CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.4 EMPLOYEE TURNOVER
2.4.4 How Do Employees Decide to Leave
An employee‟s decision to leave follows a series of steps. These are illustrated in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Traditional model of deciding to leave
Source: Fisher et al., 2003:756.
Having established the major causes of employee turnover, researchers have managed to determine the process followed by employees when they think of leaving their jobs (Fisher et al., 2003:755). Figure 4 above also helped to illustrate that for employees to decide to leave their organisations they follow a series of steps. The first step is when employees experience job dissatisfaction and start thinking of leaving their job. In step 2, employees evaluate the costs of leaving their job and the probability of finding an alternative job. Step 3 involves the actual search for a job, that is, to establish if there is a high probability of finding an
Assess cost of leaving and likelihood of finding a better alternative
If alternatives seem possible, initiate search for alternatives
If alternatives found, evaluate against current job
If alternative is superior, develop intention to leave Experience
job
dissatisfaction
TIME
alternative job. In step 4, if the employees manage to find an alternative job, they will compare it with their current job in order to select the best option. Lastly, step 5 occurs if the alternative job is better than the current job and at this stage employees start to have high intentions of leaving (Mobley, 1982 cited in Fisher et al., 2003:756). An employee‟s intentions to leave eventually affects his or her decision to leave an organisation and this will be covered in the following section.
Intention to Leave
The „intention to leave‟ and the „propensity to leave‟ are related constructs. In the study, managerial-level employees‟ „intention to leave‟ and „propensity to leave‟ their organisations will be reviewed. “Intention to leave is simply referred to as a worker‟s intention to leave his or her present organisation. This concept is considered interchangeable with the term
„turnover intention‟, however, intention to leave is distinct from defining actual turnover”
(Seonghee et al., 2008:1). Thus intention to leave is based on an individual employee‟s approximation of time they will likely leave the organisation in the future. “Intention to leave is considered a conscious and deliberate desire to leave an organisation within the near future and is considered the last part of a sequence in the withdrawal cognitive process” (Mobley, 1978 cited in Seonghee et al., 2008:1).
Both the intention to leave and the availability of alternative jobs results in actual employee turnover (Mowday, 1982 cited in Stroud, 2001:45). “An employee‟s intent to leave can influence subsequent turnover in two ways. Firstly, it may cause turnover fairly directly. That is, some people decide to leave their jobs even when alternative jobs are not available.
Secondly, an employee‟s intention to leave may further influence actual turnover indirectly by causing the employee to initiate search behaviour for preferable alternative jobs” (Mowday, 1982 cited in Stroud, 2001:45).
The intention to leave concept has been used in other studies in South Africa. In a study by Maharaj (2003:2), the intention to leave concept was used and the study aimed at exploring whether there was a significant difference in the psychological contract of black and white male managers and the extent to which the perceived influence of employment equity practices was related to the psychological contract and intentions to leave. A sample of 55 respondents from a financial services organisation was used. Black and white males were found to differ significantly on employee balance type of psychological contract. Maharaj (2003:2) further stated that black managers were found to have a strong, positive relationship with the intentions to leave when they perceived their relationship with their employer to be in transition. The study also revealed that black and white managers had low intentions to
leave when they shared a mutual „relational‟ psychological contract (Maharaj, 2003:2).
Intentions to leave influence employee turnover as clearly indicated in the above study.
Employees may have tendencies to leave organisations, thereby affecting turnover rates.
„Propensity to leave‟ an organisation by an employee is used in research studies as an alternative to turnover (Arnold and Davey, 1999 cited in Maharaj, 2001:42). The propensity to leave concept was used in an empirical study by Stroud (2001) in which the aim was to identify the organisational experiences of black graduates compared to white graduates. The target population comprised of 30 participants who were currently writing their articles and also employed as clerks in a large accounting firm (Stroud, 2001:1). “The study found out significant experiences existed between organisational entry experiences and propensity to leave. In this study no differences were found between the different racial groups on the variable of propensity to leave. The surprising areas were „own work performance‟, „training and learning opportunities‟, „lifestyle outside work‟ and „general atmosphere‟” (Stroud, 2001:1). In another study by Govender (2006:2), the propensity to leave concept was used.
The study aimed at reviewing job satisfaction among health care professionals in a sample population in the South African Military Health Services and 61 health care professionals participated in the study. Results of the study indicated that there was a strong correlation between total job satisfaction and propensity to leave (Govender, 2006:2). Therefore, the traditional model of deciding to leave shows that managerial-level employees‟ decision to leave is a gradual process up until they find an alternative job.
Employee turnover has various benefits. Highly experienced senior employees may choose to leave their organisation and can be substituted with less costly junior employees; problematic employees may leave leading to a better friendlier workplace for other employees; internal promotion is re-ignited due to new openings; and lastly, turnover leads to the increased willingness to accept new ideas and organisational transformation (Fisher et al.. 2006:757).
However, turnover occurs in each and every organisation either voluntarily or involuntarily.
At times turnover can be functional and/or dysfunctional as mentioned earlier. South African organisations should give more attention and effort to reducing their voluntary turnover rates by resolving some of the common reasons that make employees leave. Employees‟ intentions to leave may result in them deciding to quit working for the organisation. Thus, if employee turnover is not controlled it can end up costing the organisation a great deal of money through recruitment and training costs. South African organisations that want to retain and effectively manage their managerial-level employees will have to implement talent management strategies. These will be discussed in the next section.