Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

CONTROL VOLUNTARY TURNOVER BY UNDERSTANDING ITS CAUSES
EXCEPTIONS
137
The research that we’ve reviewed offers some clear advice on managing (or controlling)
employee turnover such as monitoring for signs or predictors of employees ’ quitting and
assessing the functionality and avoidability of employee turnover. With that said, however,
there are a number of considerations that should strengthen or weaken our recommended
actions.
Importance of workforce stability
Selective retention is less important in situations where workforce stability is less critical; conversely
stated, retention is more important in situations where stability is more critical. Four
questions immediately arise. First, are replacement employees readily available? If replacement
employees are readily available, selective retention should be less important to managers.
An immediate indicator of availability is the unemployment rate in the “ relevant labor
market. ” Numerous studies indicate a consistently negative, substantial relationship between
aggregate turnover and unemployment rates (r ’s commonly .80 and higher). In general, the
higher the unemployment rate, the higher the availability of replacement employees.
Second, can the requisite job - specific knowledge, skills, and abilities (as well as broader
needs for contextual, citizenship - based performance) be readily taught? If success in training
is relatively quick and inexpensive, selective retention should also be less of an issue.
Two immediate and related indicators of training success are the job ’s organizational level
and whether advanced education is required. In general, lower- level (e.g. non - exempt)
jobs that do not require advanced educational experiences (e.g. bachelor ’s or master ’s
degrees) should lend themselves to quicker and less expensive training than higher- level
(e.g. exempt) positions that require higher education. When considered together, lowerlevel
jobs that are filled primarily with non - college - educated persons and that occur in
labor markets with high unemployment rates strongly suggest far less attention might be
devoted to selective retention.
Third, it is becoming increasingly clear that many employees are valued for their
human and intellectual capital. More specifically, some employees may have specialized
knowledge that is critical to organizational effectiveness. With the (incredible) pace of
organizational change and the competitive nature of many industries, human and intellectual
capital should become increasingly important in a manager ’s judgment about what
is and what is not functional turnover.
Fourth, as an organization’s success becomes more dependent on relationships, network
connections, and interactions with others within and outside of the organization,
an employee ’s social capital, independent of his or her skills, knowledge, and abilities,
becomes a more critical asset. If employees with high social capital quit, they might
leave behind a communication gap that cannot easily be filled. Unless other employees
have worked closely with the quitter and developed a similar network of connections in
both quantity and quality, such social capital losses may lead to immediate decrements
in performance that, due to the inherently interdependent nature of today ’s work, may
ripple throughout the organization (Dess and Shaw, 2001 ; Shaw, Duffy, Johnson, and
Lockhart, 2005 ). In sum, managers need to consider the availability of replacement workers,
the ease of training, and the leaver ’s human capital, intellectual property, and social capital
in judging the functionality of an individual ’s turnover.