Undesirable voluntary turnover of part-time employees
A research for ABC in Amsterdam
Fleur Pijnappel
Student number: 1572881
University of Groningen
Abstract
This research describes the influence of individual and work related factors on undesirable voluntary turnover of part-time employees of ABC in Amsterdam. First of all a literature review of previous researches is described to give insight in recurrent factors on employees’ willingness to leave an organization. Based on these findings a conceptual model is created to show the expected relationships between the individual factors (age, gender and duration of employment) and the work related factors (salary, flexibility/working hours and collegiality) to intention to leave that could lead to undesirable voluntary turnover.
The aim of this study is to provide ABC detailed insight in intentions to leave among their current part-time employees in Amsterdam. To find out what current employees think about their working conditions, all factors of importance are covered in in-depth interviews. 25 part-time employees are randomly selected to ensure enough respondents to come up with reliable and valid outcomes.
The main conclusion is that ABC easiest can influence the work-related factors, but not all factors expected from literature are mentioned as intentions to leave among the part-time employees. If the policy within ABC allows a more individually tailored system, the intentions to undesirable voluntary turnover shall decrease.
1. Introduction
Employee turnover is the rotation of workers around the labor market; between firms, jobs and occupations; and between the states of employment and unemployment (Abassi & Hollaman, 2000). To compete effectively, organizations must take steps to ensure that good performers are motivated to stay with the organization, whereas chronically low performers are allowed, encouraged, or, if necessary forced to leave (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Whright, 2006). Firms that fail to secure a loyal base of workers constantly place an inexperienced group of no cohesive units on the front lines of their organization (Noe et all, 2006).
Employees’ turnover is a normal given in every organization, which is a much-studied phenomenon (Shaw, Delery, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1998). According to Sullivan (2009) it is necessary to mention it would be a mistake to assume that any firm that has low or “zero” turnover is a well-managed firm; higher turnover rates can also be positive, for example when bottom performers leave on their own.
There are two types of turnover: involuntary and voluntary turnover. Involuntary turnover is turnover initiated by the organization; often among people who would prefer to stay (Noe et all, 2006). Involuntary turnover due to retirement, death and so forth is essentially uncontrollable and is therefore less fertile in this research.
In contrast, voluntary turnover is turnover initiated by employees; often whom the company would prefer to keep (Noe et all, 2006). According to Gustafson (2002) there are a lot of costs related to voluntary turnover, like direct replacement costs, recruitment, the application procedures and the training that is needed for new employees.
Dess & Shaw (2001) show in their research that when employees see their colleagues leave the organization, they start to doubt about their own motivation of continuing their job for that organization.
To stay competitive in the rivalry between supermarkets in the Netherlands, for ABC their people are the tool to make the difference (www.
X.com). ABC is the largest grocery in The Netherlands and strives to provide the best service and choice to their customers. To reach this goal, it is essential to attract the right employees and not losing talents to competitors. For ABC ‘right employees’ are employees who do their work with passion and are not willing to leave the company within nine months. This time-indication exists, because of the extensive training ABC provides to new employees to let customers experience the difference between ABC and other supermarkets. These training programs are time-consuming and therefore expensive. Furthermore, these programs are only relevant if the employee stays at least nine months after they gained the knowledge (policy of ABC).
Unfortunately, ABC is undesirably losing a lot of their part-time employees earlier than nine months, especially in Amsterdam. As said, recruiting new employees cost money to hire, time to familiarize them with the store-processes and customer contact (training programs), and so on. ABC would like to know which factors they can actively manage to keep the ‘right employees part-time employees’ within their organization.
Therefore, the problem statement of this research is the following:
2. Theory
Differences between turnover intentions of full-time and part-time employees have long been of interest to organizational psychologists (Martin and Sinclair, 2007). Sullivan (2009) explores it would be a mistake to assume that any firm that has low or “zero” turnover is a well-managed firm; higher turnover rates can also be positive, for example when bottom performers leave on their own. Voluntary turnover only becomes undesirable if valuable employees (as well part-timers as full-timers) leave the organization, e.g. employees who are top performers, critical team leaders or individuals with unique experience and knowledge (Sullivan, 2009)1.
Most researches of undesirable voluntary turnover in organizations have concentrated on factors that can only be measured after employees left the organization, for example with exit forms (Biderman, 2003). Instead of measuring afterwards, intentions to leave are the collective notion of employees’ behavioural intentions and probability to leave the organization, which can be measured by current employees (Hsu, Jiang, Klein and Tang, 2003; Cho, Johanson and Guchait, 2009). According to Mobley, Horner and Hollingsworth (1978) intention to leave is the last phase of a withdrawal cognition process in which employees want to leave the organization in the near future. Understanding the factors that can lead to voluntary turnover is crucial for building effective retention policy (Bentein, Vandenberg, Vandenberghe and Stinglhamber, 2005). Intention to leave is the most important predictor of actual turnover in organizations and it is even a stronger predictor than job satisfaction (Cho et all, 2009; Steel and Ovalle, 1984). Turnover of employees can be optimized by lowering the rate of current employees’ intentions to leave the organization (Hsu et all, 2003, Mak and Sockel, 2001).
Many studies are focused on actual turnover, which means that the (part-time) employee makes the transition to another employer (Munchinsky and Morrow, 1980). More recently, other researchers (Kluytmans, 2001; Pettman, 2001 and Kim, 2005) state that there is a predictor ‘willingness to leave’ that underlies the actual turnover. Willingness or intention to leave is a predictor of (undesirable) voluntary turnover instead of a factor that measures turnover intentions afterwards.
Current literature shows some recurring factors when looking at ‘willingness of part-time employees to undesirable voluntary turnover’. In general, the factors that may predict undesirable voluntary turnover are divided into three groups: individual factors, work-related factors and economic variables (Chen, Chu, Wang & Lin; 2008 and Wright and Bonett; 2007), based on Muchinsky and Morrows model (1980), showed in figure 1 below. Their model will be the heart of this research, and therefore the conceptual model is the one below (Figure 1):
FIGURE 1
Factors that influence the willingness to leave of part-time employees (Muchinsky and Morrow, 1980)
The next section is about to explain the three factors in detail and why these are of influence on the willingness of part-time employees to undesirable voluntary turnover.
2.1 Individual factors
Chen et all (2008), Tanova et all (2008) and Kim (2005) state that gender, age and duration of employment are covered as individual factors that are of influence when looking at intentions of undesirable voluntary turnover of part-time employees.
Gender
difference between men and women in terms of intentions to turnover, in which women are slightly more likely to leave their jobs than men. A reason for this could be the extra care-related tasks women frequently have, like childcare (Schwartz, 1989). Royalty (1998) found gender differences in turnover are due to the behaviour of less-educated women (many of whom leave the labour force when they leave a job). However, the intentions to turnover of men and women, who are higher educated, is quite equal (Tanova and Holtom, 2008; Griffeth, Hom and Gaertner, 2000).
Age
Younger employees are more likely to take risk at the beginning of their careers (Tanova, 2008). They are also more likely to accept positions that are below their abilities and expectations at the beginning of their career and move on to better jobs when those jobs become available. According to Hall (1976) older people feel less attractive in the job market. Pettman (2001) suggests that older employees have greater need for security in their job. There is a difference in needs between older and younger employees (Van Hoof et al, 2002). Two reasons for older people to finish their career earlier are high work pressures and lack of challenges, while good relationships with colleagues motivates them to stay (Van Hoof, 2001). Contrastingly, younger employees think time and opportunity for your private life are important when considering staying or leaving an organization (Van hoof, 2001).
Meta-analytic research supports the negative age-turnover relationship (Griffeth et al, 2000). Duration of employment
According to Van Breukelen (1991) a perfect predictor of intentions to undesirable voluntary turnover is job tenure. The longer an employee is working for the same employer, the less chance there is of willingness to leave (Tanova, 2008). Employees with longer job tenure often fulfil the more attractive positions (Van Breukelen, 1991). Furthermore, the longer employees are working at the same organization, the higher becomes their income. Griffeth et al (2000) state that the probability of intentions to leave than decrease and therefore undesirable voluntary turnover also decreases.
2.2 Work-related factors
Van Hoof (2002) shows that there are three recurring work-related factors in literature to take into account when researching undesirable voluntary turnover of part-time employees, namely: salary, collegiality and flexibility/working hours.
Salary
Salary is one of the factors that is of big influence at intentions to leave of part-time employees (Pettman, 2001). Not only the amount of money part-timers earn is of importance, also the amount of money compared to peers who do the same work in the same types of organizations. As stated, when a person’s income from a job increases, the probability of him/her leaving the job decreases (Chen et all, 2008). Pettman (2001) pointed out that dissatisfaction with pay is a major part of dissatisfaction with work and thus an increase of intentions to leave. Pay is defined as the degree to which monetary and nonmonetary compensation is consistent with responsibility, ability, and workload (Alexander, Lichtenstein, Oh and Ullman: 1998). Alting Siberg-Kuipers (2006) states that to keep part-time employees within your organization, the salary should be at least equal to that of employees in the similar industry. Compensation is a variable in the decision-making process to leave a job voluntary, which always ranks highly, whether it is the most important variable or not (Van Hoof et al., 2002; Charney, 2008). It is a more important reason for lower educated employees for intentionally leaving the organization then it is for higher educated ones, however, also for this group it is not the most important reason (Van Hoof et al., 2002). Organizations who adopt a cost oriented approach to employment costs often show a higher undesirable turnover rate (Booth and Hamer, 2007). According to Price (2001) and Chen et al. (2008) intentions to leave can be decreased by higher pay though its positive influence on job satisfaction.
Collegiality
states that when employees feel committed to their team, they are satisfied with their colleagues and experience support from that entity. Lack of team commitment is considered important as it can lead to a variety of negative outcomes. One outcome that very often turns out to be costly for the company (McConnell, 2006) and that research has proved team commitment’s positive effect on it – is turnover intention (Allen and Meyer, 1996). If employees not feel taken seriously as well by their superiors as their peers, they will become frustrated, which could lead to intentions to undesirable voluntary turnover (Kim, 2005). Flexibility/working hours
Less employee friendly, but more employer-centered are often those work arrangements that involve shifts, weekend and overtime (Brewster, Mayne and Tregaskis, 1997). With such a strategy an organization can reduce penalty rates, expanding work time and increasing operational efficiency (Albion, 2004). Bucklow (1950) found that new part-time employees often have intentions to leave an organization because they feel unable to meet a production standard in a limited time period, set by the company. According to Lum, Kervin, Clark, Reid and Sirola (1998) high workload is also a factor of increasing willingness to leave of part-timers, because workload pressures are often irregular and difficult to predict in advance. Stavrou and Kilanjotis (2010) report a negative relationship between non-standard work patterns and turnover intentions in the private sector. As a result, the employment relationship, for any of the parties involved, would be easier to terminate: therefore flexible work arrangements, like part-time employees often have, are more likely to be related to increased undesirable voluntary turnover and less organizational identification (Stavrou and Kilanjotis, 2010). Also Wegge, Van Dick, Fisher, Wecking, and Moltzen (2006) have reported that organizational identification is negatively related to turnover intention, which means that the willingness to leave of current employees is higher if their identification with the organization is lower.
2.3 Economic variables
An individual’s behavior or even attitudes are likely to be different in times of high versus low unemployment (Trevor, 2001). If employees feel it is easy to get a better job than their current job, the intentions to leave increase (Mueller, Price Boyer and Iverson, 1994). Furthermore, if employees have more job choices, it would become easier to leave their current organization (Finnegan, 2010).
Economic variables are hard to influence by organizations, but important to monitor (Maertz & Griffeth, 2004). Because of the difficulty to influence these factors, the economic variables are not further taken into account in this research.
Therefore, the model of Muchinsky and Morrow (1980) is declined to Figure 2 below that shows the heart of this research.
FIGURE 2
3. Method section 3.1 Research design
As explored in the theory section, the model of Muchinsky and Morrow (1980) will be the base of this research. The model is not that recent, but current literature showed their model is still relevant and therefore often cited by contemporary researchers (Chen, Chu, Wang & Lin;
2008 and Wright and Bonett; 2007). Two of Muchinsky and Morrows’ categories are therefore chosen to research, namely the individual factors and the work-related factors. Again, no further attention is given to the economic variables in this research. The individual and work-related factors are the underlying variables of the semi-structured interview to create insight into the willingness of undesirable voluntary turnover by part-time employees of ABC.
3.2 Procedure
general rule on sample size for interviews is that when the same stories, themes, issues, and topics are emerging from the interviewees, then a sufficient sample size has been reached (Boyce and Neale, 2006). To ensure these part-time employees are willing to help, the management of ABC agreed about the idea to do these interviews within their working time, so they do not have to stay longer to do the interview than their normal working hours and they are paid like a normal shift.
The semi-structured interview contained of open-ended questions and was build up from the influencing factors of willingness to undesirable voluntary turnover by part-time employees. The first part of the interview contained some general information questions about age, gender and duration of employment. The second part contained interview questions about salary, flexible work arrangements and collegiality. Interviewees are encouraged to talk in their own words. Generally the more the interviewee talks, the better for the researchers perspective, because this provides more natural talk to analyse (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). Basically, face-to-face in-depth interviews offer a way to explore people’s lives and the contexts in which they make decisions and yield “thick descriptions” of social life (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006). An overview of the semi-structured interview is provided in appendix 1.
3.3 Data collection
Literature shows a number of overarching factors that emerge when researching undesirable voluntary turnover (Harding, Whiteshead, Aslini and Chen; 2006). For ABC it was unclear which specific factors underlid the intentions of their part-time employees to leave the organization.
Interviews allow the informants to answer from their own frame of reference, rather than being confined by the structure of pre-arranged questions (Bogdan and Bilken, 1992). In qualitative open-ended questions informants can express their thoughts more freely, which should lead to more specific answers. The interviewer can collect and understand in a richly detailed manner what an interviewee thinks and feels about some phenomenon (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). Descriptive data contains quotations said by informants to illustrate and substantiate the presented findings.
When taking into consideration the abovementioned arguments, there is opted for a qualitative study in this research. A semi-structured protocol generally consists of a list of open-ended questions that the interviewer poses to the informant. Semi-structured interviewing is characterized by substantial freedom on the part of the interviewer (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). The interviewer can pose the questions in whatever order and is free to use alternative language in paraphrasing the questions for the informant if that is what is needed. The interviewer is trying to maximize the in-depth talking by the informant, so the interviewer expends a lot of energy trying to probe for additional details. In appendix 1 you can find the interview questions that are formally framed, but when doing the real interview these questions could be changed in order, explored or removed, because of abovementioned reasons.
3.4 Respondents
The respondents of this research were current part-time employees of ABC in Amsterdam. In total 25 respondents were invited by email to make an appointment to participate in the research by answering the open-ended questions. As earlier mentioned, 20 respondents is the amount of respondents needed to come up with reliable and valid results when conducting a qualitative interview (Baarda and De Goede, 2001; List, 2007; Baxter and Babbie, 2004). Therefore it was needed to collect one interview per ABC in Amsterdam. These part-time employees could anonymous give insight in their experiences and ideas about the ABC they are working for and what –eventually- are their intentions to leave the organization. All factors that could have influence on the willingness to leave the organization are asked in the interview.
There is a risk that the interviewees give socially desirable answers: e.g. when questions are asked about the relationship with their peers or supermarket-manager it is more difficult to say you are not happy with them than confirming the socially desirable answer that both relationships are perfect. By ensuring respondents anonymity in several ways, I hope to restrict this risk as much as possible.
At the start of each interview I asked individual data like age, gender and duration of employment. Before starting the interview I explained that all information respondents gave will be processed anonymously (see the introduction above the interview in appendix 1). Only the researcher sees their personal opinions, not their supermarket-manager or someone at X.
3.4 Measures
provided a description of what the interview will be about. To read this description, I refer to appendix 1.
Individual factors
The general questions about age, gender and duration of employment are all measured with a single item. I asked the respondents face to face about these three items and to ensure their anonymity these factors are asked in scales. These questions are asked as verification questions (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). This type of question is useful when there is the existence of some domain, here: part-time employees of ABC from whom we need to know their age, gender and duration of employment. Verification questions are to be confirmed or disconfirmed by the informant. Example questions are: ‘You are a part-time employer at ABC, right?’ ‘How long are you working for ABC at the moment?’ The researcher fills in these answers while asking the questions.
Work related factors
To start the real interview, first a grand-tour question is asked. A grand-tour question is very useful because it basically asks the informant to provide a verbal ‘map’ of some phenomenon (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). Therefore, the first question of the interview will be: ‘Can you walk me through what a typical working day is like for you when working at ABC?’
To understand the background of why these part-timers are working, the following questions are asked: ‘Why do you work’? and, after that question: ‘Why do you work at ABC’?
For each of the questions the rule of thumb is that the researcher let the informant talk as much as possible and when some things are unclear the researcher is allowed to ask more details to clarify and understand the thoughts of the informant.
Salary and benefits are good at ABC; their paying rates are higher than other supermarkets and employees have more vacation days than when working for another supermarket.
reminders when asking about salary are: ‘Do you know about the salary of other supermarkets’? and ‘How do you think about the working pressure when comparing it to your salary?’ For all aspects to help the researcher keeping the conversation going, I refer to appendix 1.
Measuring collegiality in this research is twofold, namely: direct peers and the supermarket-manager. Because there is a clear difference between peer-to-peer relationships and peers to management relationships there are separate questions for both factors, also translated in Dutch. Firstly there is asked an oral-history question from the research of Whright and Bonett (2007): ‘How would you describe the atmosphere/relationships in your team with your peers? With such an oral history question the researcher can gather personal recollections of events of an individual’s life, perceptions and thoughts (Baxter and Babbie, 2004).
Secondly, it is asked: ‘How do you think about the relationship with your manager?’ With these narrative interview questions the researcher hoped to find informant stories that make sense of their lives (Fisher, 1987). Furthermore, the researcher asked informants to talk about work life in the organization, assuming that telling of stories would be a common way in which workers talked about their organization (Baxter and Babbie, 2004).
ABC’s part-timers have to work in shifts, weekend and overtime. Therefore, in this research the following questions from Brewster et all (1997) are translated into Dutch, to discover if part-time employees experience stress Bucklow (1950) describes when they feel unable to meet the expectations of the organization in a shift. It is asked: ‘What do you think about the flexible work arrangements ABC expects you to work?’
4. Results
For the results chapter, 25 part-time employees of ABC’s in Amsterdam are interviewed. With these in-depth interviews it is tried to find out what current part-time employees think about their work and grow wiser about the aspects that influence intentions to leave the current job.
All factors of the conceptual model (Figure 2) will be described below based on answers of the interviewees to get insight on intentions to leave of current part-time employees of ABC. Furthermore a section is added with remarkable statements of employees that are not specifically grounded on one factor, but important to mention in this chapter.
4.1 Individual factors: gender, age and duration of employment
A schematic overview of the individual factors of the respondents in this research can be found below in Figure 3:
FIGURE 3
Schematic overview of the individual factors of respondent group
mentioned they were seeking for another job at the moment. Now the individual factors from Figure 3 will be described related to intentions to leave.
Gender
From literature it was expected that women were less attached to the labor force than men and that women have more intentions to leave. Two women literally mentioned they were searching already for another job, while three men came up with this statement. Only this given is not enough to conclude that men are less attached to the work force. It can be stated that it is surprisingly three men mentioned they are looking for another job, which was not expected from literature.
For one female interviewee the intention to leave was the impossible combination of nursery and a part-time job at ABC, due to short shifts. Contrastingly, another woman with a child mentioned the opportunity within ABC to plan your part-time shifts like you wish what makes it easier to combine it with childcare. When looking at the respondent group, it was not expected that a lot of the women do have children, because of their low age. Maybe the results in gender are more different when having more female respondents in the oldest category of 25 years and older.
Age
According to literature younger employees are normally more likely to take risks than older employees, and therefore younger employees often have more intentions to leave the organization. Three boys under 18 years old and working relatively short at ABC mentioned they really want to work elsewhere –because a lack of growth opportunities and the impossibility to work longer shifts-. Contrastingly, almost all younger employees mentioned their positive ideas about the possibility to combine school with this part-time job because of the short shifts. A few part-time employees (scholars and students) stated it is unique that you can work at flexible and different times, dependent from your schedule at school. Especially this flexibility makes them staying within the organization.
Within this respondent group there were less part-time employees above 25 years old and no ‘really’ elder employees (e.g. above 50 years old), so it is difficult to see a clear difference between the categories now.
Duration of employment
The longer someone is working for the same organization or employer, the less chance someone has intentions to leave. All three part-time employees who are working for one year or longer for ABC show low intentions to leave. They mentioned they consciously chose to work and stay at ABC because they compared their salary to friends who work for other supermarkets (who have lower wages). So part-timers who know wages at competitors and know ABC is paying better, do not have intentions to leave the organization.
Three part-timers who work shorter than three months for ABC said literally they are searching already for another job, so they have clear intentions to leave. Most important reason is the impossibility to work longer shifts.
Finally two employees who were working more than one year for ABC said some remarkable statements. Firstly one mentioned the workload is never the same, and secondly the other mentioned salary is equal for low and high performers due to a lack of filing by supermarket-managers who do therefore not know who are low- and high-performers. Both statements increased the intentions to leave among these part-timers, but they said these two factors are only notable when you work for a longer period at ABC.
In the next section the work-related factors will be described, illustrated by statements of employees. If possible, it will be explained based on individual factors, which are expected from literature.
4.2 Work-related factors: salary, collegiality and flexibility/working hours Salary
ABC. Notable to mention, these interviewees were female, and they both like the extra days off, compared to other jobs in the same industry, which was also found from literature.
Contrary, one interviewee who is working for more than one year at ABC, mentioned the following: ‘Despite of filing by the supermarket manager about the performance of part-time employees, underperformers still earn bonuses for overtime, which I think is not correct towards high performers who earn the same’. This is a statement mentioned by just one interviewee, but of big importance, because this interviewee said this could be a reason of why part-time employees intent to leave: ‘For me it was an irritation factor and it decreased my motivation when it became clear it does not make any difference for your salary if you are high- or low- performer, despite of filing by my supermarket manager’.
Most interviewees said that they knew before starting their job about their hourly payments. To underline this a couple of statements of interviewees are mentioned here: ‘ABC is clearly communicating their pay wages to me and therefore I never experienced vague payments’ and ‘I know I earn 6 euro’s per hour and it is increasing when I become older. I know where to find the standard wages per age, when working as part-time employee at ABC’.
Part-time employees normally work only 9 hours per week, so their monthly salary is not that high when comparing it to full-timers. But, the interviews with all three part-timers who are employed for more than one year at ABC, shows the following: ‘Some friends are working for another supermarket where they are encouraged to work longer shifts, but their hourly payments are much lower’. And, ‘I chose conscious for this part-time job at ABC, because I knew I would earn more than the minimum wage and I still have enough leisure to combine it with school and hobbies’.
In short current part-time employees do not show they have intentions to leave because of their salary. Literature shows salary could be a factor of influence on intentions to leave, but other things are more important. For example if salary compared to peers is equal, if salary compared to workload is acceptable and if salary compared to competitors is comparable who can offer the same job it is not likely employees leave their job.
Collegiality
Corporate culture is of importance when looking for intentions to leave by current employees. Almost half of the respondents say something about their unhappiness about the atmosphere in the organization because of a lack of collegiality and support from supervisors.
One respondent said literally: ‘Because of the continuing changes in the policy of ABC, we do not know what to do in our shift and it is impossible to ask peers or your supervisor for help and explanation’. When I asked why it is impossible to ask for help, the respondent answered about the short time in which you have to finish your tasks, so it is impossible to help a peer without delaying your own tasks. At this subject the next section is focused on, namely flexibility and working hours.
First the results of collegiality will be presented further. Within ABCs policy is included that every two months a supermarket manager should have a feedback moment with every employee. In practice, these structural feedback moments are very infrequent and not known by almost half of the interviewed part-time employees. A couple of quotes underline the need of part-time employees to come into contact with their peers and their supervisor: ‘Both two times I planned an appointment with my supermarket manager, it was canceled for unclear reasons’ and ‘ I would appreciate it when my supervisor or my peers organize a meeting to discuss about the way of working here’ and ‘ What I miss at ABC are structural feedback moments in which both I and my supermarket manager can say what is going on’.
Three interviewees said they like their job most because of their colleagues: ‘The atmosphere at ABC is better than my previous job and I made friends while working’ and ‘I see some of my direct peers more often in my leisure time than at work’. These statements are very positive for ABC, because these employees are not willing to leave because they like to work with their ‘friends/peers’ and they are also bringing in new employees who like the job because of the acquaintances who also work at ABC. It is of importance to build strong teams in which people like to work hard, with peers they like. It must be kept in mind the balance between work and social need to be monitored; otherwise there is the risk it becomes too sociable and the results will suffer.
Flexibility and working hours
Within this group of interviewees a lot of comparable answers came up about their work arrangements. Often they were not that positive.
First of all more than half of all interviewees do not like the content of their job, but they are willing to work more hours. Two female interviewees asked literally for longer shifts to work two times a week six hours instead of four times a week three hours. This is not workable within the policy of ABC, because ABC chose to have shorter shifts to delete pauses of their employees. All hours are now optimally used. Reasons for one of these women to ask for longer shifts are the following: ‘When I only work two times a week, it is easier for me to combine it with childcare’ and ‘It is much cheaper to bring my children two times a week to the nursery than four times for a few hours. In that case my salary is lower than the costs of the nursery’. For women with younger children the short shifts are seriously reasons to leave she said.
Contrary, younger employees –as well boys as girls- comment very positively about the short shifts. They said things like: ‘Because of the short shifts of three hours, I can combine it easy with school’ and ‘I like working in the weekends, but not too many hours, because I also like to do nice things with friends. That is the reason why I chose to search a job at ABC, because I knew this information from a friend already working at ABC’. Furthermore a few younger interviewees said their parents only wanted them to have a job if their school results would not suffer from the job. With the guarantee of the maximum of twelve hours of work within a week these young employees can argue this to their parents.
Two interviewees who are working more than a year at ABC, complained about the workload which is never the same: ‘Sometimes it is busier for example when the supplier arrives. You have to do the same in three hours of work, while it is much more work than feasible’. These two interviewees said they think this is a problem just noticeable for employees who are working for a longer time within ABC, because when you just start you do not know about differences in workload. It becomes more and more visible when you can compare it to more shifts you had to complete your work.
than 18 years are not allowed to work longer because of the importance of school, the agreements they have with their parents about their jobs and so on. Overtime therefore was within the category under 18 years never an intention to leave.
But, employees above 18 years are sometimes frustrated about their overtime. Three of them said the following: ‘You do not earn extra money for overtime’ and ‘when you have to work with only colleagues under 18 you already know you have to stay longer without earning more money’ and ‘I do not mind working longer, I instead asked for more hours, but I want to be paid for these extra hours, which is not the case at the moment. This really frustrates me and therefore I already searched for another job’.
For women above 18, for example the ones with children, overtime is a big problem. The abovementioned suggests ABC is sometimes expecting that you stay longer, which is impossible for women who have to pick up their children at school or nursery at a certain time. For these women overtime is an important reason to leave when it becomes more common that employees above 18 have to stay longer.
4.3 Remarkable statements
Overall the interviewees are mainly positive about their work. Especially the benefits are considered as very good. A few remarkable statements that are not covered in the categories mentioned from literature will be described here, because of the importance for this research to get a complete view of the willingness to leave of part-time employees at ABC in Amsterdam.
5. Discussion
The aim of this research was to find answers for ABC, based on variables from literature, to get insight in the willingness to leave of their current part-time employees in Amsterdam. In the results section these main findings were presented.
For this research the model of Muchinsky and Morrow was the base, in which the individual factors age, gender and duration of employment and the work-related factors salary, collegiality and flexibility/working hours are expected of influence on willingness to undesirably leave the organization by part-time employees. The final factor of the model of Muchinsky and Morrow, economic variables, were not taken into account in this research. 5.1 Main findings
Gender
The influence of gender in case of willingness to leave an organization appears doubtful: only two female respondents mentioned their social responsibilities (childcare) when asking why they are working at ABC as a part-time employee and eventually will leave their job. But, there were relatively few female respondents above 20 years old, which means that it can be expected the others do not have children at all. In that case the two female respondents who do have children and mentioned childcare as a reason to work part-time, are a very notable given.
Furthermore it was expected that men have a higher attachment to the labor force than women. Contrastingly, three men mentioned literally their intention to leave instead of two women. A logical explanation of this result could be that these intentions to leave are not because of gender, but because of these part-timers have their job as a sideline: it is not their primary business.
Age
opportunities to get more responsibilities. It could be a random outcome, but it is notable to mention because this outcome was exactly expected.
Contrastingly, several employees under 20 mentioned they really like the flexibility within ABC, because of the chance to combine work and school. This is especially mentioned by younger employees, because of their busy days at school or university, for who it is impossible to work longer shifts. It is interesting to see why some of them dislike the short shifts while others stated it is the reason why they like to work for ABC.
Duration of employment
The expectations for duration of employment were described in the results section, of which it can be concluded theory and results are quite similar. The answers of the respondents showed that people with longer job tenure have lower intentions to leave the organization. Three part-timers who worked for more than one year by ABC show low intentions to leave, while three part-timers who work shorter than three months already searched for another job. The reason for intentions to leave are often about the impossibility to work longer shifts; part-timers who work for more than a year for ABC expected that they should get more responsibilities and therefore longer shifts. It is of importance for ABC to find the border between earning on short shifts (so they do not loose time and money for breaks) and losing employees and thus money because of these short shifts.
Salary
Salary was according to literature expected as having big influence at undesirable voluntary turnover of part-time employees (Pettman, 2001 and Chen et all, 2008). It is evident that an increase of salary decreases willingness to leave in general, but it is difficult to make absolute statements to what degree salary is influencing the willingness to leave. The results section pointed out salary is not the primary reason on willingness to leave at all, but factors in coherence with salary, like bonuses, the more. One respondent mentioned the dissimilarity between high and low performers when comparing it with their salary: the salary stays the same. This was of bigger influence on willingness to leave than the salary itself.
Most respondents knew the wages at ABC are higher than at competitors. Therefore some part-timers, who were aware of this, chose consciously for ABC.
Collegiality
Collegiality/relationships with peers and supervisors appear to affect the willingness to leave of part-time employees. In the results section the unclearness by part-time employees about some weekly routines –policy, filing, weekly meetings- shows the lack of influence from supervisors. This given is expected as a trigger to undesirable voluntary turnover. Among respondents the idea dominates that it is of bigger importance to finish your own tasks than helping a peer. When working this way, the willingness to leave shall increase, because nobody feels support or has the idea of forming and having a team.
Contrary, also a few respondents mentioned the friendships that exist between peers. This is a fact that was not illustrated by literature, but probably it can be interpreted as positive for ABC, because of the strong link between team members and the desire to work with their friends.
Flexibility/working hours
The employer-centered work arrangements ABC uses with weekend, shifts and overtime are expected as stimulating undesirable voluntary turnover. Respondents differ extremely in their answers about the workability of their schemes. Some are very positive (which was not expected), some are very negative. It was striking that no one of the respondents gave a middle/average answer: they were either very positive or very negative. The positive answers were the most interesting ones, because flexibility and working hours for part-time employees was only considered as a factor that only could increase willingness to leave. The positive answers are therefore worth it to research.
5.2 Strengths and limitations and suggestions for further research
respondents made the interviews more realistic and therefore they gave a lot of detailed information.
Logically, this research also has its limitations. A first limitation is the exclusion of environmental factors, which has a direct relationship with willingness to leave according to the model of Muchinsky and Morrow. The exclusion was necessary for this research, because both ABC and respondents could not influence these factors.
Furthermore the factors measured in this research are most recurrent in literature, but of course it may be clear there are several other factors like job stress and social support (Kim et al., 1996) that influence the willingness to leave among part-time employees. These other factors of importance could be included in further research.
Another limitation is the fact that the information was collected in a limited time period. The results are therefore depending on time of measurement and circumstances. Therefore it is useful to repeat the research in the future to compare outcomes and find out if there are different results when measuring the same questions at another moment of time or collected in a longer time period. For this research the described results are an indication for this moment of time about which factors are of interest when measuring intentions to leave among current part-time employees.
The feeling of anonymity of the respondents can also be considered as negative -instead of positive- and therefore seen as a limitation for this research. The answers of the respondents were collected by in-depth interviews in which experiences and opinions –and not facts- of these part-timers were delivered. It was time-consuming to do these in-depth interviews, but the results show some interesting outcomes and were most of the time in line with literature. Therefore validity and reliability is warranted in this research, but for further research some divergent outcomes –for example if salary is still an important for intention to leave- can be investigated further.
A few respondents mentioned the friendships that exist between peers. This is a fact that was not illustrated by literature, but probably it can be interpreted as positive for ABC, because of the strong link between team members and the desire to work with their friends.
This is really a point for further research, because when it becomes too ‘cozy’ at work, the results will suffer instead of becoming better.
Finally, ABC now only gets insight in a limited respondent group in Amsterdam. For more details about Amsterdam, a bigger respondent group must be interviewed. Because in-depth interviews are very time-consuming, also a quantitative survey can be developed, for example to research a surprising outcome of the qualitative interviews (e.g. friendships among peers versus intentions to leave).
This research was only focused on employees of ABC. A comparative study of part-time employees of other supermarkets/competitors can give broader insights: maybe their employees have several other or no intentions to leave, for example because of different policies, lower workload or better benefits.
5.3 Practical implications
For this research the factors underlying intentions to undesirable voluntary turnover by part-time employees are studied. Factors that could be influenced by ABC to decrease undesirable voluntary turnover, according to the results chapter, will be described below.
part-timers that it is possible to talk about work-life related problems. To reach that goal, ABC has to create trust and fairness within teams, which must be realized by clear communication and routinized training.
The results section pointed out that a lot of unclear processes and rules are stressful factors, because it creates job insecurity. Supermarket-managers should remove these stressful factors by explaining expectations and targets to their part-timers and if it is achievable in their opinion. If supermarket managers follow the policy of ABC in which feedback meetings with all employees are required in each period, expectations of both parties can be compared and tailored if possible. Also filing is mandatory for supermarket managers, because it is impossible to remember all outcomes of meetings with so many employees. Filing and feedback sessions should be implemented routinely in every ABC, which is not the case right now.
Duration of employment has influence on intentions to leave: the longer a part-time employee is working for an organization, the less chance these part-timers have intentions to leave. To maximize employees’ job tenure ABC can try to optimize the wishes of their part-timers about salary, flexibility and colleagues. Support from peers and supervisors show also a lower willingness to leave among part-timers. In other words: a more tailor-made work arrangement should lead to longer job tenure and less intentions to leave among part-timers within ABC. Relatively many of the interviewed employees wish to work two times a week a longer shift instead of four times a week a short shift (3 hours), which is now the policy of ABC. Especially because of the possibility within competitors of ABC to work longer shifts, it is important to monitor this intention to leave, for example with exit forms when employees left the organization. ABC is within their own policy not required to give breaks to their part-time employees, because breaks are only mandatory after three hours of work. But when relatively many employees undesirably leave the organizations because of these short shifts, costs of hiring and training new employees can be higher than what is saved on the policy of short shifts. Therefore filing about intentions to leave can be very useful for ABC.
Job variety can for example be increased by job enlargement and job enrichment. It must be kept in mind it is difficult to realize variety, because of the relatively simplistic and recurring tasks that need to be done every day in the supermarkets of ABC.
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APPENDIX 1
Interview – semi-gestructureerd
Mezelf introduceren, en de geïnterviewde wat te drinken aanbieden om een comfortabele sfeer te creëren. Daarna geef ik een beschrijving van het interview, wat ongeveer als volgt eruit ziet:
Dit interview zal ongeveer een half uur duren. Je bent volledig vrij om te antwoorden en je antwoorden zullen anoniem worden verwerkt. Je manager zal dit dus niet te zien krijgen en je hoeft ook je naam niet te geven. Doel van het onderzoek is om te achterhalen waar ABC invloed op kan uit oefenen bij het verlagen van het ongewenste verloop onder part-timers. Dit betekent dat er volgens ABC teveel part-timers vertrekken die hun werk wel goed doen. Nu proberen we te achterhalen welke redenen daarvoor zijn, en daarom gaan we een gesprekje voeren over je ervaringen bij ABC. Ik wil je alvast bedanken voor je medewerking.
Algemeen: Individuele factoren, door interviewer in te vullen na vragen van onderstaande ‘verification questions’
ABC (nr) . . . .
Geslacht: M/V
Leeftijd: 15-18 18-21 21-25 >25
Hoe lang werkzaam? <3 maanden 3-6 maanden 6-12 maanden > 1 jaar
Semi-gestructureerd interview: (volgorde en verloop van interview kan verschillen! Doel is om zoveel mogelijk details en achterliggende gedachten te weten te komen.)
• Kan je beschrijven hoe je werkdag bij ABC eruitziet?
(Hoe laat kom je binnen, wat zijn je werkzaamheden, hoe is de algehele indruk)
• Waarom werk je?
(doorvragen over geld, sociale contacten, verplicht door ouders etcetera)
• Waarom werk je bij ABC?
(ooit andere supermarkt of winkels overwogen? Vanwege sociale contacten, dichtbij, moet van ouders etcetera)
• Wat vind je van het salaris dat je verdient bij ABC?
(Wat weet je van het salaris van andere supermarkten? Staat het in verhouding met je gemaakte uren/werkdruk? Zou je anders te werk gaan bij meer of minder salaris?)
• Hoe vind je de sfeer op je afdeling/in je team en de relaties met directe collega’s? (Open, vriendschappelijk, hiërarchisch, streng etcetera)
• Hoe vind je de relatie met je manager/leidinggevende?
• Wat vind je van de flexibele werktijden die bij ABC van je verwacht worden?
(Zou dit een reden zijn om ander werk te zoeken? Heb je er wel eens over gedacht dat er ook andere werktijden en uren mogelijk zijn? Hoe denk je daarover?)
• Heb je er ooit aan gedacht om ABC te verlaten?
(Zo ja: waarom? Waarom heb je besloten voorlopig toch bij ABC te blijven werken?)
