Testing the unfolding model of voluntary turnover on construction professionals

Abstract

Employee turnover affects performance and competitiveness of companies. Traditional voluntary employee turnover models attempting to predict voluntary turnover are based on job satisfaction. A recent model that breaks away from this tradition is the unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover (UMVT) which takes account of additional factors such as labour market forces, economy and habit. UMVT has been tested in various industries. However, in the construction sector UMVT is tested for the first time in this study. A convenience sample of 320 construction professionals was taken from the Global Construction Consultants, Davis Langdon. The sample provided useable online survey data from 104 respondents who had voluntarily left their previous employers in the last four years. The results reveal that UMVT’s ability to interpret voluntary employee turnover among construction professionals was weak. In contrast to previous studies of UMVT, a significant number of respondents (80.8%) followed paths other than the original five theorized paths. As a result, a new extended version of the UMVT is proposed that includes two new paths that have been theorized, which add to the understanding of voluntary employee turnover and may, in the long term, help support human resource management in construction professional practices to predict and manage voluntary employee turnover.