Personnel Psychology:
Employee Retention - IOP3706
Unit 1 – Chap 7: Introduction: Psychology of personnel retention
Unit 2 – Chap 8: Reward and Remuneration
Unit 3 – Chap 9: Performance evaluation
Unit 4 – Chap 10: Training and Development
Unit 5 – Chap 11: Career Development
Unit 6 – Chap 12: Employment relations
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As manager you need to understand the psychological principles and factors pertaining
to the retention of employees for the purpose of recommending strategies for retaining
talented people with scarce and critical skills in the organisational context
Discuss the various factors that influence employees’ turnover intentions, job and
occupational embeddedness. Also explain how employees’ job and work satisfaction,
commitment and work engagement influence their turnover intentions, job and
occupational embeddedness (25)
EMPLOYEE TURNOVER INTENTIONS
• One of the schools of thought dominating research and practice on turnover is the
psychological school of thought
• Focuses on individuals and their decisions to quit or stay
• This relates personnel or labour turnover to factors such as: job satisfaction, organisational
commitment and employee engagement
Forms of turnover
• Categorised into the following:
Involuntary • Occurs when an employee is fired as a result of poor
turnover performance or laid off owing to company downsizing
• Considered inevitable and possibly beneficial
Functional • Includes all resignations which are welcomed by the employer
turnover • Those which stem from an individual’s poor work performance
or failure to fit in comfortably with an organisational or
departmental culture
• Still regarded are lost opportunities and unnecessary cost
Voluntary • When a competent and capable employee leaves to work
turnover elsewhere and is generally costly to the organisation
• It means reduced productivity and increased expenses
associated with recruiting and training a replacement
Measuring employee turnover
• The following measures can be used:
o Exit interviews
o Anonymous questionnaires
o Word of mouth
o Attitude surveys
o Salary surveys
• People leave jobs for a variety of reasons, many of which are outside the power of the
organisation to influence
Factors that influence employee turnover
Outside factors