Myth: Turnover Is Driven by Job Dissatisfaction
Understanding New Perspectives on Why Employees Leave and Stay
Johnny turned and stormed out of Manager Green’s office, threatening to quit as soon as he could find a job that would increase his paycheck. Manager Green sighed. Benjamin had already left, and the turnover rate in Manager Green’s business unit has continued to creep up. Manager Green has learned that even though Benjamin and Johnny mentioned their paychecks, their motivations for leaving are likely deeper than that. Manager Green has also learned to conduct a much more thorough analysis of the impact of turnover. He has determined that there are two key subgroups of employees in his unit, experienced customer service representatives and project managers, who are driving the rising turnover, causing performance disruptions when they leave, and are very challenging and costly to replace. He has also discovered that employee exit interview data indicates that 70% of employees exiting his unit are dissatisfied with their jobs, and that job satisfaction scores from employee surveys suggest that the job satisfaction of customer service representatives and project managers has declined since last year. Manager Green is tempted to focus his retention efforts on job dissatisfaction; however, when he mentions this to Manager Savvy, she encourages him to take a broader decision frame before acting. Focusing solely on dissatisfaction of leavers and those in high turnover units could be a misleading example of sampling on the dependent variable, which is when you only focus on the outcome that is of interest as opposed to examining the complete set of possibilities (as described in the Introduction).
Kernel of Truth
It is true that job attitudes in general, and job satisfaction in particular, can lead to turnover. Many people do follow a “traditional” path to turnover in which they become dissatisfied with their job, or with some important facet of their job, such as the nature of the work, rewards, supervision, opportunities for advancement, or even co-workers. This dissatisfaction leads them to search for alternative opportunities, and to compare their current job circumstances to these alternatives. When they find an acceptable or preferable alternative, many people leave (although many do not). Some individuals even become so dissatisfied that they leave before securing an alternative. The most comprehensive summary of research to date finds that overall job satisfaction is one of the most consistent predictors of individual turnover decisions.1 However, that same research suggests that job satisfaction explains far less than half of the variation in individual turnover decisions—meaning the bulk of the turnover decision is explained by other factors! Savvy managers need to consider additional perspectives about how individuals arrive at turnover decisions.
What the Research Says
Research is showing that job satisfaction may be a major driving force in less than 50% of individual turnover decisions.2 Why do many dissatisfied employees stay, while some satisfied employees leave? We describe the research evidence from three key perspectives on turnover decisions that help to address these questions. One such perspective, the unfolding model of turnover, suggests that there are multiple decision paths that could lead to a turnover decision.3 The unfolding model brings three key new ideas to the understanding of turnover: paths, shocks, and scripts. Research suggests at least four primary paths by which individuals arrive at a turnover decision that may each have different retention implications: leaving an unsatisfying job; leaving for something better; following a plan; and leaving without a plan. We describe each path in more detail below. A shock is defined as an event that leads someone to consider quitting his or her job. Many shocks are negative job-related events that jar the individual into thinking of leaving, but all kinds of things can be turnover shocks. Shocks can be expected (e.g., graduating from school) or unexpected (e.g., discovering a spouse has to relocate); job-related (e.g., a negative performance appraisal) or non-job-related (e.g., pregnancy); and positive (e.g., winning the lottery), neutral (e.g., a merger), or negative (e.g., sexual harassment).4 A script is a turnover-related plan that some individuals have in place that details under what circumstances they will leave their job, for example, when they finish school, when their spouse gets relocated, or when they earn a certain amount of money.
Leaving an unsatisfying job is the path most representative of the typical turnover process described earlier. That is, individuals become dissatisfied with one or more elements of their job or work environment, and then leave if they find a suitable alternative. Leaving for something better entails leaving for an attractive alternative, and may or may not involve dissatisfaction. This differs from the previous path because dissatisfaction no longer plays such a key role. Many individuals who are perfectly satisfied with their current jobs might still leave if they hear about or are approached about an attractive alternative. Traditional employee satisfaction surveys would not help the organization prepare for or intervene in these cases. These decisions may also be initiated by a “shock” such as an unsolicited job offer. Following a plan refers to individuals who quit in response to a script or plan already in place. Examples include employees who know they will leave if their spouse gets promoted, if they get accepted into a particular degree program, after completing a particularly marketable training program, or after receiving a retention bonus. These paths also have little to do with dissatisfaction and would not be captured by traditional employee satisfaction surveys. Leaving without a plan involves leaving as a reaction to a shock without a plan in place and without searching, evaluating alternatives, or undergoing the traditional withdrawal process. These are likely impulsive quits, typically in response to negative shocks such as being passed over for a promotion. Below, we discuss some of the practical implications of these ideas, but first we turn to another key advance in thinking about turnover: job embeddedness.
Most thinking and research about turnover focuses on why employees leave. Recall, though, our discussion of sampling on the dependent variable: focusing only on leavers and reasons for leaving ignores something very powerful—why people stay. Job embeddedness theory focuses on the multiple ways in which employees become embedded in their jobs and communities over time.5 This perspective brings two key new ideas to the understanding of turnover. One is that the reasons employees stay may be just as informative as the reasons employees leave. This is a powerful insight that provides a new perspective for thinking about turnover and retention. The other is that sometimes factors that have nothing to do with the workplace influence stay or leave decisions. These ideas may sound obvious, but they are rarely systematically considered in models of turnover or by managers. The primary premise of job embeddedness theory is that, over time, employees develop connections and relationships both on and off the job that form a network. To the extent leaving a job would require severing or rearranging these connections, employees who have many connections are more embedded in the organization.
There are three types of connections: links, fit, and sacrifice. Each of these connections may be focused on the organization or on the surrounding community. Employees who have more links, a stronger sense of fit, and greater sacrifices associated with leaving the organization would be less likely to quit. To the extent employees have links, a sense of fit, and sacrifices associated with leaving the community, they would also be less likely to quit when quitting would involve relocating out of the community.
More specifically, links are connections with other people, groups, or organizations such as co-workers, work groups, mentors, friends, or relatives. Employees with numerous links to others in their organization and community are more embedded and would find it more difficult to leave. Fit represents the extent to which an employee sees himself or herself as compatible with their job, organization, and community. For example, an employee who values community service would be more embedded in an organization and community that provided extensive opportunities to get involved in community service. Sacrifice represents what would be given up by leaving a job, and could include financial rewards based on tenure, a positive work environment, promotional opportunities, community status, or even home ownership in a tough market to sell. Employees who would have to sacrifice more by leaving are more embedded and more likely to stay. Interestingly, research is showing that job embeddedness is related to job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors as well as turnover.6
A third new perspective on turnover suggests that the motives that drive individuals to quit may be different than the reasons they provide (to themselves and to others) after the decision has been made. Summarizing a great deal of prior theory and research, the forces model identifies eight distinct motivational forces that act as the direct motivators driving quit decisions: affective forces (i.e., lack of positive emotional attachment to the organization); alternative forces (e.g., receiving an attractive job offer or believing in such possibilities in the future); behavioral forces (e.g., low costs of leaving the organization); calculative forces (e.g., low possibility of attaining important values and goals such as career development and promotion in the future when remaining in the organization); normative forces (e.g., wanting to be closer to family); contractual forces (e.g., breach of the implied contract between an employer and employee based on the mutual beliefs, perceptions, and informal obligations that exist); constituent forces (e.g., lack of attachment to coworkers and work groups); and moral/ethical forces (e.g., believing that switching jobs regularly is good and that staying long means stagnation).7 This taxonomy of motivational forces provides a useful summary of the myriad predictors of turnover that have been studied. Further, the researchers behind the model have developed a survey measure assessing each of the forces.8
Evidence-Based Management Implications
Turnover research suggests that understanding and managing turnover requires a broader perspective than simply focusing on how satisfied or dissatisfied an individual may be with their job. Here are several key practical suggestions for savvy evidence-based managers:
Multiple Paths to Turnover
•For paths based on dissatisfaction, use traditional retention management approaches such as monitoring workplace attitudes and managing common causes of dissatisfaction and turnover.
•For paths involving better alternatives, make sure your workplace is externally competitive in terms of rewards, opportunities, and the work environment; also, be prepared to deal with external offers for valued employees.
•For paths involving plans and scripts, although it may be difficult in some cases to alter these directly, increasing rewards tied to tenure may alter some scripts. Also determining which scripts are common in your particular context may enable a tailored response (e.g., revised maternity and family supportive policies for large numbers of family-related scripts).
•For paths involving leaving without a plan, analyze the types and frequencies of shocks that are driving employees to leave, provide training to minimize prevalent negative shocks (e.g., letting leaders know how to provide negative feedback, minimizing harassment or perceptions of unfair treatment), provide employees realistic job previews and clear communication to minimize unexpected shocks or violations of implied contracts, and provide support mechanisms to help employees deal with shocks (e.g., grievance procedures, flexible work arrangements, employee assistance programs).
Embedding Employees
•To foster organization links: provide new hires opportunities for interactions with other newcomers and with experienced organization members, design work in teams, provide mentors, and encourage employee referrals.
•To foster community links: sponsor community events, and support community involvement.
•To foster organization fit: provide realistic information during recruitment, incorporate organization fit into employee selection, allow employees to sculpt their jobs to fit their interests, and provide clear communication about organization values and culture.
•To foster community fit: recruit locally when feasible, provide relocating employees with extensive information about the community, and build organization ties to the community.
•To foster organization sacrifice: tie financial incentives to tenure, and provide unique incentives that might be hard to find elsewhere.
•To foster community sacrifice: encourage home ownership through home-buying assistance, encourage employees to be proactive and involved in their communities, and develop career paths that do not require relocation.
Forces
•Incorporate the measurement of these multiple motivational forces into employee surveys and track changes in patterns over time.
Final Thought
One of the major barriers to effective managerial decision making is the tendency to use a narrow decision frame.9 Narrow decision frames involve focusing on easily accessible symptoms and solutions to minimize uncertainty. To improve decision making, managers can broaden their decision frames by considering multiple objectives and issues, not only those most salient at a particular point in time, and by considering multiple alternatives, not just the first to arise. The latest thinking about turnover suggests managers should broaden their decision frames beyond dissatisfaction to consider multiple paths to turnover decisions and multiple motivational forces, and to consider why employees stay as well as why they leave.