Exploring Turnover Causes

Paper Summary:

This paper presents a case study concerning the company, Convergent, and its help desk department that provides customer assistance services, in particular. The paper surveys the personnel on a small help desk regarding the causes of turnover and the impact that leadership styles and motivational factors have on turnover to meet the help desk staffing needs while improving company profits. Lastly, the paper asserts that identifying appropriate and effective leadership techniques for a specific workplace setting may be reasonably expected to help improve a company's profitability while reducing or otherwise mitigating the incidence of employee turnover.

Outline:
Introduction
Statement of the Research Problem
Definition of Key Terms
Brief Review of Literature
Methodology

From the Paper:

"Because employee turnover is inevitable and its impact and costs are well known, identifying the most effective leadership methods to reduce it to the extent possible readily translates into money saved for a company as well as improved morale and effectiveness among employees (Koestenbaum, 2002). According to Lamb and McKee (2005), 'Everyone, individuals and the organization, will get the most from an enterprise when all commit as much human and hard capital to the endeavor as they can. . . . Satisfied employees care more about customer satisfaction, cooperate more with each other, and apply more effort' (p. 8). At Convergent, help desk employees are required to be continually recruited and a bank of potential employees is kept at the ready to meet unexpected losses; to the extent that the company is able to retain its existing employees, then, is likely the extent to which ongoing recruiting efforts could be minimized and the effectiveness and esprit de corps of the company's existing help-desk workers maximized."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Adams, G. B. & White, J. D. (1994). Dissertation research in public administration and cognate fields: An assessment of methods and quality. Public Administration Review, 54(6), 565-76. Following comparison of the dissertation research generated by public administration graduates in 1992, the authors emphasize that case studies must be carefully conducted to be of any to researchers; observations used to support case study rationale.
• Brett, J. M. & Drasgow, F. (2002). The psychology of work: Theoretically based empirical research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Authors' comprehensive analysis of employee satisfaction and reasons for turnover were deemed highly relevant for the instant research and will be consulted further.
• Convergent: Corporate brochure. (2007). Convergent. Retrieved July 10, 2007 http://www.convergent.com/downloads/Corporate_Brochure.pdf.Convergent Media Systems is a communications company located in Alpharetta, Georgia with 300 people. There are 75 employees on the help desk. Convergent's help desk personnel (current and former) will be surveyed to explore reducing the turnover
• Dalton, D. R. & Mesch, D. J. (1990). The impact of flexible scheduling on employee attendance and turnover. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(2), 370.Some organizations may encourage employee turnover for a number of reasons, most due to seasonable profitability; however, authors also emphasize the high costs associated with the practice and emphasize that alternative approaches may provide superior results, findings which were considered highly useful for this study.
• Dennis, G. L. (1998, June). Here today, gone tomorrow: How management style affects job satisfaction and, in turn, employee turnover. Corrections Today, 60(3), 96.Study surveyed entire population of 2,426 full-time, permanent employees based in the 11 prisons operated by the Kentucky DOC to identify primary reasons for employee turnover; while environment is substantively different, many of the salient reasons were deemed generalizable and therefore of relevance for the instant study.

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