Correlates of Turnover: Salary and Bonuses

Abstract

Purpose–This paper investigates how salaries and bonus payments are related to turnover. Design/methodology/approach–The wealth maximization hypothesis posits that turnover is negatively related to the worker’s expected future earnings at the current firm. Thus, salary and bonuses should be related to turnover to the extent they provide information about the worker’s future earnings at the firm. To evaluate this hypothesis, this paper uses data coming from the personnel records of a medium-sized US firm in the financial services industry. Results–The regression results show that pay variables are serially correlated and they signal future promotions in the firm. Thus, both salaries and bonuses provide information about the worker’s future earnings through these two channels. Further, as predicted by the wealth maximization hypothesis, both salaries and bonuses are related to turnover. In particular, the results show that the growth rate of salary and bonus size (as well as earning a bonus in the current year) are negatively related to turnover.Discussion–The findings of this study underscore the importance of pay variables on turnover behavior. While most existing studies focus on salaries, thereby ignoring bonuses, the current analysis shows that bonus payments are an important determinant of turnover. Hence, in addition to providing workers with effort incentives, the retention function of bonuses should be taken into account for designing optimal compensation schemes.