Employee Voice & Employee Retention

Written By: Jeffin Johnson

Dr. Spencer

My second blog will discuss an article written by Daniel G Spencer. Dr. Spencer is an associate professor of business at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D degree in organization and management from the University of Oregon. His current research interests include turnover, absenteeism, and processes of resolution of employee-organization conflict. 

His article was published by the Academy of Management in their monthly journal, and portions of his paper were also presented at their 42nd Annual Meeting in the state of New York.  In his article, titled “Employee Voice and Employee Retention”, Dr. Spencer presents the results of two studies he has conducted in efforts to reveal a relationship between employee opportunities to voice dissatisfaction and voluntary turnover. 

Introduction and Foundation

Dr. Spencer initiates his article by stating that “The relationship between the job satisfaction and employee turnover has been one of the most widely studied but least understood relationships in organizational behavior literature.” He continues on to say that the most prominent studies from the past focused on the number of alternatives dissatisfied employees had and the nonwork-related factors that affected their decisions.

                 

                     Dr. Mowday

Dr. Steers

Richard M. Steers and Richard T. Mowday (University of Oregon) were the first academics to suggest that there may be a relationship between employee voice and employee retention; however, Dr. Spencer goes on to state that although Steers and Richard were the first to verbally acknowledge this relationship (in 1981), it has been heavily implicit in the works of an European economist named Albert Hirschman a decade earlier. Hirschman’s concepts are gaining increasing attention in the organizational behavior arena and his concepts are also the theoretical foundation for Dr. Spencer’s studies.

Study One

Objective

Determine if there is a direct relationship between the amount of opportunity an organization gives its employees to voice dissatisfaction and the organization’s rate of employee retention.

Hypothesis

There will be a significant and negative relationship between the total number of voice mechanisms for employees that an organization has and the voluntary turnover rate among the organization's employees.

Methods

First, a systematic sample of executive directors of hospitals in the north central United States was drawn from the American Association membership directory. Second, Dr. Spencer sent them questionnaire packages with a request to forward the questionnaire to their hospital's personnel directors. Out of a sample of 278 hospitals, 129 of them completed and returned the questionnaires for a response rate of 46.4%.

The questionnaire asked whether or not each hospital’s register nurses were subject to the following employee-retention practices:

• Grievance procedures
• Suggestion systems
• Employee management meetings
• Counseling services
• Ombudsman services
• Non-management task forces
• Question & answer programs
• Survey feedback 

Each hospital was also requested to supply the rate of voluntary turnover for its registered nurses for the previous 12-month period.

Results

Table 1 presents the mean and standard deviations of the study’s variables. Dr. Spencer concludes that “All the correlations between variables and turnover were in the predicted direction with the exception of the positive correlation between wage rate and turnover.” He provides a detailed explanation for the correlation in the footnotes of his article. 

Table 1 (Click to Expand)

Study Two

Objective

The first study did not weigh the quality of the hospitals' voice mechanisms; as a result, a second study was necessary. The second study examined the relationship between the number of mechanisms offering employees the option to voice their issues, and the employees' perceptions of its effectiveness.

Hypothesis

A high number of employee voice mechanisms will be positively related to high expectancies of problem resolution among employees and high levels of effectiveness for the organization's problem resolution procedures.

Methods

Four hospitals that participated in study one also allowed Dr. Spencer to survey their nonsupervisory registered nurses. As the objective stated, the survey’s goal was to assess the registered nurses’ perception of the effectiveness of the available voice mechanisms.

Results

Dr. Spencer concludes that all the correlations were again in the expected direction. More voice mechanisms can lead to higher levels of expectancies for problem resolution in an organization. Table 2 (Table 4 in the article) paints a clear picture of study 2 and its results. 

Table 2 (Click to Expand)

In conclusion, the results of these studies conducted by Dr. Daniel G Spencer sheds light on the importance of providing employees with venues to share their concerns and complaints. Although it may be time consuming, in the long run it will save you more time and money since your retention rates will be higher. In other words, the more time and money you devote to cooperating with and accommodating your current employees, the less time and money you have to spend finding and training new ones. 

Source Citation

Spencer, Daniel G. "Employee voice and employee retention." Academy of Management Journal 29.3 (1986): 488+. Academic OneFile. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.

Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA4402406&v=2.1&u=lom_oaklandu&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Gale Document Number: GALE|A4402406