Turnover Contagion and The Great Resignation

Organizations looking to stay market competitive have employee retention as one of their top priorities. Numerous researches in the field of employee retention, predictors and reasons for employee turnover have mostly focused on individual reasoning for turnover. What most of the researches have ignored is the social aspects of turnover. In a team setup, it is common for employees to catch each other's feelings (Sigal Barsade) when working in groups. This could largely influence employee decisions, including their intent to stay, or quit their job. The psychological effect of seeing their coworkers quit the organization could motivate the individual employee to think if it makes sense for them to leave too. This tendency of multiple individual employees within a team independently acting or reacting to cues from others is turnover contagion.

Researches have found that when an employee's coworker involves in actions antecedent to leaving a job, these actions could influence other coworkers to an extent that they may decide to leave too. Primarily, people have an inclination to compare themselves with others in the most ambiguous situation (Festinger, 1954; Tesser, Campbell, & Mickler, 1983). If these comparisons reflect differences with a relevant other's thoughts, feelings, or behaviours, the individual's tendency to change his or her understanding to be consistent with relevant others increases (Festinger, 1954). In most instances, a job transition is due to high level of risks and uncertainty in their current job (Steel, 2002), which necessitates the need to validate this risk and need for alternative employment with others. When they notice several of their coworkers looking for other jobs, it is an implicit affirmation of their perceived belief of risk and uncertainty resulting in them deciding to leave too.

Job embeddedness is another key factor that could potentially influence people to attrite since the possibility of being influenced by social context is on the higher side when an employee's job embeddedness is low. What this could mean is that the job embeddedness of the peer group to some extent could help predict the focal employee turnover. For organizations focusing on employee retention, job embeddedness is an important factor to consider since it not only influence individual employee decision on quitting, it could also influence the social environment within the workspace.

The great resignation is happening and most of the organizations globally are experiencing it. COVID pandemic has created a situation of risk and uncertainty among the global workforce, which is fuelling employee resignation. This in turn acts as a 'social proof' for other coworkers to think quitting is acceptable. Some of the organizations try to limit transparency and visibility to other employees about why their coworkers are leaving fearing potential mass exits. However, it might be a good strategy to be transparent about the reasons for coworkers leaving as it could to some extent minimize rumours, and potential turnover contagion. There are several underlying factors that potentially contribute to turnover contagion. For company leadership, identifying these factors and minimizing them is critical to succeed in this 'war for talent'.

References:

Felps, Mitchell, Hekman, Lee, Holtom, and Harman (2009). Turnover Contagion: How coworkers' job embeddedness and job search behaviours influence quitting. Academy of Management Journal 2009, Vol. 52, No. 3, 545-561.

Christine Ro (2021). 'Turnover Contagion': The domino effect of one resignation