Introduction
When an employee leaves the company of his or her own volition, it is called voluntary turnover. In this essay, I will discuss why voluntary turnover is a problem for many organisations and how to retain employees.
The first part of this essay will introduce the theoretical synthesis of why employees resign from their jobs based on the Eight Motivational Forces (Jr & Griffeth 2004). The second part of this essay will discuss the consequences to the organisation left behind by the employee. The third part will then focus on strategies for organisations to retain their highly talented and motivated employees.
Eight Motivational Forces
A theoratical synthesis proposed by Jr and Griffeth showed that there are eight motivate categories that drive an employee’s decisions about whether to stay or leave an organisation (Jr & Griffeth 2004).
By discovering the reasons as to why employees leave the organisation, strategies for organisations to increase retention can then be identified (Mowday 1984).
i) Affective forces
The first motivational mechanism is affective forces, which is a hedonistic approach-avoidance involving emotions evoked by the organization and membership in it (Jr & Griffeth 2004, p. 669). An employee is motivated to continue staying in the organisation when they have positive emotions towards the organisation and their co-workers (Jr & Griffeth 2004).
Conversely, a person who has negative emotions towards the organisation will want to avoid the
High employee turnover, where workers frequently leave and must be replaced, leads to increased spending on recruitment and training and can indicate management problems. Employees often have good reasons for moving on but if too many are leaving an organisation, can be very disruptive.
Employees may leave for a number of different reasons and these reasons may differ according to generations, gender, and education background and so on making the act of identifying why a particular employee packs up and leave the more complicated. Though studies have found some of the major reasons that an employee would leave would include reasons or factors such as that of; monetary, stress, work-life balance and career opportunities (Deery, 2008; De Vos&Meganck, 2009).
Retaining employees is one way the turnover rate can decrease, Branham (2000), focuses on retaining valuable employees by incorporating four key elements. The first key elements is, “be a company that people want to work for”. There are many companies that have been labeled as, “employers of choice”. These employers all have something in common, which is how they value their employers (Branham, 2000). They treat their employees with respect and like family. With being an “employer of choice,” people are the most valuable asset; not just customers but employees too. Many companies go above and beyond for their customers, but not for their employees, yet they wonder why they are losing valuable talent.
Employee turnover is one of the major concerns in the professional environment. The businesses are in need of employees who can relate with the organizations so their employee turnover rate can be reduced. Human Resources Management (HRM) suggests that managerial procedures are strengthening the relationship between the employees commitment towards organization and make it easy to understand the objectives along with mission. HRM practices and organization execution are the one that directs the employees and determine their intentions for turnover rate.
The end result of a lack of employee motivation in their jobs is turnover. When one is not happy with their career or job choice and it becomes clear that an employer is only looking out for the profit line of the corporation, employees will actively seek out new employment opportunities. The cost of turnover to an organization is tens of thousands of dollars now vying to be spent on interviewing, selecting, and training a replacement.
All over the globe retaining employees is a most critical factor for the organisations. High employee turnover is more common in private sector as compared to public. In construction industry, to reduce employee turnover and to improve the productivity of an organisation, organisations have to be aware of the reasons why an employees quit the organisation?. Employee turnover can be explained as the expenses, in term of money, time, and quality of work, that an organisation bear while replacing an employee. If an organisation fails to satisfy the needs of its employees then it is obvious that the employees will look forward to fulfill their necessities. This chapter discuss the reasons why employees quit their jobs.
Workforce turnover is a complex and important issue amongst today's organisations. It is perhaps one of the most often cited cause of increased cost and decreased productivity. No wonder people management has become an important frontier to extract and create more value from company assets. On comprehending the articles, it has become evident that organisations have moved beyond the traditional approach of only investing in core business activities, to invest in employee retention strategies. Many organisations, for example St. George Bank
The authors of this article give the misconceptions of employee turnover by systematically breaking down myths that organizations tend to believe cause employees to leave the workplace. The misconceptions are replaced with evidence based strategies that show the underlying factors beyond pay compensation that drive turnover in addition the employee morale. One of the meta-analytical relationships that
Employee retention has always been an important focus for human resource managers. Once a company has invested time and money to recruit and train a good employee, it is in their own best interest to retain that employee, to further develop and motivate him so that he continues to provide value to the organization. But, employers must also recognize and tend to what is in the best interest of their employees, if they intend to keep them. When a company overlooks the needs of its employees and focuses only on the needs of the organization, turnover often results. Excessive turnover in an organization is a prime indicator that something is not right in the employee environment. We will look at
Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology is devoted to the study of employee behavior in the workplace and understanding the issues facing organizations and employees in today’s complex and ever changing environment. Motivation refers to the set of forces that influence people to choose various behaviors among several alternatives available to them. An organization depends on the ability of management to provide a positive, fostering and motivating environment for its employees in order to increase profits, productivity and lower turnover rates of its employees. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and compare six academic journal articles and explore the behavior, job, and need based theories of motivation that can aid management in motivating and understanding their employees. Finding that delicate balance to can sometimes be elusive so effectively learning how to motivate by understanding, controlling and influencing factors to manipulate behavior and choices that are available to employees can produce the desired outcome.
Employee retention has always been an important focus for human resource managers. Once a company has invested time and money to recruit and train a good employee, it is in their own best interest to retain that employee, to further develop and motivate him so that he continues to provide value to the organization. But, employers must also recognize and tend to what is in the best interest of their employees, if they intend to keep them. When a company overlooks the needs of its employees and focuses only on the needs of the organization, turnover often results. Excessive turnover in an organization is a prime indicator that something is not right in the employee environment. We will look at
In the recent years, there has been viable evidence that shows that other factors in the work environment may also be strong push factors for retention (Burns, Bradley and Weiner, 2012, pg.445). The factors that contribute to forcing workers to leave the public sector include: "workload and staff shortages are contributing to burnout, high absenteeism, stress, depression, low morale, and de-motivation" (Burns, Bradley and Weiner, 2012, pg.445). It is also shown that poor working conditions also contributes to preventing staff morale and motivation and it also contributes directly to recruitment and retention (Burns, Bradley and Weiner, 2012, pg445). According to Burns, Bradley and Weiner (2012),
Even though employee retention starts with attracting potential employees, today’s society has placed a new and greater demand for skilled and educated employees as new hires for their companies. These employees, however, are starting to become harder and harder to find. So
High employee turnover rates bear an overall impact on organizational performance. More specifically, the costs of turnover will impact the company’s productivity. The cost of replacing employees can exceed 100% of the annual salary for the open position (Cascio, 2006). There are two types of costs associated with managing turnover, Separation costs and Replacement costs (Allen, Bryant and Vardaman, 2010). When employees voluntarily resign the organization acquires loss time and money to separate from the former employee. These costs include recruiting, selecting and training a suitable replacement. The relationship between turnover rate and performance are inverse. As collective turnover increases, an organizations productivity will decrease (Hausknecht and Trevor’s 2011). Developing mechanisms to offset the desire for employee’s to resign could mitigate the risk of company’s falling short on productivity, and incurring those costs that affect the bottom line.
Employee retention refers to policies and practices organizations used to prevent valuable employees from leaving their jobs (Ahlrichs, 2000).Knowing employee perception and appraising their retention factors are very important to an organization‘s achievement. Conversely, each employee in an organization constructs his or her own understanding of an event and assumptions (Argyris and Schon, 1978). It is the understanding of the situation that provokes an action (Weick, 1979; 1995).