MGMT1002 Lecture 8: MGMT1002 Week 8 – Turnover
Week 8 – Turnover
Types of Turnover – Voluntary and Involuntary
Voluntary turnover is when an employee self-willingly makes the decision to leave the organisation.
It could be due to a better job offering, staff conflict and a lack of opportunities in career
advancement.
Involuntary turnover occurs when the employer makes the decision to discharge an employee and
the employee unwillingly leaves his or her position. It could be as a result of poor performance or
staff conflict.
Costs of Withdrawal Behaviours
• Absenteeism contributed 49% of the total cost
• Involuntary and voluntary turnover contributed to 27% of this cost
• Turnover disrupts normal operations
• Lost productivity while the job is vacant
• Preparing for recruiting costs, recruiting costs, screening costs, interviewing costs,
evaluation costs
• Training costs
• Cost of reduced efficiency and quality of performance
Kwon et al. examined EI practices, training and development and availability of potential workers as
moderating variables in the relationship between voluntary employee turnover and organizational
performance -> EI procedures have an immense impact and include constructing work-teams,
information sharing etc., availability of workers had a slight moderating impact and training
investment had no impact.
Physical Withdrawal Behaviours – act of physically removing oneself.
• Lateness
• Absenteeism
• Turnover
Psychological Withdrawal Behaviours - a mental state in which employees are disengaged from the
workplace.
• Negative attitudes
• Poor job satisfaction
• Lack of commitment or negative commitment
• Presenteeism – showing up for work but working at a limited capacity possibly due to
mental strain or sleep deprivation.
• Burnout – emotional exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy.
General Model of the Causes of Voluntary Turnover (1)
Shocks to employee – organizational change, unethical behaviour
of company. All these factors drive the intention to quit which
then predicts voluntary turnover.
There are two broad streams of research on turnover:
• Job attitudes – job satisfaction and commitment -> Micro
research
• Unemployment rates, job alternatives and demand factors (social or economic) -> Macro
factors
Micro research – Mobley (1977) model of linkage between
job dissatisfaction and turnover
Summary of empirical research on Antecedents of Turnover –
• Demographic characteristics such as gender, race – very weak relationship to turnover
• Job Satisfaction – modest negative relationship to turnover
• Work experiences such as role clarity, role conflict, overall stress and leader member
exchange – weak to moderate relationship
• External environment factors such as perceived job alternatives – very weakly related to
turnover
• Most important predictor of job turnover - Cognitions and behaviours – organizational
commitment, intentions to quit (strongest predictor of voluntary turnover)
Correlates and outcomes
• Lateness is not correlated to predicting voluntary turnover
• Absences is weak to moderately related to voluntary turnover (0.2 correlation)
• Performance is associated to voluntary turnover but weakly (-0.15)
Traditional models of Turnover
Summary of findings:
• Less satisfied and committed employees think about leaving, look for alternative jobs, are
more likely to quite and do each of these activities more when they feel there are attractive
job alternatives
• Many macro levels (eg. org. size, culture etc.) influence turnover by influencing satisfaction
and commitment
• Despite this, these traditional models do not explain that much variance in voluntary
turnover eg. 50%. There is still something missing from models – traditional model can’t
explain 50% of reasons as to why people leave.
Recent Thinking (2000s) – The Unfolding Model of Turnover (2)
• Developed a substantially different model to the traditional model
• Focused on “shocks to the system”
• A shock to the system is a distinguishable event that jarres an employee towards making
deliberate judgments about their jobs and perhaps to voluntarily quit their jobs.
• Not all events are shocks – an event must cause a person to rethink their current
circumstances eg. New boss, pregnancy, ill health, organizational change
Document Summary
Voluntary turnover is when an employee self-willingly makes the decision to leave the organisation. It could be due to a better job offering, staff conflict and a lack of opportunities in career advancement. Involuntary turnover occurs when the employer makes the decision to discharge an employee and the employee unwillingly leaves his or her position. It could be as a result of poor performance or staff conflict. Involuntary and voluntary turnover contributed to 27% of this cost: absenteeism contributed 49% of the total cost, turnover disrupts normal operations, preparing for recruiting costs, recruiting costs, screening costs, interviewing costs, Lost productivity while the job is vacant evaluation costs: training costs, cost of reduced efficiency and quality of performance. Physical withdrawal behaviours act of physically removing oneself. Psychological withdrawal behaviours - a mental state in which employees are disengaged from the workplace: negative attitudes, poor job satisfaction, presenteeism showing up for work but working at a limited capacity possibly due to.
