Abstract
Orientation: The retirement age of most of the academics currently in the workforce is approaching fast. To understand factors that would influence younger academics to leave the profession is becoming more important in order for institutions to avoid a knowledge gap and ensure information and skill transfer.Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to investigate factors influencing the intention to leave younger employees in an academic institution. The objective was to explore factors that would result in younger employees leaving the institution.Motivation for study: It is important to understand how younger employees experience the academic world in order to attract, develop and retain them within academia as employees.Research design, approach and method: Purposive sampling was utilised, which provided the researcher the opportunity to gain further understanding on participants whilst exploring their experiences. The participants were under the age of 35 years, either in possession of a master’s degree or in the process of obtaining a master’s degree. A thematic analysis was conducted after 17 semi-structured interviews were completed and transcribed.Main findings: The study revealed that employment practices are the leading reason for the intention to leave of younger academics followed by job satisfaction. Further reasons why employees considered leaving the institution were work engagement and well-being. These findings can assist in developing effective methods of attracting, managing, engaging and retaining these younger employees in the academic institution.Practical/managerial implications: The results of this study provide insights into human resource management practices to better manage and design methods to reduce younger academics’ intention to leave the institution.Contribution/value-add: Thoroughly exploring factors that can influence younger academics’ intention of leaving the profession, meaningful methods to encourage them to stay in these academic institutions could be designed.
Highlights
The central focus of the study is centred on younger employees in an academic institution and their intention to leave
The study revealed various reasons that could result in employees leaving
These include employment practices, where management is seen as lacking integrity, and white male superiority is dominant, in an environment in which there is a general lack of respect for young academic employees, inadequate support for these academics to complete their studies, which perpetuates a culture of disregard for employee contributions, a lack of recognition of employees’ efforts and well-being, increased workloads, lack of resources to perform optimally and misaligned expectations and the geographical location of the campuses
Summary
The central focus of the study is centred on younger employees in an academic institution and their intention to leave. The study focused on employees who are employed as academics, younger than 35 years of age and in possession of a Master’s degree or pursing one. It is focusing on exploring reasons that would lead to these employees leaving the academic institution. It is necessary for institutions to retain younger academic employees as the current academic workforce is close to retirement, and knowledge retention is essential for institutional success (Powell, 2010). Younger academics can be seen as the future of academia; it is important to study to retain them in academia as a source of innovation and knowledge retention. The study went further to explore factors that influence these employees to stay within the institution
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