Employee retention and turnover

This entry reviews historical trends in turnover theory, and research beginning with industrial psychologists identifying prospective employees’ ‘quit’ propensity. Scholars later formulated and tested turnover theories, promulgating job attitudes, labor-market conditions, and shocks (critical events prompting thoughts of leaving), as fundamental turnover causes. Focusing on why employees stay rather than leave, contemporary researchers investigated job embeddedness, specifying that job fit, links, and sacrifices (job benefits forsaken by leaving), embed incumbents in jobs. Other inquiries examined turnover consequences - notably, how collective turnover decreases unit or firm effectiveness, and how peer or leader turnover prompts remaining employees to quit. While practical studies are uncommon, the turnover literature nonetheless has yielded evidence-based interventions for controlling turnover.