Factors causing Voluntary turnover

 

Employees may decide to leave an organization due to various reasons. In earlier studies it was emphasized that employees will leave only when there is a ‘perceived desirability to do so and when there is a perceived possibility of such ease of movement’ (March and Simon 1958) According to this theory, for an employee to quit a job two factors had to be satisfied. The first, he should have a desirability to quit the job due to some reason. secondly there should be ease of movement from the job. If there are no job opportunities in the market, if the employee cannot leave the job due to some legal or other binding factor such as bonds or loans, even if there is a desire, the employee will not be able to leave the job.

Employees intention to turnover or desire to quit may trigger due to various reasons, Salary expectations, job dissatisfaction, stress, skills and ability, difficulty to balance work with family life, carrier development, poor working conditions, internal politics, superior’s attitude, government policy are some examples for the reasons that people intend to leave their jobs. The reasons for an individual’s turnover intention may vary according to age, gender, marriage, education levels and years of working in the organization (Liu and Wang, 2006). Previous studies found that the rate of female employee turnover is higher, as compared to male employees. This may be attributed mainly due their family commitments and child birth.  According to Ma et al. (2003), ‘Employees who are young, inexperienced and with high education level tend to have low level of satisfaction about jobs and careers, and have lower commitment to the organization, these negative attitudes are associated with turnover intention’.

By studying the reasons for the voluntary turnover intentions We can categories them into three main blocks based on the ability of controlling the factor that affect the turnover.

1)      Individual factors affecting turnover.

2)      Institutional factors affecting employee turn over

3)      External factors affecting turnover.       

 

 

Voluntary turnover                                    

 

                    Individual Factors             Institutional Factors                       External Factors

                                                                               

1)      Individual factors affecting turnover.

Individual factors leading to turnover intentions refer to the personal characteristics of an employee. These characteristics could be those which are ingrained in the individual, such as personality, or those which are learnt, such as skill, ability etc. Studies indicate that various cognitive and non-cognitive factors do influence, directly or indirectly to an employee’s intention and then finally the decision to actually quit the organization.

Stagner(1948) defines personality as "the organization within the individual of those perceptual, cognitive, emotional and motivational systems which determine his or her unique responses to the environment‟ (Jha 2009).  Friedman & Rosenman’s (1959) theory of Type A & Type B personality, motivated researchers to unearth the relationship between personality and turnover intentions among individuals. However, a significant relationship between personality and turnover intentions could not be established from the researches. (Dole et al. 2001).

Going beyond the cognitive factors, researchers tried to find out the relationship between non-cognitive factors like ability, gender, number of years of experience, etc on the one hand and turnover intentions amongst employees on the other. Ability refers to the capacity of an individual to perform tasks on a job. The overall ability of an individual is essentially composed of two sets of factors: intellectual ability and physical ability. Jackofsky & Peters (1983) hypothesized that ability has an indirect and multifaceted effect on the desirability of movement. Further, the model hypothesized that as people with high ability are dissatisfied working on routine tasks, they have a high desirability to move to an alternative job. However, a further study on Jackofsky & Peter’s (1983) model showed that ability has only a marginal effect on an individual’s perceived desirability of movement from his current organization (Rosse, 1987).

Scholars have also attempted to establish a connection between ethnicity, gender, personality, and hierarchical position on the one hand and turnover intentions on the other. The obtained results however negated any such connection (Dole et al. 2001). But it is commonly believed that there is a relationship between gender and turnover as statistics show a higher turnover among female employees in certain industries. Eg : apparel industry, education sector and retail sector in Sri Lanka.

1.      Institutional factors affecting turnover

 

As discussed earlier there are many factors that would make an employee want to quit the job they are doing, but could be controlled by the organization if they knew the reason for the quitting. These factors are known as the institutional factors effecting turnover.

Employees would leave the job when they are dissatisfied. Below are some of the main reasons that would make an employee dissatisfied with the job that they are doing for which the organization is responsible and therefore could be controlled by it if they provide an acceptable solution to these reasons. In most of the organizations today when an employee tenders a resignation an “exit interview” is held and the reasons for the resignation is discussed. Based on the outcome of this interview the employer provides alternative solutions for the employees reasons for resignation and if the it is acceptable the resignation is revoked. Some such alternative solutions are salary increments, transfers, providing other benefits, offering a flexi working schedule etc.

 Smith (2009) listed out twelve major reasons for employees to leave from their Jobs. Those were rude behavior, work-life imbalance, inability to meet expectations, employee misalignment, feeling undervalued, lack of coaching and feedback, lack of decision making ability, inadequate skills, organization’s instability, stagnation, lack of growth opportunities and lack of appreciation. We can also add remuneration, working environment, job stress supervisor attitude, other benefits available other than the salary as other institutional factors affecting employee turnover.

2.      External factors affecting turnover

 

These are the factors that cause employee turnover but the causes cannot be controlled neither by the employee or the institution. Employees may be forced to leave their jobs and shift to other geographies due to political unrest, due to natural disasters or plagues. This type of reasons can be termed as external factors. Some examples for this type of turnover is employees resigning jobs in war tone areas, natural disaster prone areas.

 

 

 

 

References

1.     Dole, C. and Schroeder, R.G. (2001). The impact of various factors on the personality, job satisfaction and turnover intentions of professional accountants. Managerial accounting Journal, Vol 16, No 4, pp 234-45.

2.      Friedman, M. and Rosenman. (1974), Type A Behavior and Your Heart. Knopf, New York, NY.

3.    Jackofsy, E. and Peters, L. (1983). The hypothesized effects of ability in turnover process, Academy of Management Review, Vol 8, pp 46-49.

4.   Jha, S. (2009). Determinants of employee turnover intentions: A review. Management Today, VoL.9, No. 2, pp. 26-33.

5    Liu, Y.A. and Wang, F. (2006). A Study on the Influence Factors of Employee Turnover Intention, Enterprise Economy, Vol 6, pp. 42-44.

6   Ma, S.J., Chen, J.Q. and Wang, L. (2003). A Study on the Causes of Employee Turnover. China Human Resources De[1]velopment, 9, pp. 18-20.

6.    Rosse, J.G. (1987), Job-related ability and turnover, Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol 1, No 4, pp 326-36.