Employee turnover is a subject that has received extensive attention from various researchers. Researches have been done with regard to the cost of turnover; the driving forces (antecedents, predictors, etc.) behind turnover; solutions to turnover problem; effects of turnover, etc. What interests me most is the research on the factors that drive turnover which answered the question why people leave the organizations they work for.
This literature review is to find out why turnover has received so much attention; and the factors that drive turnover;
1. Why Turnover Has Received So Much Attention?
In today's world, human resource becomes one of the most important resources an organization needs to succeed in its business, especially, in an era of information explosion and increasing instability, in which many knowledge-based industries would likely show a 30% to 40% rate of annual turnover. (Harkins, Philip J., 1998), [1]. Almost every organization in every industry faces the high turnover problem, which is persistent and expensive. Turnover has proved to be a drain on organizations' profit. What is turnover? According to Abbasi & Hollman (2,000), [2], "Turnover is the rotation of workers around the labour market; between firms, jobs, and occupations; and between the states of employment and unemployment."
Various studies have been done in this respect and proved that turnover is very expensive for organizations. Turnover expenses differ by different industries, companies, functions, etc.
For instance, for public accounting firms, each loss of a senior accountant costs the firms $4,000 to $8,000 in training and recruiting costs. Apart from this, the cost of losing outstanding accountants also extends to losing the value of their superior performance. (Roth & Roth,1995), [3],
According to White (1995), [4], the U.S. Department of Labour estimates that it costs a company one-third of a new hire's ann...