Minimizing Employee Turnover by Focusing on the New Hire Process

Abstract

This dissertation summarizes research that focused on the new hire process for a targeted population within the Computer/Telephony Industry. The primary objective of this research was to determine how to build and maintain an effective employee/employer partnership that helped ensure employee loyalty. The research design was taken from the theoretical framework of Vroom's Work Motivation model adapted using Dunnette's work with relevant job features along with Scott's theories on Jablin's model of organization-wide communications. The study examined survey responses for importance and expectation/realization ratings of 15 job features given by 150 newly hired individuals at their new hire orientation and then at the individual's eight month anniversary. In addition, focus group sessions were conducted and statistical analyses were performed.

The study found that overall employees had stronger feelings about certain job feature importance than job feature expectation certainty. The results showed that employees who remained with the company exhibited a change in importance and initial expectation set. This flexibility was demonstrated in the trade-offs that employees made between attributes of intrinsic value. The Chi-Square results on intent to leave showed that the level of overall satisfaction is significantly related to intentions of leaving. Review of the exit interview data reveals that the job feature of being a "Good Boss" was the deciding factor in the individual's decision to leave the business. Overall, respondents who voluntarily resigned or who remained with the organization based their final decision on how effective the supervisor/subordinate communications and organizational citizenship capabilities of the boss were perceived. The findings support Jablin and Scott's research investigating organizational communication relationships while expanding Dunnette's definitions of critical job features. In conclusion, the findings also validated that Vroom's expectancy theory can be used when predicting behaviors in situations where choices are made such as whether to expect an employee to remain or leave an organization.