Turnover Contagion and Job Embeddedness

I honestly did not intend to address the topic of employee turnover so soon after my last blog post. Out of the dozens of articles I could have featured today, I was drawn to this article about turnover contagion soon to be published in the Academy of Management Journal. It is probably fair to assume that the current economic climate and the almost daily layoff announcements have made this topic particularly salient. So, let us blame this topic selection to what academics often call “MEsearch.”

This article examines turnover from a perspective we may not often think about, despite the fact that we probably see it pretty often. Turnover Contagion refers to the influence our co-worker’s turnover intentions and behaviors have on our own. The desires of a few people to leave an organization can spread to others, exposing companies to loss of rare talent, damage to valuable client relationships, displacement of key knowledge and employee replacement costs.

I recently saw a first-hand example of this curious, but not all together surprising, phenomenon. A colleague of mine, Trixy (I have changed names to protect the not-so-innocent) told me about some layoff rumors in her company. Not wanting to be caught off-guard, Trixy polished off her resume and went on the hunt for greener pastures. At some point, she apparently mentioned her search to one of her trusted co-workers who promptly asked Trixy if she should search too. Over the course of a few weeks about a dozen people jumped into the job search. [Note: I should mention that the layoff rumors were not true, nor has anyone been successful in finding alternate employment.]

Review
So why is it that one person’s desire to leave an organization “spills over” to others? As it turns out, this type of social influence is pretty prevalent, just not often framed in terms of employment decisions. People influence each other all the time, mostly without even meaning to (intentional persuasion is another beast entirely). Plenty of social psychology research confirms this human tendency and reveals that conditions under which social influence is most likely. The article I consider today focuses on just one of these conditions: uncertainty. When people are not sure how to behave, we look around us to see what others are doing. The general idea is that if other people are doing something, it is probably the right thing to do (see social proof for more information). I am sure we can all think of certain situations where this rule of thumb would be problematic (it turns out that if your friends jumped off a bridge, the likelihood of you jumping too rises quite a bit… sorry, mom), however, it works out pretty well in most situations. The authors of this study posit that a job search is precisely the kind of ambiguous situation where the behaviors of others can be influential.

Felps and colleagues throw job embeddedness into the mix. Briefly, job embeddedness refers to to the extent to which people are involved in their organizations and their corresponding communities. Employees with more friends at work, more ties with the communities in which they live and who’s skill sets are well-matched to their jobs are substantial less likely to leave an organization.

These two forces seem to be contradictory. On the one hand, turnover contagion can increase turnover intentions. On the other hand, job embededness can reduce it. So what do employees do when they are rate high on one scale and low on another? This is one of the questions posed by these researchers.

Findings

The study authors report a number of variables that predict voluntary turnover behaviors (involuntary turnover is not tracked). Specifically, results indicate that individual job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job embeddedness are negatively related to voluntary turnover behaviors. So, as each of the three predictors increase, voluntary turnover decreases. As for turnover contagion, analysis indicates that an employee is less likely to seek new employment if their co-workers also refrain from these activities. Indeed, these researchers indicate that turnover contagion is about as important as job embeddedness is in this decision.

Application

In applying these findings to our own organizations, we can focus on the two variables discussed in this study: Enhancing job embeddednesss and reducing the effects of turnover contagion.

Where job embeddedness is concerned, employers are in a great position to insure that employees feel like a vital part of the organization. Well-designed recruiting, selection and retention initiatives can promote a good match between employees and their jobs. Mentorship programs can promote strong ties among employees, as can other social programs (organizationally-sponsored groups, promotion of team-driven projects, etc.). Employers can even encourage employees to enhance ties to their communities by allowing time for community organizations or school programs.

Avoiding the negative effects of turnover contagion can be a bit more tricky. Employers may be tempted to prohibit job-search related communications, but this would be exceedingly difficult to enforce and would have a negative impact on job satisfaction and job embeddedness. Instead organizations can reward, or otherwise encourage close relationships between management and employees. These relationships can pay off in institutional awareness of employee concerns. If people are talking about layoff rumors or sufficient dissatisfaction than can lead to voluntary turnover, management can only address these if they are aware of what employees are talking about.

For my final reccommendationt, I focus on the uncertaintly related to the job search. People all over the world are concerned with being on the wrong side of a reduction in force. Even unfounded rumors can lead to otherwise satisfied employees looking for a new organization. Keeping quiet about this fact only hurts the organization. Layoff concerns must be addressed. If your organization is not planning to engage in layoffs, then be proactive and inform your people. If layoffs are a possibility, be honest and specific about the conditions under which layoffs may be necessary and how people can help prevent this.

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