Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Employee Retention among Healthcare Professionals in the United States

Abstract

With the endemic health care professional shortage seen both in the United States as well as globally, retaining staff is a high priority. Much like other organizations who rely on human capital, health care professionals are the most important resource for improving patient outcomes, and for achieving organizational performance. Leaders must effectively manage their employees in order to retain top talent and meet organizational goals. One reason for high turnover rates among healthcare professionals is the lack of recognition they are given by their leaders. With this in mind, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between transformational leadership components and turnover intentions of health care professionals. One hundred and twenty-seven healthcare professionals from the United States participated in the survey. Participants were recruited through a LinkedIn group of healthcare professionals. More than 100 healthcare professionals from the United States responded to an online survey that contained the Global Transformational Leadership Scale, The Turnover Intention Scale, and demographic questions to describe the sample. A correlational analysis was conducted to determine the type of relationship between the health care professional’s perceptions of their supervisors’ transformational leadership and their intent to turnover. The results of this study support the theory of transformational leadership. The health care professionals’ turnover intentions were negatively correlated with the transformational leadership components, which indicate that as their turnover intentions increased their positive rating of their supervisors’ transformational leadership behaviors decreased.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Employee Retention: Mediation and Moderation Through Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Communication

“…Against the background of Bass (1985), the TL theory best explains the model constructed for this study. The theory supports the idea that transformational leaders modify the behavior of subordinates (Burns, 1978a), resulting in a higher ER (Sow et al, 2016). Furthermore, TL increases the intellectual ability of employees (Fletcher et al, 2019).…”

“…Studies also found that organizational justice theory impacts the effects on OCB through perceived restorativeness (Bellini et al, 2019). However, studies on TL have examined TL theory and its four dimensions significantly affecting OCB (Jiang et al, 2017) and ER (Adekanbi, 2016;Sow et al, 2016). It is based on the view that transformational leaders transform their followers by changing their insights, ambitions, morals, and potential (Bass, 1985).…”

“…Leadership equally benefits employees and organizations, and specifically, TL affects ER (Amankwaa and Anku-Tsede, 2015), both directly and indirectly (Khan, 2015;Nohe and Hertel, 2017). Transformational leaders improve subordinates' performance by achieving organizational goals (Sow et al, 2016) and implementing a reward system to retain employees (Adekanbi, 2016). TL increases ER (Abouraia and Othman, 2017;Gyensare et al, 2017;Jiang et al, 2017) and reduces turnover intention (Maaitah, 2018).…”

“…Furthermore, TL increases the intellectual ability of employees (Fletcher et al, 2019). Past research shows that several of the world's most successful companies have achieved their goals by implementing the TL process (Sow et al, 2016;Dedaj, 2017;Jiang et al, 2017;Maaitah, 2018).…”

“…Therefore, leaders must eliminate the reasons for low ER with the help of the human resource management department (Deshwal, 2015;Juneja, 2015). Some scholars argue that TL plays a vital role in ER (Khan, 2015;Kossivi et al, 2016;Nasir and Mahmood, 2016;Gyensare et al, 2017) and achievement of personal and organizational goals (Sow et al, 2016;Gyensare et al, 2017). Dimensions of TL, including "idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, " affect employee performance and retention (Jiang et al, 2017).…”