Who stays with you? Factors predicting employees' intention to stay

Abstract

Purpose -The study was conducted with the aim of discovering the factors which maximally discriminate between those employees who intend to leave the organization and those who intend to stay with the organization. The primary motive was to find those factors which are strong predictors of intention to stay, so that employees who intend quitting are identified in advance, and remedial measures are taken to retain them, especially if they are key performers. Design/methodology/approach -A questionnaire covering several aspects relating to employee retention was designed and distributed amongst a sample of 100 employees chosen through incidental sampling. Data thus collected was subjected to factor analysis, which yielded seven factors: Goal Clarity, Autonomy, Employee Engagement, Affective Commitment, Organizational Culture, Compensation and Benefits, and Normative Commitment. Discriminant analysis was done on these factors to identify the best predictors of employees' intention to leave or stay, by creating a discriminant function. Findings -Results showed that Affective Commitment, Normative Commitment and Goal Clarity were the best predictors of employees' intention to stay or leave the organization. Originality/value -Increasing employee turnover rates have necessitated the formulation and implementation of a robust retention strategy to effectively reduce employee turnover. By building a decision rule and a cut-off score to classify an employee into one of the two groups -"intend to leave" or "intend to stay" -an organization would be able to invest its resources in the right employees.

Internal Push Factors and External Pull Factors and Their Relationships with Lecturers’ Turnover Intention

“…Indeed, compensation is considered as one of the most important factors for attracting and retaining talent (Caplow & McGee, 1958;Ghosh, Satyawadi, Joshi, & Shadman, 2012;Irshad, 2011;Matier, 1990;Williams & Dreher, 1992;Willis, 2000). Employees may compare their existing salary packages with those offered by other organizations.…”

Intention to Stay and Intention to Leave: Are They Two Sides of the Same Coin? A Cross‐sectional Structural Equation Modelling Study among Health and Social Care Workers

“…Ghosh et al 14) showed that affective and normative commitment and goal clarity were the best predictors of employees' ITS or ITL an organization. Importantly, Howe 7) demonstrated, in line with US findings, that there is considerable asymmetry between ITS and ITL amongst aged care workers, meaning that the drivers of intention to stay are not simply the opposite side of the drivers of intention to leave.…”

“…Several studies have indeed explored predictors of both ITS and ITL leave in various occupational groups including the hospitality industry 13) , Indian workers 14) and nurses 6) .…”

Conceptualizing the impact of perceived organizational support and psychological contract fulfillment of employees paradoxical intentions of stay and leave

“…Furthermore, in retention-turnover research, "intention to leave" has been termed as replacement of "intention to stay." Intention to stay was significantly related to career development, remuneration, person-organization fit (P-O fit), training, and recognition among Australian employees [48], freedom to employees to do their best, opportunities for employee development, employee loyalty and unique contribution to the organization among Indian T&D Organization employees [49], transformational leadership among IT personnel [50], perceived job security among service sector employees of Turkey [51], learning and development initiatives among engineers in Malaysia [52] and task shifting policy among Canadian personal support workers [53]. ITS and ITL are associated with similar factors.…”

“…In fact, many studies support that job satisfaction and organizational commitment predict intention to leave and intention to leave predicts actual turnover [38] . In addition few well reported predictors of intention to leave are impact of personality and type of job [39] , organizational justice , perceived career growth [40][41] , job characteristics [42][43], perceived organizational and supervisory support [44] , affective and normative commitment and goal clarity [45] , organizational climate, commitment and support [46]. However, this study will focus in detail the prediction of ITL through perceived organizational support and psychological contract fulfilment in the following sections.…”