Research Proposal on Increasing Employee Turnover

Introduction

Hunan resource management is concerned with identifying and employing qualified personnel in an organization.  Companies advertise job vacancies to be filled by potential job seekers on agreed terms and conditions. However, some employees do not stay for a long time in the organization (Clinger, 2017). Employees leave their organizations due to different reasons.

Over the years, many organizations have reported a significant increase in the rate of employee turnover. In other words, many employees re leaving different organizations and they are replaced with other employees. The main reason for the replacement is to ensure continuous production.

Research aims and objectives

• To identify the problems associated with the increasing rate of employee turnover in the organization.
• To advice the human resource management on the ways of keeping employees to avoid high employee turnover rate.
• To develop relevant assumptions on the increasing rate of employee turnover.

Research question

What are the effects of increasing rate of employee turnover in organizations?

Problem statement

The news has reported instances of employees leaving their jobs for both personal and economic reasons. For instance, some employees leave their job in order to work in another organization which could be paying better or even offering good services as compared to their current jobs.

However, this increased turnover has an effect on the organization as well as the market. Therefore, this research aims at identifying the problems associated with increased employee turnover in different organizations.

Research hypothesis

This research focuses on the fact that increased employee turnover influences the operational and financial aspects of an organization. The influence is regarded to be negative.

Proposed Structure of the study

This research will deal with both primary and secondary sources of information. Primary sources will include data collected using questionnaire and interviews from the respondents. The respondents will form the sample size for the qualitative analysis. On the other hand secondary sources will include books and journals on the related field of study.

Literature review

According to the study carried out by Kim and Fernandez (2017), employee empowerment reduces employees’ intention to quite the company. The study focused on the causes of increased employee turnover in US based organization. The findings showed that employee empowerment played a crucial role in reducing the turnover.

Employee empowerment involves different strategies aimed at improving the morale of employees in an organization.  Kim and Fernandez noted that for management to avoid the cost of replacing employees who have left the organization, they should employ appropriate employee empowerment strategies.

Motivation is one of the methods of empowering employees. An organization which does not motivate its employees is likely to lose them.  Many employees prefer working in organizations which are concerned with their well-being. Employees can be motivated through monetary and non-monetary factors.

Monetary factors include salary increment and other additional pay such as allowances and bonuses. Organizations can also consider promoting employees to a higher job position as compared to their current rank. Promotion is one of the best motivational methods to retain employees in an organization.

Wang et al. (2015) conducted a study based on social compassion theory to determine the effects of employee participation and voluntary turnover. Based on the data collected from various organizations which had experienced voluntary employee turnover, the study found that participation plays an important role in the decision of employees.

In this regard, employees can make an independent decision on whether to quite the organization or not. Employee participation involves the inclusion of employees in decision making on matters affecting them.  

Ideally, employees should feel that they are part of the organization. The management should ensure that employees are well represented in the management board and their grievances are addressed with immediate effect.

In 2016, Li et al. tested the influence of proximal withdrawal states theory. According to this test, several factors led to the withdrawal of employees from the organization. The first factor was job attitude. Employees who had negative attitude towards their organization tended to leave their job.

Based on the quantitative data of the study conducted by Li et al., a 59% of the respondents suggested that a negative attitude can result from improper handling of employees by the management and also poor working conditions. Therefore, the management of various organizations should promote a good working environment towards retention of employees.

According to Bilau et al. (2015), increased employee turnover leads to reduction in the overall productivity. Human capital is one of the best resources in an organization. Almost all processes in an organization are done by human beings.

Additionally, even some machines are operated by human beings.  Therefore, employees play a key role in the determination of an organization’s productivity. If employees leave a company, a gap is always created. This gap is likely to reduce the rate of production. Ideally, recruitment of new employees takes a certain process which should be followed effectively.

For instance, advertisement of the vacancy and vetting of qualified candidates mat take a given period. However, employees can leave the organization whenever they fell like. To avoid this, organizations should develop effective strategies to maintain their employees.

Turnover culture also reduces employees’ loyalty to the organization (Chen et al., 2016). Loyal employees tend to cooperate with the management towards the achievement of organizational objectives. The study carried out by Chen et al. found that organizations which had experienced a continuous increase in employee turnover reduced the loyalty of the new employees.

Actually, they noted that the new employees developed a preconceived idea about the organization hence ended up quitting the job after a short period of time. The new employees kept on asking themselves what made the former workforce to leave the organization. In the long run, they felt as if something was wrong with the particular organization. The management should avoid continuous employee turnover by addressing the needs of employees where there is need to.

Many scholars have written about employee turnover and also other scholars are still researching on the same topic. Klotz and Bolino suggested that employee turnover leads to increased financial costs in the organization. The vacancy created by the employees who left an organization would not be felled instantly. However, human resource managers use different strategies such as offering overtime payments to the available employees due to the additional work load. Moreover, the workload would not be easy to handle in an instance where more than three employees leave an organization at the same time.

Apart from overtime payments, additional payments result from the process of employing new workforce. Job advertisement involves additional financial implications.  Therefore, employees should be encouraged to retain their jobs.

Moreover, a case study presented by Purl et al. (2016) revealed that increased employee turnover is likely to affect the whole industry. The case study was drawn from a teaching profession. In this case, many leaches were leaving their jobs to focus on other business ventures and employment opportunities.

Therefore, the teaching sector was affected by employee turnover.  Generally, this rate affected many schools. Due to this fact, employee turnover not only affects the individual organization but also the whole industry.  The management of various organizations which fall under a particular industry should embrace good strategies towards employee retention.

Limitations assumptions and significance

In the questionnaire, I will omit some questions for privacy and confidentiality purposes. I will not interrogate the management of various organizations if perhaps their employees left the organization due to poor working conditions.

This would be a strategy towards protecting the image of the company. In this regard, I will use physical observation alongside questionnaire. Most likely, the management would not disclose some information which led to the high rate of employee turnover.

However, the importance of asking this research question is to find ways of preventing the loss which results from increased employee turnover. Additionally, the research question covers almost all organization hence the responses will not be limited to a specific organization.

Research Design and Methods

Strategy

This research will incorporate both qualitative and quantitative methods. In this case, qualitative data will include the theoretical perception of the topic of study and the analysis of the ideas presented by the research population.  Consequently, quantitative data will include the mathematical representation of the significance of some factors based on the research topic.

Research design

I will use cross-sectional method to obtain relevant information regarding the topic of study.  In this case, I will consider two groups of people that are employees and the management. The research will consider the perceptions of the two groups. Therefore, the questionnaire will be designed to suit both groups.  

The ideas of the respondents will be assesses based on a descriptive study design. I will relate the information presented by different employees to the statement presented by the management of the particular organization. Employees are likely to determine what can make them leave the organization at any given time (Mamun and Hasan, 2017). The management will be able to assess the implications of increased employee turnover in the respective organizations.

Data collection

I will use questionnaire to obtain information form the affected employees and organizations. Questionnaire is one of the best methods to collect qualitative data. Additionally, I will use interview to complement the information provided on the questionnaires. Both interview and the whole process of data collection will be conducted by experienced data collectors.  

The main reason of using qualified data collectors is to obtain relevant information about the topic of study. In some cases, the data collectors will also apply direct observation on critical matters such as the physical condition of the organization.

For quantitative data, I will uses the documented employee turnover rates to calculate the absolute employee turnover are in the particular industry.  The questionnaire will have a slot for the current employee turnover rate of the organization. The management will be required to fill this part for effective collection of quantitative data.

Additionally, I will use the response from the questionnaire to develop a mathematical representation of the topic of study. The research will determine the significance of qualitative as well as the quantitative data. This will entail the primary source of information in this research. The secondary sources will be compared with the findings of the primary sources to come up with a conclusive assumption on the topic.

Sampling

In this research, I will use random sampling technique in choosing organizations and employees who have been affected by the topic of research. However, I will consider the recent companies who appeared on the carious news platforms to have experience an increase in employee turnover.

Sample size

For effective results, I will consider visiting 20 organizations. Additionally, I will also consider having a minimum of 600 employees to answer the questionnaire. The sample size will be significant enough to show the effects of the current market trends as well as the practices in a number of organizations.

Data analysis techniques

I will use content analysis to assess the qualitative data of the study. This method will involve thorough scrutiny of the information obtained from the respondents. All relevant information will be put into consideration.  

This means that the responses will be grouped according to the perception of their content. Thereafter, the research will focus on ensuring security of the data to prevent submission of false report. There will be no form of biasness in the data analysis.

In regards to qualitative data analysis, I will use statistical method to determine the relevance of some factors. Two samples Z-test will be most appropriate in determining the mathematical significance of different variables concerning the research question. Z test is appropriate since it incorporates a large sample size. The results of the statistical test will be presented in the form of percentages to show the level of significance of the various factors.