Conflict & Work-Life Balance

Two of the most time-consuming and costly tasks that business managers face are recruitment and training of new employees. It is clear that the organizational resources devoted to the effects of voluntary, dysfunctional turnover are numerous and taxing on any business.

As you work toward your business degree online and enter the workforce, it’s important to understand what can lead to this dysfunction, and how to avoid it (both as an employee and a manager!).

TThe Study: Causes and Effects of Turnover

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Collat School of Business professor Scott Boyar researched the causes and effects of voluntary dysfunctional turnover. The study worked to understand turnover motivation, how turnover can lead to dysfunction and the role of work-family conflict.

Turnover Motivation

There are eight forces that affect an employee’s decision to leave or stay at their job. The motivation seems impacted by where the employee’s thoughts and attitudes fall on these factors:

• Affective forces, or feelings about the organization.
• Contractual forces, or psychological contract obligations vs perceived violations of the contract.
• Calculative forces, or whether or not the employee sees a successful future career with the company.
• Alternative forces, or whether there are job alternatives.
• Behavioral forces, or perceived costs of leaving.
• Normative forces, or the expectations of family and friends.
• Moral forces, or personal values.
• Constituent forces, or feelings about co-workers/supervisors.

Turnover Dysfunction

Turnover can lead to dysfunction for a number of reasons, including interruption of workflow, slowed production, unnecessary cost, loss of competitive advantage, disruption of team processes and loss of valuable talent/reduction in profits. For these reasons, managers are particularly concerned with:

• Understanding the relationship between work-family conflict and staff turnover
• Gathering data on employees at risk of turnover.
• Developing effective ways to recruit and retain talented staff.
• Avoiding unnecessary staff losses.

To learn what the study found about the role of work-family conflict, job satisfaction and work centrality in dysfunctional turnover, view the UAB Collat School of Business infographic below: