes, such as employee retention, higher green commitment and lower turnover intentions. Arafin, Chowdhury, Roy and Siddiquee (2016) and Mohammad (2019) proclaimed that employees are showing strong positive intentions regarding the greater employee commitment and job satisfaction to that organisation which are practicing the go green concept. The study also added that the outcome of practicing green HR may be pragmatic if it is monitored properly with proper guidelines. Green HR attempts have resulted in increasing employee retention, operational efficiencies, cost reduction, and improved productivity, besides other tangible benefits (Othman, Ramayah & Yusoff, 2015). Likhitkar and Verma (2020) found that compensations given to the employees for any new skills (related to environment management) acquired by them, recognition is also a part of non-monetary incentives where the employee is motivated to work more in near future. Special leaves, and family recognition programs, are also considered non-financial incentives where loyalty enhances and results in high retention of talents.
Asaduzzamanm, Chowdhuryand and Sanju (2017), Franklin and Nilufar (2018) found that green HRM practices and green work life balance facilitates by an organisation as well as its employees through improvement rate of retention in employees, improved public image, improvement in attracting better employees, improvement in productivity, improvement in sustainable use of resources, reduction of practices that cause the environmental degradation, reduced utility cost, save environmental impact, rebates and tax benefits and increased business opportunities (Bangwal & Tiwari, 2015). Ernest and Nwakoby (2018) also found green human resource management practices and green work life balance have a weak and insignificant effect of green HRM practices on employee retention in Nigerian Insurance industry.

Theoretical Framework
Cafferkey, Kellner and Townsend (2019) revealed that Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) theory are three independent work system components that shape employee characteristics and contribute to the success of the organisation. AMO framework was initially proposed by Bailey (1993), who suggested that ensuring the employee's discretionary effort needed three components: employees had to have the necessary skills, they needed appropriate motivation and employers had to offer them the opportunity to participate.). According to the theory, organisational interests are best served by a system that attends to the employee's ability, motivation, and opportunity (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg, 2000).
AMO theory also sees organisational performance as a result of the interaction of employees' capacity to perform (ability), willingness to perform (motivation), and opportunity to perform through participation (opportunity). The theory showed the effect of GHRM practices, green work life balance on employee retention, the theory explained that GHRM practices and green work life balance boost employer ability through developing employees to become high-performer, Employees motivation, flexible working hours and commitment by giving rewards as well as conducting effective performance management and providing an opportunity for employees to involve in knowledge-sharing and problem-solving activities, help in achieving employee retention (Cafferkey, Kellner, & Townsend, 2019).

Methodology
The study adopted a survey research design. A proportionate random sampling technique was used with a sample size of 902 respondents made up of senior employees and management staff of selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria. A structured adapted questionnaire was used for data collection. There were 750 respondents, representing 83% were returned and found usable for the analysis. SPSS version 25 was used to analyse the descriptive and inferential statistics. The hypothesis was tested using multiple regression.

Analysis and Results
The respondents indicated their perception and level of agreement with questions related to green human resource practices, green work life balance and employee retention. The responses were on the level of 1 to 6 which are based on agreement or disagreement on statements of green human resource practices, green work life balance and employee retention.

Hypothesis Testing
H0: Green human resource management practice and green work life balance have no significant effect on employee retention of selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria.  Table 1 showed the result green human resources management practices and green work life balance have on employee retention of selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria. From the result, it can be seen that while green employee performance management has a negative and insignificant effect on employee retention (β = -0.011, t = -0.243, p>0.05) of selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria, green employee relation (β = 0.029, t = -0.639, p>0.05) have a positive but insignificant effect on employee retention. Only Green discipline management (β = 0.210, t = 4.442, p<0.05) showed a positive and significant effect on employee retention. The two components of green work life balance showed a positive and significant effect on work-family balance (β = 0.265, t = 6.326, p<0.05) and work health balance (β = 0.393, t = 10.711, p<0.05) having the listed coefficient and significant value. These results disclosed that green discipline management, work family balance and work health balance all have a positive and significant effect on employee retention, thus they are also a strong determinant of employee retention in the selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria.
The correlation coefficient, R= 0.737 revealed that there is a strong and high positive relationship between green human resources management practices and green work life balance on employee retention of selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria. The coefficient of multiple determination, Adjusted R 2 = 0.540 showed that green human resource management practices and green work life balance explain about 54.0% of the changes occurring in employee retention of selected Hospitality Firms while the remaining 46% is a result of other factors not captured in the model. Also, the F-statistics (df = 4, 363) = 176.897, p<0.05) revealed that the overall model is fit and significantly predicts the interaction among the practices of green human resource management, green work life balance and employee retention in the selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria but of all the elements green discipline management, work family balance and work health balance should be given the top priority. The predictive and prescriptive multiple regression models are thus expressed: The regression model showed that when the practices of green human resource management and green work life balance are held to a constant zero, employee retention will be 0.485. This means that even without practices of green human resource management and green work life balance, employee retention of the selected hospitability firms in Lagos and Ogun States Nigeria would be 0.485. The results of the predictive model showed of all the components only green discipline management, work family balance and work health balance are significant and are thus prescribed for the firm's consideration. The prescriptive model revealed that an increase by one unit in green discipline management and green work life balance components (work family balance and work health balance) will also lead to an increase in employee retention by 0.21, 0.265 and 0.393 respectively. This implies that an increase in Green human resource practices with special emphasis on green discipline management and green work life balance would lead to an increase in employee retention of the selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria.
The result further showed a high level of statistical significance with p<0.05 which implies green human resource practices with particular emphasis on green discipline management and green work life balance significantly affect the employee retention of the selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States Nigeria. Therefore, the null hypothesis (H01) which states that green human resource management practices and green work life balance have no significant effect on employee retention of selected Hospitality Firms in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria was rejected.

Discussion of Findings
The findings in Table 1 and the results of the hypothesis of this study revealed that the components of green human resources management practices and green work life balance (green performance management, green employee relation, green discipline management, work family balance and work health balance) had a significant positive effect on employee retention of selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun states Nigeria. This confirmed the stated assumption that green human resources practices, green work life balance are useful tools for attaining and sustaining employee retention (Amutha 2017; Madhavi, & Durga 2018;Benevene & Buonomo 2020, Bazrkar & Moshiripour, 2021. However, green performance management and green employee relation had a negative and insignificant effect on employee retention.
Conceptually, some authors (Likhitkar & Verma, 2017;Amutha, 2017;Aranganathan, 2018;Rael, 2018;Ernest & Nwakoby, 2018;Kirtim & Goyal, 2019) stated that green human resource management practices, green work-life balance helped in employee retention in various sectors. Scholars (Madhavi, & Durga 2018;Benevene & Buonomo 2020, Bazrkar & Moshiripour, 2021 opined that green HRM practices and green work life balance initiatives enhanced staff retention, increased green commitment, and lower turnover intentions, supported Kumar and Mathimaran (2017) and Azeez (2017) who opined that successful employee retention is essential to an organisation's strength, growth and revenue and have earlier affirmed that employee retention is the exertion by a business to keep attractive labourers with a specific end goal to meet business targets. Authors such as (Amutha 2017; Madhavi, & Durga 2018;Benevene & Buonomo 2020, Bazrkar & Moshiripour, 2021 confirmed that green human resources practices, green work life balance are useful tools for attaining and sustaining employee retention. However, the results of hypothesis one of this study also revealed that green performance management and green employee relation had a negative and insignificant effect on employee retention. This buttressed authors such as Franklin and Nilufar (2018) who disagreed conceptually with scholars like (Amutha 2017; Madhavi, & Durga 2018) on the basis that employers can seek positive turnover aim to maintain only those employees whom they consider to be high performers.
Empirically, authors such as Benevene and Buonomo (2020) found that green human resources management practices, green work life balance are frequently linked to significant outcomes such as employee retention. It was found as the set of financial and non-financial rewards aimed at stimulating green employee behaviors and reinforcing long-term organisational outcomes. Consistently, it reported significant effects of this dimension on organisational sustainability, environmental performance, and green supply chain management. At the same time, all these dimensions have been linked to employee-related outcomes, such as employee retention, higher green commitment and lower turnover intentions.
Scholars such as (Wong & Aspinwall, 2005;Mooradian, 2006;Zahra, 2007;Yang, 2007) acknowledged that AMO (ability, motivation, opportunity) theory linked to employee retention and found that AMO was a widely accepted theory in human resource management (HRM) literature and its linkages with firm performance. Given the importance of cultural and human intentions and behavioural factors, the three key AMO factors: ability (training for workers), motivation (incentive systems) and opportunity (trust) enhanced employee retention. Although, Cafferkey, Kellner and Townsend (2019) found that the AMO theory had not seen straightforward adoption in the HRM discipline. Instead, there are several adaptations and interpretations of how AMO may work in practice. Some authors agree AMO may have a multiplicative effect, whereby each variable must exist, which may increase or decrease organisation performance like employee retention.
On the basis of the conceptual, empirical findings, theoretical implications as well as corroborative findings of previous scholars of the field of green human resources management practices and green work-life balance it can therefore be stated that green human resources balance and green work-life balance significantly affect employee retention, therefore null hypothesis (H01) was rejected.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The study established that green human resource management practices, green work life balance is important for employee retention of hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun states Nigeria. This study reviewed the concept of green human resource management practices, green work life balance and how it could contribute to employee retention of hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun state Nigeria and concluded that it enhanced employee retention. The study recommends green human resource practices with special emphasis on green discipline management and green work life balance would lead to an increase in employee retention of the selected hospitality firms in Lagos and Ogun States Nigeria.