Employee turnover and maintaining knowledge continuity in large and small organisations

Abstract

Determining the causes and consequences of employee turnover is necessary in order to maintain competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy. For an organisation, an employee’s departure can mean the outflow of the knowledge that he or she possesses, and it is thus necessary to ensure its transfer in order to maintain knowledge continuity. The objective of the present article is to present the results of surveys on the causes of employee turnover and its perception by employers as possible knowledge loss. The impact of employee turnover on knowledge continuity was examined by combining quantitative and qualitative surveys. The differences between provable factors leading to an employee’s departure from small and large organisations provided a base for a follow-up survey focusing on the preservation of key knowledge in organisations dealing with turnover problems. One of the conclusions is that the threat arising from a departing employee with critical knowledge about the organisation is dependent on their ownership interest in the organisation, on the size of the organisation and on the sector of the economy. Today‘s knowledge-based organisations must be aware of the main causes and consequences of employee fluctuation in order to maintain competitiveness at this time of economic crisis.