Job‐to‐job turnover and job‐to‐non‐employment movement. A case study investigation
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| Pages | 710-721 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480210445980 |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Author | John Sutherland |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
31,6
710
Personnel Review,
Vol. 31 No. 6, 2002, pp. 710-721.
#MCB UP Limited, 0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483480210445980
Received September
2001
Revised May 2002
Accepted June 2002
Job-to-job turnover and
job-to-non-employment
movement
A case study investigation
John Sutherland
School of Economics and Human Resource Management,
Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
Keywords Staff turnover, Labour market, Unemployment, Gender, Human resource management
Abstract This paper analyses an establishment-based data set of voluntary quits. Exit interview
data identifies two discrete types of quitters, viz. those who quit to accept alternative jobs offering
superior terms and conditions of employment and those who quit for other reasons and without
having alternative jobs to go to. A binomial logit model is estimated to identify the probability of
quitting for reasons of having been offered and having accepted alternative employment. This
probability is seen to be both gender and grade related. Females are less likely to quit for this
reason. Individuals occupying the financially better rewarded grades are more likely to quit for
this reason. Policy recommendations are forwarded based on the analysis.
Introduction
Although engagements by and separations from organisations are integral
features of the operation of the labour market, labour turnover is expensive
from the perspective of the organisation. Voluntary quits represent an exodus
of human capital investment from the organisation (Fair, 1992) and the
subsequent consequential replacement process entails manifold costs to the
organisation. These replacement costs include, for example:
.search of the external (and perhaps internal) labour market for a
possible substitute;
.selection between competing substitutes;
.induction of the chosen substitute; and
.formal and informal training of the substitute until he/she attains
performance levels equivalent to the individual who quit.
In additional to these replacement costs, output may have been lost in the
interim. Or, if output has not been lost, it may have been maintained only at the
cost of overtime payments. Furthermore, there are the abnormal management
costs of supervising a constantly changing workforce (Hom and Griffeth, 1995;
Rothwell and Fellow, 1980).
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I am grateful to Lesley Biddescombe for providing me with the data set on which this paper is
based. Additionally, I am grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
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