Determining turnover intention and job satisfaction among health scientists in Durban South Africa.

Abstract

ABSTRACT Human capital management is an integral part of the management process. It is people who help an organisation exit into the future. One important factor to consider under human capital management is ‘employee turnover’. Employee turnover, or staff turnover, is the rate at which employees leave a company in a given period. It’s a way to track whether a company has more employees leaving than is typically expected. This includes employees that quit voluntarily, are let go by the company, or retire. Companies measure each of their employee turnover types separately to facilitate effective management of each type. Predicting turnover intention is an important step in determining job satisfaction among employees and in developing a good staff retention strategy. Turnover intent is the probability that an individual will change his or her job within a certain period of time. Intentions are statement about a specific behaviour of interest, determined prior to the actual event or behaviour happening. Turnover intention has been acknowledged as the best predictor of actual turnover. This research was designed to identify turnover intentions among employees and establish whether a relationship existed between job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The objective of the study was to identify factors contributing to the rise in staff turnover and suggest recommendations to identified problems. Quantitative research methods were used in data collection and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for data analysis. Reliability of the instrument was tested using the Cronbach Alpha’s reliability scale from SPSS. A Cronbach alphas of (>0.6) internal consistency for all the research’s 5 concepts was observed. This indicated that the reliabilities of composite measures used to test the concepts were at acceptable levels. The participants of the research were all employees of University of KwaZulu-Natal’s HIV Pathogenesis Programme (UKZN-HPP). Participation in the study was voluntary and was through the means of self-administered questionnaires. The main findings from the study were that UKZN-HPP employees had a general positive perception of their jobs and working environments. The study also found that job satisfaction and labour turnover intention were negatively correlated at 0.05 level of significance, so when employees are happy and satisfied with their jobs, the intention to leave or quit a job was significantly lower. Key words: Turnover intention, job satisfaction, staff retention, organisational commitment, supervisory support.