Category Archives: Turnover
Predictors of quit rates (Human Resource Management)
In honor of March Madness, let’s play a game. Here are variables related to quit rates:
- union representation
- employee participation
- higher relative wages
- internal promotion policies
- contingent staffing
- electronic monitoring
- variable pay
Now, set your bracket and guess which factors increase quit rates and which factors decrease quit rates. If you’re really feeling sporting, establish some sort of office pool. Since the suspense is probably overwhelming, I’ll now reveal the answers.
Here are the factors that decreased quit rates:
- union representation
- employee participation
- higher relative wages
- internal promotion policies
Here are the factors that increased quit rates:
- contingent staffing
- electronic monitoring
- variable pay
For this study, a single item asking managers for the percentage of their annual voluntary quit rate served as the indicator of quit rates; union membership indicated union representation; the ratio of median pay to the local cost of living served as the barometer of relative pay; use of offline problem-solving groups and the degree to which the company used self-directed teams served as indexes of employee participation; percentage of employees who were internally promoted served as the mark of internal promotion policies; percentage of employees that were employed in a temporary or part-time basis served as the gauge of contingent staffing; percentage of time that an employee’s daily work was electronically monitored served as the measure of electronic monitoring; and the percentage of an employee’s salary that was not fixed (e.g., commission based) was the indicator of variable pay. The overall sample size consisted of 938 managers from the telecommunications industry.
Predicting Turnover? You Might Want to Measure This (IO Psychology)
Topic: Job Attitudes, Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: When and How Is Job Embeddedness Predictive of Turnover?
A Meta-Analytic Investigation
Authors: Jiang, K., Liu, D., McKay, P. F., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
Have you ever had a job where you felt like you were stuck? Like if in a perfect world you might leave, but your work obligations, salary, family needs, or community ties didn’t allow you to? If you’ve ever felt this way you’ve demonstrated what researchers call job embeddedness, or the integrated reasons employees become stuck or caught in a job. This idea is important when it comes to understanding turnover.
When it comes to predicting turnover, Jiang and colleagues expected that it’s not just how an employee thinks or feels about his or her job, it’s also the degree of on- and off-the-job embeddedness that an employee experiences.
The researchers visualized turnover like this: depending on the employee’s national culture, type of organization, and gender, on- and off-the-job sources of embeddedness will influence turnover intentions. These turnover intentions, also influenced by job attitudes and possible job alternatives, will then directly and indirectly influence actual turnover.
Did the authors find evidence to support this idea of turnover? After using 65 independent samples in a meta-analysis, the authors found that as job embeddedness increased the intention to turnover decreased. What’s more interesting is that this relationship was observed when job attitudes and alternatives were controlled, indicating that job embeddedness is a unique piece of the pie when it comes to understanding turnover. Jiang et al. also found that on-the-job sources of embeddedness had stronger relationship to turnover intentions in public organizations and when the employees came from a female-dominated sample.
So overall, job embeddness can decrease an employee’s intent to turnover, which often times directly or indirectly lowers their chances of actually turning over. Thus, while being “stuck” might have a negative connotation for employees, organizations might want to consider bolstering employee job embeddedness in positive ways to keep turnover levels low. The authors suggest investing in career development opportunities or helping subsidize home purchases in favorite neighborhoods. Either way, in addition to measuring employee engagement and job satisfaction, surveying levels of job embeddedness could be a useful tool in predicting future levels of employee turnover.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Home not sweet anymore? What happens to your employees during and after international assignments?
Topic: Turnover
Publication: Academy of Management Journal (APR 2012)
Article: No place like home? An identity strain perspective on repatriate turnover
Authors: Maria L. Kraimer, Margaret A. Shaffer, David A. Harrison and Hong Ren
Reviewed By: Nupur Deshpande
What happens to employees during and after an international assignment? Mostly, they leave. Why? Well, it has to do with the strain that assignments abroad have on their (now) dual identities—a conflict within the repatriate. You see, while employees enjoy the sunshine, gourmet cooking, new sights and sounds along with other perks of working in a whole new environment, they are also taking on an international employee identity, wherein they see themselves as an aggregate of their international work role, work-related experiences, and interactions with international and non-international employees in that setting, thereby making it a part of their self-concept.
This process is facilitated by the degree of job embeddedness (feelings of attachment toward the organization) the expatriate has toward their international role, on and off the job. However, being involved and owning their international identity means letting go of their old one. When they come back to their home county, they see themselves as having taken on an ex-pat identity and responsibilities, which may lead them to expect their home organization to reward them with better perks such as higher levels of job responsibility, higher pay, opportunities to utilize skills acquired on global assignments, and respect from colleagues. When they aren’t met with the fanfare they feel they deserve, they may experience feelings of job deprivation when the repatriates compare themselves to their home-based colleagues. This induces identity strain—the feeling that your positive self-image is threatened because the organization does not see them as they see themselves. If the level of strain gets too high and reaches a point that is unbearable, the repatriate quits in order to find an environment that is supportive of their new identity.
What can employers do to help their employees readjust to life back home? Two things: 1) acknowledge that the employees self-concept may have changed in their time abroad and 2) change their work to fit their new identity. Communicating the value of their experience and involving them in operations in which they now have expertise may keep them in your organization and happy.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
A Closer Look at Human Capital as a Competitive Advantage (Human Resource Management)
Topic: Talent Management, Turnover
Publication: Academy of Management Review (JUL 2012)
Article: Rethinking Sustained Competitive Advantage from Human Capital
Authors: Benjamin A. Campbell, Russell Coff, & David Kryscynski
Reviewed By: Susan Rosengarten
All organizations want the secret to retaining top talent; I challenge you to find me one that doesn’t! Turnover and new-hire training is costly and organizations are always looking to curtail their expenses and get the best bang for their buck. Finding job candidates with the right mix of knowledge, skills, and abilities can be tough, but getting the right people to stay once you’ve found them can be even tougher.
Conventional wisdom suggests that a firm’s human capital can be a source of great competitive advantage, but only if the variables of employees’ jobs restrict them from seeking employment elsewhere. Employees with general human capital, or knowledge and skills that can be applied in other settings, have greater market value than employees with firm-specific human capital, which does not transfer to other settings quite as well. However, Campbell, Coff, and Kryscynski (2012) suggest that there’s more to the story than meets the eye and this approach to human capital mobility may be overly simplistic. They say that factors of supply and demand play a crucial role as well. Under the right conditions, employees with firm-specific human capital may be far more mobile and tradable than you might think. Conversely, supply and demand factors can restrict employees with general human capital as well. Specific supply factors outlined in this article include the hassle of having to search for a new job and whether or not an employee can accurately appraise what his skills are worth and would command on the market. On the other hand, demand factors focus on how valuable an employee’s skills are deemed to be by potential employers.
So for all of you managers out there, use this information to your advantage! Compensation designs, employee selections, and job designs can be strategically created and leveraged to create supply and demand constraints and, ultimately, to produce a competitive advantage for your firm.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Talkin’ ‘bout my generation: Does it affect work-related attitudes?
Topic: Job Attitudes, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, Turnover
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (in press)
Article: Generational differences in work-related attitudes: A Meta-analysis
Authors: D. P. Costanza, J. M. Badger, R. L. Fraswer, J. B. Severt, & P. A. Gade
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin
Do generational differences predict work-related attitudes, like job satisfaction and commitment? Although many organizations base training programs and interventions on the belief that there are generational differences, research has found mixed results. David Costanza and his colleagues recently conducted a meta-analysis using the available research findings to determine if there really are generational differences in work-related attitudes.
Contrary to popular belief, there were not meaningful differences in work-related attitudes (like job satisfaction or organizational commitment) due to the generation of the worker. Older workers were slightly more satisfied than younger workers, but this result was likely due to the difference in age or tenure of the employees and not due to generational differences. Also, older workers were less likely to leave their jobs; but again, this result is best explained by factors other than generational differences.
So what’s the takeaway message from this meta-analysis? Don’t just assume that there are generational differences that you have to deal with. The research doesn’t support the idea that workers’ attitudes are affected by their generation, so before implementing any interventions or programs based on mitigating generational differences, conduct a needs assessment of your employees. Find out if there are any differences that need to be addressed before just assuming that you need to develop an intervention.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Employee embeddedness can improve retention rates (IO Psychology)
Topic: Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (online pre-publication)
Article: When and how is job embeddedness predictive of turnover? A meta-analytic investigation
Authors: Jiang, K., Liu, D., McKay, P. F., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R.
Reviewed by: Larry Martinez
Turnover is a huge concern for most organizations. The cost of recruiting, hiring, training, and replacing employees can be astounding. It’s much cheaper to just keep the employees you have for as long as possible (unless, of course, they are terrible). So, what can organizations do to try and prevent the good employees from leaving? This is what Liu and colleagues have investigated by collecting data from 65 studies and nearly 43,000 individuals.
Specifically, these authors look at the influence of the number of links (e.g., friends, obligations, responsibilities) that employees have both within their organizations as well as in their communities—otherwise known as on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness, respectively. Previous work has shown that the more connections people have, the less likely they are to quit their jobs. However, this past work has shown inconsistent results and doesn’t always include other important variables that affect and/or explain the relationship between embeddedness and turnover. Using such a large sample, this study clarifies some of the confusion.
One big (and obvious) finding was that the more links an employee has, the less likely they are to quit. Impressively, relationship held true even when other variables such as job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, or the perceived availability of alternative jobs were taken into account. Second, this study uncovered some interesting relationships. For instance, feelings about the organization were stronger in collectivistic cultures and among female employees. Importantly, this research also shows that embeddedness is negatively related to intentions to quit, likelihood of looking for other jobs, and likelihood of having poorer performance, all of which were, in turn, positively related to actual quitting.
Based on these findings, organizations can try to reduce turnover by providing opportunities for their employees to become more embedded. For example, making sure employees are well-integrated into work social circles, are on working on interdependent projects, and have connections with community organizations can all help to “embed” employees and reduce the likelihood they will quit. This extra effort can have real bottom-line consequences!
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
The relationship between job performance and turnover – It’s not as simple as we thought! (IO Psychology)
Topic: Job Performance, Turnover, Culture
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2012)
Article: The effect of culture on the curvilinear relationship between performance and turnover
Authors: Michael C. Sturman, Lian Shao, & Jan H. Katz
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin
The relationship between job performance and turnover has long been thought to be curvilinear (U-shaped). In other words, the highest and lowest performers are most likely to quit their jobs. Numerous studies have replicated these findings, but these studies were almost entirely conducted in the United States. In a recent article, Michael Sturman and his colleagues investigated the effect that culture may have on the relationship between performance and turnover.
The authors analyzed data from employees in 24 countries. They compared the countries in terms of in-group collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. In a culture that is highly collectivistic, people have a strong desire to be part of a group, and group goals are more important than individual ones. Power distance refers to the extent that people in that culture are accepting of unequal power distribution, and uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which a culture’s members are comfortable with uncertainty and risk.
Sturman and his colleagues found that the curvilinear relationship between job performance and turnover didn’t really hold up in some cultures. The U-shaped relationship was weaker (in other words, it’s a much flatter U) for collectivist cultures and for cultures high in power distance and high in uncertainty avoidance. Voluntary turnover was less likely in those cultures than in cultures high in individualism and low in power distance and uncertainty avoidance. The relationship between performance and turnover was stronger (more U-shaped) in cultures that were high in performance orientation.
These findings are important because they indicate that the nature of the relationship between performance and turnover is not the same for all cultures. Therefore, the same HR practices used to reduce turnover may or may not be effective, depending on the country in which they’re used. HR practices (e.g., efforts to encourage turnover of low performers, retention of high performers) should be chosen based on the target culture.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Jobs: What Makes the Difference for Moms After Childbirth? (IO Psychology)
Topic: Work-Life Balance, Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2011)
Article: Health and Turnover of Working Mothers After Childbirth Via the Work-Family Interface: An Analysis Across Time
Authors: Dawn S. Carlson, Joseph G. Grzywacz, Merideth Ferguson and Emily M. Hunter, C. Randall Clinch and Thomas A. Arcury
Reviewed By: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor
It has been shown that certain resources in jobs such as supervisor and coworker support decrease turnover of new mothers, but little research has been done on other positive aspects of jobs like skill discretion, job security and schedule control, and how they affect the work – family relationship.
Skill discretion is being able to use a variety of skills in a job and provides meaning for a job. It enriches family life via spillover from work life (as shown in previous research).
Job security should also be big for working moms, as they tend to have many concerns about job loss. These fears arise from maternity leaves and necessary absences due to childcare. These anxieties can affect performance.
Lastly, it seems like having schedule control would be a big benefit to working moms, by allowing them to have some control over their working times.
The findings of this study for these job variables? Drum roll please…skill discretion and job security were significant contributors to work-to-family enrichment as hypothesized, but schedule control’s effect depended on the type of job of the working moms. For those moms who were in jobs with high psychological demands, having schedule control exacerbated the work-to-family conflict, which was already higher for them than for moms in jobs with low psychological demands. The authors theorized that perhaps these moms were using schedule control to try to “fit more in” their everyday lives ratherthan to organize their existing responsibilities.
Additional results were as expected: greater work-to-family conflict predicted poorer physical and mental health over time, and turnover occurred more frequently for those with poorer mental or physical health. Greater work-to-family enrichment did predict better physical health, but surprisingly it did not predict better mental health. Instead, there was not a relationship between work-to-family enrichment and mental health. In other words, those moms who reported greater work-to-family enrichment did not also generally report greater mental health, but they did have a tendency to report greater physical health. So, they may or may not have been mentally exhausted, but physically they were fine. Interesting…
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Smile Like You Mean It: Reducing Turnover By Communicating Organizational Honesty (IO Psychology)
Topic: Recruiting, Turnover
Publication: Personnel Psychology
Article: Mechanism Linking Realistic Job Previews with Turnover: A Meta-
Analytic Path Analysis
Authors: Earnest, D. R., Allen, D. G., & Landis, R. S.
Reviewed By: Katie Bachman
Nerd alert! I love me some realistic job previews (RJPs to those in the know). So, you can imagine my glee when I saw a brand-spankin’ new meta-analysis in the current P-Psych that dealt with RJPs. RJPs include any kind of manuals, presentations, videos, and written or verbal information that contains positive, negative, and neutral
information to job candidates or new hires. The big difference between an RJP and regular old recruiting materials is the inclusion of negative and neutral information. Basically, rather than trying to make your company look like puppies and rainbows, you throw in some stuff about the storm clouds too, with the end result being that potential employees have a more well-rounded impression of what their life would be like if they worked for you. Previous researchers (myself included!) have tried to tease out the mechanism behind the RJP – what really makes them work. Hark! We may have found one piece of the puzzle! (I hear bells chiming, is that just me?)
The results of my new favorite meta-analysis suggest that it may be all about perceived organizational honesty. By giving potential employees the good, the bad, and the ugly, your organization is communicating honesty, literally and symbolically. You’re giving them balanced information, but you’re also signaling that you are a truthful and upright partner in their job experience. An RJP sends a message that you won’t lie to them once they’re on the job and people like that sort of thing. The long term effect of all this up-front truth telling is reduced voluntary turnover. And who doesn’t like that?
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
IO Psychology:Organizational Culture: If the Shoe Fits
Topic: Job Attitudes, Turnover
Publication: Personnel Psychology (2011)
Article: Understanding newcomers’ adaptability and work-related outcomes: testing the mediating roles of perceived P-E fit variables
Authors: M. Wang, Y. Zhan, E. McCune, D. Truxillo
Reviewed by: Chelsea Rowe
When considering a new position at a new firm, we often try to predict how well we will fit with that company. We consider how well our own goals align with those of the company (Person-Organization Fit), how well we could get along with the people we’d potentially be working closely with (Person-Group Fit), and how well the demands of the actual position line up with our own unique skills and abilities (Person-Job Fit). These three considerations combine to formulate a more holistic picture of how well we will fit in within a potential work setting (Person-Environment Fit).
Finding a good-fit can be easier for some than for others. In a study of Chinese workers, Wang, et al. (2011) investigated how new employees’ adaptability influenced their likelihood of perceiving fit within organizations. Adaptability also isn’t a “one size fits all” concept: different types of adaptability were uniquely related to specific aspects of Fit. The more flexible & broad-minded someone is with new people, termed interpersonal adaptability, the more apt he or she is to experience Person-Group Fit. Cultural adaptability, describing active attempts to assimilate into various cultures, fostered greater Person-Organization Fit. Those who are willing to participate and adjust oneself to fit within the culture at his or her workplace seem to also feel more as though the organization’s goals represent some of their own goals.
Wang and his colleagues checked up on employees’ satisfaction, performance, and turnover two months after these newcomers began their new jobs. Perceived fit mattered for these work-related outcomes! When employees express greater Person-Environment Fit, not only did they experience greater satisfaction with their jobs, but also had better performance ratings (as assessed by their bosses), and were less likely to turnover.
Newcomers with greater adaptability may make the transition into new roles more easily. However, managers can’t hire on the sole basis of adaptability; more knowledge and skills may make the less adaptable candidate the better person for the job. In this case, managers can take active attempts to ensure that their new-hire experiences greater Person-Environment fit. The more an employee feels at home, the more satisfied & productive he or she will be and the less likely he or she will be to leave the company.
human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
