Predicting Employee Turnover From Communication Networks

This article investigates three social network models of employee turnover: a structural equivalence model, a social influence model, and an erosion model. It was predicted that structurally equivalent individuals would be more likely to behave similarly (i.e., leave or stay at their position). The rocial influence model predicted that employees with a greater percentage of direct communication links with leavers would be more likely to leave their job. The erosion model posited that individuals located on the periphery of a social network would be more likely to leave their job or “fall off” the edges of the social network. A total of 170 employees, a census of an organization, were administered a communication network questionnaire asking them to identify the people with whom they communicate at work. Network self-report data were analyzed using NEGOPY and UCINET software. Results provided support for all three models of turnover, with the erosion model explaining more of the variance than the other two models. Future research examining communication networks and employee turnover is proposed, on the basis of these results.     

Trust in organization as a moderator of the relationship between self‐efficacy and workplace outcomes: A social cognitive theory‐based examination

Drawing on a social cognitive theory perspective, we contend that an employee's trust in oneself, or self‐efficacy, will interact with the individual's trust in the system, or trust in organization, to predict job attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we expected that self‐efficacy would have stronger effects on job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and behaviours (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours) to the degree to which employees perceive high levels of trust in organization. Using data collected from 300 employees and their respective supervisors at a manufacturing organization in Turkey across three waves, we found that self‐efficacy had more positive effects on job satisfaction, task performance, and citizenship behaviours when trust in organization was high. Interestingly, self‐efficacy had a positive effect on turnover intentions when trust in organization was low, indicating that high trust in organization buffered the effects of self‐efficacy on intentions to leave. The results suggest that the motivational value of trust in oneself is stronger to the degree to which employees also have high trust in the system, whereas low trust in system neutralizes the motivational benefits of self‐efficacy.

Practitioner points

• Practicing managers should not only invest in increasing self‐efficacy of their employees, but also invest in building trust to improve employees’ attitudes, behaviours, and performance. This is because when employee trust in organization is high, employee self‐efficacy has greater potential to have a positive influence over job satisfaction, task performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours.
• Self‐efficacy may actually increase an employee's desire to leave the organization when organizational conditions are unfavourable, such as in the case of low trust in the organization. Practicing managers should be aware that employees who have high levels of confidence may be at higher risk of turnover when they are unhappy with the organization.

     

Examining the job search-turnover relationship: the role of embeddedness, job satisfaction, and available alternatives

This study examined factors that may help explain under what conditions employee job search effort may most strongly (or weakly) predict subsequent turnover. As predicted, the job search-turnover relationship was stronger when employees had lower levels of job embeddedness and job satisfaction and higher levels of available alternatives. These findings suggest that there may be a number of factors interacting to influence employees' turnover decisions, indicating greater complexity to the process than described in prominent sequential turnover models.     

TURNOVER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION FROM A CAREER DEVELOPMENTAL POINT OF VIEW

Demographic and psychological characteristics of 479 job leavers from two plants were processed, and work stability of 110 previously tested subjects was followed up for up to eight years. The study revealed that job quitting is a career decision depending upon career type, career stage and the characteristics of the organization, from the career development point of view. These variables make it possible to predict leaving decisions by employees, and also job stability.     

Does a corresponding set of variables for explaining voluntary organizational turnover transfer to explaining voluntary occupational turnover?

This study proposed and tested corresponding sets of variables for explaining voluntary organizational versus occupational turnover for a sample of medical technologists. This study is believed to be the first test of the Rhodes and Doering (1983) occupational change model using occupational turnover data. Results showed that corresponding job (occupational) satisfaction and intent to leave organization (occupation) variables were each significant for explaining subsequent organization (occupation) turnover. Job insecurity was found to be a significant correlate for organizational turnover while work exhaustion was found to be a significant correlate for occupational turnover. Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Internal and External Networking Differentially Predict Turnover Through Job Embeddedness and Job Offers

Although the career benefits associated with professional networking are relatively well established, the repercussions of this highly regarded career management activity for voluntary turnover have rarely been examined. Given the potential costs associated with voluntary turnover, this study sought to clarify the roles of networking behaviors in relation to voluntary turnover by focusing on the distinction between internal and external networking. Based on survey responses of industrial and organizational psychology professionals, we found that internal and external networking behaviors differentially predicted decisions to voluntarily leave employers 2 years later: The likelihood of voluntary turnover was negatively predicted by internal networking and positively predicted by external networking. Furthermore, to shed light on the reasons why employee networking behaviors differentially predicted turnover decisions, this study also examined 4 turnover antecedents (job satisfaction, job embeddedness, perceived employment opportunities, and job offers) as potential mediating mechanisms. Results revealed that the relationships of internal and external networking with voluntary turnover were mediated by job embeddedness and job offers, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding and managing employee networking and retention.     

Predicting Voluntary Turnover from Job Applicant Biodata and Other Applicant Information

Research suggests that biodata (i.e., personal history information) is one of the best predictors of voluntary employee turnover. Given this fact, it is surprising that research on biodata has declined in recent years, and that biodata is not commonly used by employers for selecting employees. This article presents the results of a study that focused on the ability of biodata items and other information available on job applicants to predict voluntary turnover. With one exception, the hypotheses offered were confirmed. Specifically, applicant status (i.e., previously had applied for a job), submission of optional personal history information, employment status (i.e., job applicant was employed), and recruitment source (i.e., employee referral) all predicted voluntary turnover. The ability of applicant status, submission of a personal statement, and recruitment source to predict employee performance also was examined. Applicant status and recruitment source were found to predict subsequent performance ratings.     

Three-component commitment and turnover: An examination of temporal aspects

SEM (N = 182) was employed to examine implied temporal aspects of three-component commitment theory as they relate to turnover. Consistent with expectations, affective commitment predicted subsequent turnover in an immediate and relatively short interval of 4 months, but failed to do in a much longer but outlying interval of 5–12 months. Side bet commitment failed to predict turnover in the short, immediate interval, but did so robustly over the longer albeit more distant interval. Normative commitment predicted turnover in neither the near term nor outmonths. Turnover rates for employees with low affective commitment were much higher than those with high affective commitment in the first quarter of a 1-year monitoring period, but subsequent turnover rates were roughly the same for the two groups. In contrast, turnover for employees with low side bet commitment was only slightly higher than the high side bet group in the first quarter, but over the remainder of the year cumulative turnover for the low side bet group exceeded that for the high side bet group by increasingly large margins. These results are consistent with theory suggesting that decrements in affective commitment (1) often occur suddenly and just prior to employees' leaving and (2) reflect general disaffection and an impetus to leave that is already exists at the point of attitude measurement. Results comport with theory describing side bet commitment as (1) an appraisal of leaving costs that, in the aggregate, are unlikely to change suddenly and (2) a relatively stable attitude that serves primarily to prevent turnover should some independent motivation to leave arise.     

Increasing Job Performance and Decreasing Salesperson Propensity to Leave: An Examination of an Asian Sales Force

Given the rapid expansion of the geographic territory that today’s firms compete in, firms without a strong understanding of the markets/countries where they conduct business will experience higher levels of employee turnover and lower levels of employee performance. When high levels of employee turnover and low levels of employee performance exist, firm profitability will be reduced and the potential for failure within the given markets will increase. Considering the level of firm interest in conducting business in Asian markets, we examine methods to reduce employee propensity to leave and increase job performance using a sample of 213 Korean salespeople. Results from the study indicate that (1) only organizational commitment was found to directly increase performance and decrease propensity to leave, (2) perceived organizational support was found to increase performance, and (3) emotional exhaustion was found to directly increase employee propensity to leave. Given the findings of this study, firms are provided with insights into managing turnover and increasing performance, which can aid firms in being potentially more successful within the Asian marketplace.     

Perceived fairness of employee drug testing as a predictor of employee attitudes and job performance

Although management of drug testing programs is becoming a critical organizational issue, no systematic conceptual framework has been applied to the study of employee reactions to drug testing. In this study an organizational justice framework was used to explain and predict the relationships among two types of justice (procedural justice and outcome fairness) employee attitudes (job satisfaction, commitment, and management trust), and behavior (turnover intentions and performance). Survey data from 195 employees in a pathology laboratory indicated that justice predicts employee attitudes and performance. Specifically, procedural justice, but not outcome fairness, predicted all 5 criterion variables. These results demonstrate the importance of procedural justice perceptions for predicting employee reactions to drug testing programs.     

Citizenship and withdrawal in the workplace: relationship between organizational citizenship behavior, intention to leave current job and intention to leave the organization

This study investigates the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and employee intention to leave the organization and current job using a sample of French employees. A survey was sent to 1,200 alumni of a business school in France. Participation in the study was voluntary. The participants were 355 working adults with French citizenship. This paper provides several interesting findings. While no relationship was found between altruism and intention to leave both the organization and the current job, sportsmanship, civic virtue and helping others emerged as the strongest predictors of intention to leave the organization and intention to leave the current job. Results are discussed.     

Development of a global measure of job embeddedness and integration into a traditional model of voluntary turnover

Recent research on job embeddedness has found that both on- and off-the-job forces can act to bind people to their jobs. The present study extended this line of research by examining how job embeddedness may be integrated into a traditional model of voluntary turnover. This study also developed and tested a global, reflective measure of job embeddedness that overcomes important limitations and serves as a companion to the original composite measure. Results of this longitudinal study found that job embeddedness predicted voluntary turnover beyond job attitudes and core variables from traditional models of turnover. Results also found that job embeddedness interacted with job satisfaction to predict voluntary turnover, suggesting that the job embeddedness construct extends beyond the unfolding model of turnover (T. R. Mitchell & T. W. Lee, 2001) it originated from.     

Rethinking the use of personal history information: The value of theory-based biodata for predicting turnover

This article argues the case for the use of theoretically-grounded biodata information as valid predictors of employee behavior and outlines a procedure for the use of biodata variables with relatively small samples. The usefulness of this approach was demonstrated in a study assessing the ability of theory-based biodata items to predict the turnover of bank tellers. The results of this study demonstrate the predictive power and the practical value of using carefully chosen biodata information. In particular, tenure in prior job, relevance of prior job experience, and education level were found to significantly predict teller turnover.     

The impact of role stress on workers' behaviour through job satisfaction and organizational commitment

Dysfunctions in role performance have been associated with a large number of consequences, almost always negative, which affect the well-being of workers and the functioning of organizations. An individual's experience of receiving incompatible or conflicting requests (role conflict) and/or the lack of enough information to carry out his/her job (role ambiguity) are causes of role stress. According to previous theory, role ambiguity and conflict decrease workers' performance and are positively related to the probability of workers leaving the organization. Job satisfaction refers to a positive evaluation of a job, while organizational commitment refers to an employee's attachment to the organization. The affective dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction are considered to be important predictors of turnover intention, absenteeism, and job performance. In the literature, role conflict and ambiguity have been proposed as determining factors of workers' job satisfaction and their commitment towards the organization. The role of job satisfaction and organizational commitment were analysed as variables that should mediate between role ambiguity and conflict and employees' behaviour. The hypotheses were confirmed by means of path analysis carried out with data obtained from a sample of Spanish blue-collar workers employed by a bus company and a water supply company. Role stressors were negatively related to affective commitment mediated through job satisfaction. Affective commitment to the organization exerted a positive influence on performance and reduces the withdrawal behaviour analysed— intention to leave and absenteeism—although the strongest predictor of intention to leave was, in this study, job satisfaction.     

Citizenship and Withdrawal in the Workplace: Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behavior,Intention to Leave Current Job and Intention to Leave the Organization

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and employee intention to leave the organization and current job using a sample of French employees. A survey was sent to 1,200 alumni of a business school in France. Participation in the study was voluntary. The participants were 355 working adults with French citizenship. This paper provides several interesting findings. While no relationship was found between altruism and intention to leave both the organization and the current job, sportsmanship, civic virtue and helping others emerged as the strongest predictors of intention to leave the organization and intention to leave the current job. Results are discussed.     

Pronostic de l’intention de départ chez les sapeurs-pompiers volontaires en France

The fire departments in France currently experience a growing need in volunteer stuff. At the same time the turnover rate among volunteers remains high. Intention to leave was mainly examined on the population of permanent workers, while the antecedents of intention to leave among volunteers are still undervalued. We suggest the existence of specific effects different from those previously coined out in standard organisational settings. Thus, the present study seeks to identify first- and second-order factors of intention to leave among volunteer fire-fighters. The literature review leads us to the proposition of three conceptual models that vary in terms of main mediators. Either job satisfaction, or organisational commitment, or both of them are envisaged as having the main mediating effect in the model. One hundred and thirty-nine volunteer fire-fighters returned completed questionnaires. The data was further analysed via path analysis in LISREL 8.80. The results partly confirm the model, according to which job satisfaction mediates the effects of organisational commitment, job involvement, perceived organisational support and motivation. Two variables – satisfaction with supervisors and length of service – are identified as main predictors of intention to leave. Job involvement and perceived organisational support are confirmed as second-order mediators of the effects exercised onto turnover intention by affective and normative commitment, satisfaction with colleagues and work, as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The results also indicate the necessity to examine the role of different dimensions of organisational attitudinal variables independently. Thus, the most salient dimension of satisfaction refers to the relationship with supervisors. As regards organisational commitment, its calculate dimension appears to have no significant effects at all; while affective one is characterised by a weak effect on intention to leave contrary to the results previously reported. The only individual variable having a significant effect on intention to leave is the volunteer fire-fighter's length of service. We conclude that instead of seeking to identify the appropriate selection criteria helping to reduce the existing turnover rate among volunteer fire-fighters, it is time to focus further research on the practices of organisational socialisation in order to reduce the current level of turnover. The main conclusion of the study emphasises the role the attitudes towards organisation plays in the decision of a volunteer fire-fighter to resign.     

Feedback environment and well-being at work: The mediating role of personal control and feelings of helplessness

This study examines employees' personal control and feelings of helplessness at work as partial mediators of the relationship between the supervisor–employee feedback environment and well-being (job satisfaction, job depression, job anxiety, turnover intentions) at work. Findings are reported from a cross-sectional field study with 345 participants from three different industries. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that feedback environment was positively related to job satisfaction, personal control over information and decisions, and was negatively related to helplessness, job depression, and turnover intentions. Furthermore, personal control partially mediated the relationships between feedback environment and job satisfaction as well as job depression. Helplessness partially mediated the relationships between feedback environment and job depression, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. This study adds to the literature on feedback environment in highlighting the importance of the supervisor–employee feedback environment for well-being at work and introducing personal control and helplessness as mediating variables.     

A closer look at decisions to quit

Aspects of March and Simon’s (1958) subjective expected utility model and a prediction of Lee and Mitchell’s (1994) unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover were tested. A policy capturing simulation that varied high, moderate, and low levels of five job characteristics was used to model voluntary turnover decision processes for 532 nurses. Survey measures of these job characteristics obtained over the next 2 years were multiplied by weights derived from nurse simulations to yield turnover likelihood estimates. These estimates exhibited 80%, 127%, and 190% more predictive power (depending on turnover operationalization) than post-employment survey estimates of turnover intention, job satisfaction, and job availability. Groups of nurses with homogeneous voluntary turnover decision models were also identified, though no groups with homogeneous job perceptions were observed. Evidence suggested nurses responded to “shocks” as predicted. March and Simon’s model of voluntary turnover was supported and implications drawn for managing voluntary nursing turnover.     

Employee reactions to flattening organizational structures

This article examines the effectiveness of a newly introduced integrative structure and its impact on employee job perceptions in an aircraft maintenance organization. It is not common to find studies, that relate such changes to lower level employee reactions. The implementation of the change programme involved a system-wide approach incorporating both structural and cultural change. Using a retrospective methodology we assessed employee reactions to the changes introduced. We found that both intrinsic job satisfaction and job characteristics perceptions improved in the new integrative organization. The fact that positive findings have been identified when other studies found no relationship between such changes and attitudinal outcomes illustrates the efficacy of a system-wide approach to change. Extrinsic satisfaction and organizational commitment however did not improve. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that the latter areas are concerned with factors outside the direct completion of the job and may take much longer to change if indeed they can be shown to change over time at all.     

Gone Today but here Tomorrow: Extending the Unfolding Model of Turnover to Consider Boomerang Employees

Turnover research typically views voluntary turnover as an end state that severs the employment relationship permanently. However, this perspective overlooks the possibility that an employee who quits may return in the future. Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that these “Boomerangs” can be a valuable staffing resource for their organizations. Yet, research regarding this type of employee is largely absent. Thus, we know little about whether the experiences of these temporary leavers differ from those who leave an organization permanently. In this paper, we examined differences between Boomerangs (employees who quit but are later rehired) and “Alumni” (employees who quit but will not return) using both qualitative and quantitative data. In a large sample of professional service employees, we found that Boomerangs and Alumni reported different reasons for having quit, which meant they were more likely to be classified on different paths in the unfolding model of turnover. In addition, survival analyses on the time to turnover suggest that Boomerangs quit earlier than Alumni in their original tenure, paradoxically suggesting that employees who quit earlier may be the very employees who will return in the future. Together, our findings suggest an extension to the unfolding model that considers how the timing of and reasons for turnover impact post‐turnover (return) decisions.