Employee Tenure Research Articles

Injury Risk by Day of the Week

While there is a growing body of research on the impact of work schedules on the risk of occupational injuries, there has been little investigation into any impact that day of the week might have. 2004 data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) were used to estimate the rate of injuries and illnesses by day of the week. Data for the number of injuries and illnesses involving days away from work were provided by the BLS Office of Safety and Health Statistics; data for the number of hours worked were estimated from an analysis of the American Time Use Survey database. For each day of the week, the number of cases (injuries + illnesses) per 200,000 work hours was calculated from these data. The data were also stratified by Industry Sector. The analysis revealed clear differences by day of the week that could not be accounted for by variation of day of the week employment in these industries. An association with employee tenure was evident. Weekend trends may overlap with overtime effects. Sundays had the highest rate overall – 40% higher than the average rate. Saturdays had the next highest rate followed by Mondays. Interpretation of these trends and the implications for work scheduling are discussed.

The effects of tie strength and tie diversity on job search, pay increases, and promotions in Singapore and Thailand

This study assessed the effects of an employee's strength and diversity of network ties within the organization to job-search behavior, pay increases, and promotions in two East Asian countries (Singapore and Thailand). Contrary to predictions, there were no significant associations between the strength of ties with one's supervisor or peers with job-search behavior, pay increases, or promotions. However, as predicted, the diversity of ties was positively associated with job-search behavior, pay increases, and promotions. Finally, the community in which an employee is embedded had no moderating influence on job-search behavior, pay increases, or promotions after accounting for employee tenure, suggesting a convergence of results for these relationships in Singapore and Thailand.

The Adoption of Job Rotation: Testing the Theories

This paper tests three possible explanations for why firms adopt job rotation: employee learning (rotation makes employees more versatile), employer learning (through rotation, employers learn more about individual workers' strengths), and employee motivation (rotation mitigates boredom). Whereas previous studies have examined either establishment characteristics or a single firm's personnel records, this study merges information from a detailed survey of Danish private sector firms with linked employer-employee panel data, allowing firm characteristics, work force characteristics, and firms' human resource management practices to be included as explanatory variables. The results reject the employee motivation hypothesis, but support the employee learning and, especially, the employer learning hypotheses. Firms allocating more resources to training were more likely to rotate workers; rotation schemes were more common in less hierarchical firms and in firms with shorter average employee tenure; and both firm growth rates and firms' use of nation-wide recruitment were positively associated with rotation schemes.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a logger safety training program

Introduction: Logger safety training programs are rarely, if ever, evaluated as to their effectiveness in reducing injuries. Method: Workers' compensation claim rates were used to evaluate the effectiveness of a logger safety training program, the West Virginia Loggers' Safety Initiative (LSI). Results: There was no claim rate decline detected in the majority (67%) of companies that participated in all 4 years of the LSI. Furthermore, their rate did not differ from the rest of the WV logging industry that did not participate in the LSI. Worker turnover was significantly related to claim rates; companies with higher turnover of employees had higher claim rates. Companies using feller bunchers to harvest trees at least part of the time had a significantly lower claim rate than companies not using them. Companies that had more inspections per year had lower claim rates. Conclusions: High injury rates persist even in companies that receive safety training; high employee turnover may affect the efficacy of training programs. The logging industry should be encouraged to facilitate the mechanization of logging tasks, to address barriers to employee retention, and to increase the number of in-the-field performance monitoring inspections. Impact on industry There are many states whose logger safety programs include only about 4–8 hours of safe work practices training. These states may look to West Virginia's expanded training program (the LSI) as a model for their own programs. However, the LSI training may not be reaching loggers due to the delay in administering training to new employees and high levels of employee turnover. Regardless of training status, loggers' claim rates decline significantly the longer they work for a company. It may be that high injury rates in the state of West Virginia would be best addressed by finding ways to encourage and facilitate companies to become more mechanized in their harvesting practices, and to increase employee tenure. Increasing the number of yearly performance inspections may also be a venue to reduce claim rates. Future research could investigate in better detail the working conditions of West Virginia loggers and identify barriers to job tenure, particularly for workers whose primary job task is chainsaw operation. A larger-scale study of the effect of performance monitoring inspections on claim rates is also warranted.

The Employee Factor in the Service-Profit Chain Framework

This study investigates the employees working in a Chinese leading securities firm by applying Structural Equation Modeling techniques to assess the importance of employee factors in the service-profit chain. The findings of this study indicate that positive linkages do exist between employee factors and corporate profitability. Moreover, we have found that employee satisfaction can be predicted by internal service quality as perceived by employees. A high amount of employee satisfaction can result in lower intentional turnover. And profitability seems to be strongly influenced by employee tenure. Our study has implications for Chinese securities firms because employee factors are measurable and accountable to the company's profitability. This contribution has tried to add to the knowledge domain regarding the service-profit chain model by testing it within Chinese culture.

Willingness-to-Comply and the Effectiveness of Legal Processes for Equity-Based Incentives

At the present time and in most developed countries, EBIs/ESOs are regulated by a myriad of laws at the local, state and federal levels. This introduces complexity and conflicts, and greater transaction costs, and opportunities for forum shopping and regulatory arbitrage. This article: a) analyzes the efficiency of legal processes for misconduct pertaining to Non-Common-Stock Equity-Based Incentives (EBIs); and also introduces new theories pertaining to the degree of government regulation of EBIs; b) introduces new models and the theory of Willingness-to-Comply for Equity-Based-Incentives (EBIs).The major findings of this study are that: a) its most efficient to regulate EBIs with one set of laws and a combination of civil and criminal laws; b) the degree of government regulation of EBIs and the penalty regime (criminal or civil) for illegal activities in EBI-related matters should be variable and should depend on several key factors such as company size and employee tenure.

Recruiting through advertising or employee referrals: Costs, yields, and the effects of geographic focus

Research on recruiting has generally considered the effects of recruiting source on employee tenure or performance, and has argued that formal employment ads are inferior to informal sources, notably employee referrals. We test two dimensions for evaluating the effects of recruiting sources on the recruiting process—cost per new hire and yield ratio. We also suggest a new dimension for distinguishing between different types of employment ads—geographical focus—which we define as the clarity and distinctiveness of the labour market that an ad is likely to reach. Geographically focused ads are shown to cost less and yield more appropriate applicants than unfocused ads. Considering the cost, yield, and focus of ads can promote the effectiveness of recruiting processes. The study therefore has both practical applications and implications for further research on recruiting sources.

Modeling the Relationships among Organizational Commitment and Its Outcome and Antecedents Using Career Stage as a Moderator

This study proposed a theoretical model for examining the process of turnover intentions and organizational commitment (OC) using career stage as a moderator. In the model, turnover intentions are influenced directly by OC and procedural justice, while procedural justice and leader-member exchange (LMX) influence turnover intentions indirectly through the mediation of OC. The relationships of the proposed model are moderated by a career stage moderator, which combines age and employee tenure. The moderating effects were simultaneously examined using data from staff in Taiwanese hospitals. The influences of OC and procedural justice on turnover intentions are found to be similar for the initial and mature stage groups, while the influence of procedural justice on OC is stronger for the initial stage group than the mature stage group. Finally, LMX exerts a stronger influence on OC for the mature stage group than for the initial stage group. The implications of the above findings are discussed.

Marital Status and Productivity: Evidence from Personnel Data

Although a robust wage premium for married men has been documented extensively in the labor economics literature, prior studies have been hampered in testing competing explanations of the premium by a lack of data on worker productivity. This study exploits a unique data set that contains job-performance measures for employees of a large, hierarchical organization. The quasi-longitudinal data track the marital status and job productivity, including performance reviews and promotions, of male Naval officers in technical and managerial jobs. Compared with single men, married men receive significantly higher performance ratings and are more likely to be promoted. In estimates that control for selection arising from quit decisions, the size of the marriage productivity effect falls but in most cases remains robust. Also, based on supplementary tests, selectivity arising from the decision to marry appears to explain only a small portion of the unadjusted marriage premium for Navy officers. Although the existence of a wage premium for married men has been documented extensively in the labor economics literature, the source of the premium has remained controversial. One hypothesis attributes the wage differential to economies of scale and specialization within the household, which provides incentives for additional investment in specific human capital by married men (Becker 1981). Alternative hypotheses are that the marriage premium stems from employer favoritism or that more productive or higher earning men are selected into marriage. The extensive empirical literature that has attempted to test the competing explanations has produced conflicting conclusions. However, one research approach to assess the effect of marital status that seldom has been implemented in the prior literature is to use data on the realized productivity of employees of a single firm. This study uses administrative data on male employees of a large, hierarchical organization to explore the effect of marital status on selected job performance measures. The personnel database covers male U.S. Naval officers and contains relatively detailed information on career performance, including promotion outcomes and annual performance reviews. The article seeks to shed light on the existence and magnitude of job-productivity differentials between married and single males and to assess competing explanations for marriage-related performance differentials. Navy personnel data are especially fertile for analyzing the effect of marital status on employee job productivity. Several performance measures are available for each individual, and the indicators capture performance throughout an employee's tenure rather than at a single career point. The design

The Effects of Employer Matching in 401(k) Plans

This paper uses data from the April 1993 pension supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to investigate the impact of employer matching and employee tenure on participation levels in 401(k) plans. While earlier studies examine similar issues, this study makes several advances. First, consistent with the theory that employers may use matching contributions to satisfy nondiscrimination rules, the study shows that correcting for the endogeneity of employer matching substantially increases the estimated effect of matching on participation levels. Second, the study provides evidence that the large positive association between employee tenure and 401(k) participation is because “stayers” tend to be “savers.”

Raising the Bar for Models of Turnover

It is well known that turnover rates fall with employee tenure and employer size. We document a new empirical fact about turnover: Among surviving employers, separation rates are positively related to industry-level exit rates, even after controlling for tenure and size. Specifically, in a dataset with over 13 million matched employee-employer observations for France, we find that, all else equal, a 1 percentage point increase in exit rates raises separation rates by 1/2 percentage point on average. Among current year hires, the average effect is twice as large. This relationship between exit rates and separation rates is robust to a host of data and statistical considerations. We review several standard models of worker turnover and argue that a model with firm-specific human capital accumulation most easily accounts for this new empirical fact.

Raising the Bar for Models of Turnover

It is well known that turnover rates fall with employee tenure and employer size. We document a new empirical fact about turnover: Among surviving employers, separation rates are positively related to industry-level exit rates, even after controlling for tenure and size. Specifically, in a dataset with over 13 million matched employee-employer observations for France, we find that, all else equal, a 1 percentage point increase in exit rates raises separation rates by 1/2 percentage point on average. Among current year hires, the average effect is twice as large. This relationship between exit rates and separation rates is robust to a host of data and statistical considerations. We review several standard models of worker turnover and argue that a model with firm-specific human capital accumulation most easily accounts for this new empirical fact.

The Methods Used to Implement an Ethical Code of Conduct and Employee Attitudes

In the process of implementing an ethical code of conduct, a business organization uses formal methods. Of these, training, courses and means of enforcement are common and are also suitable for self-regulation. The USA is encouraging business corporations to self regulate with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG). The Guidelines prescribe similar formal methods and specify that, unless such methods are used, the process of implementation will be considered ineffective, and the business will therefore not be considered to have complied with the guidelines. Business organizations invest enormous funds on formal methods. However, recent events indicate that these are not, by themselves, yielding the desired results. Our study, based on a sample of 812 employees and conducted in an Israeli subsidiary of a leading multinational High-Tech corporation headquartered in the US, indicates that, of the methods used in the process of implementation, one of the informal methods (namely, the “social norms of the organization”) is perceived by employees to have the most influence on their conduct. This result, when examined against employee tenure, remains relatively stable over the years, and stands in contradistinction to the formalistic approach embedded in the FSG. We indirectly measure the effectiveness of the percieved most influential implementation process methods by analyzing their impact on employee attitudes (namely, “personal ethical commitment” and “employees’ commitment to organizational values”). Our results indicate that the informal methods (“manager sets an example” or “social norms of the organization”) are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal method (“training and courses on the subject of ethics”). The personal control method (“my own personal values”) differs significantly from all the other methods in that it yields the highest degree of “personal ethical commitment” and the lowest degree of “employees’ commitment to organizational values.”

Will Job Testing Harm Minority Workers?

Because of the near-universal …nding that minorities fare poorly on standardized tests, the use of such tests for employment screening is thought to pose an equity-e¢ ciency trade-o¤: improved selection comes at a cost of screening out more minority applicants. This paper investigates the consequences of standardized testing for minority employment and productivity. We analyze the experience of a large, geographically dispersed retail …rm whose 1,363 stores switched from paper to electronic job applications during 1999 and 2000. Both hiring methods use face to face interviews, but the test-based screen also places substantial weight on a computer administered personality assessment. We …nd strong evidence that testing yielded more productive hires –increasing median employee tenure by 10 percent, and slightly lowering the frequency at which workers were …red for cause. Consistent with prior research, minorities applicants performed signi…cantly worse on the employment test. Had stores initially screened workers in a manner uncorrelated with the test, simple calculations suggest that testing would have lowered minority hiring by approximately 10 to 25 percent. This did not occur: applicant testing had no measurable impact on the racial composition of hiring at the …rm’s 1,363 sites; and, moreover, productivity gains were uniformly large among both minority and non-minority hires. As we show formally, these results imply that employers

Human Capital Measurement

OVERVIEW:Most knowledge-intensive organizations recognize that their source of competitive advantage comes from human capital. Yet few reliable metrics exist for measuring its value. A new metric draws on actuarial principles and replacement cost to estimate the expected economic contribution of individuals to an organization. The metric begins with an employee's wages plus benefits and then incorporates a series of additional costs: separation and sourcing costs; job vacancy costs; learning curve opportunity costs; and new hire risk costs. Factors such as employee tenure and age are also considered. The metric has many potential applications, from sizing retention bonuses for individuals to estimating a minimum return on people for an entire business segment.

Effects of leader-member exchange, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment on diagnosing employee job performance using career stage as a moderator

This work proposed a theoretical model for investigating the process of job performance (JP) and organizational commitment (OC) using career stage as a moderator. In the proposed model, OC and leader-member exchange (LMX) directly influence JP, while LMX and job satisfaction (JS) indirectly influence JP via the mediation of OC. The causal relationships are moderated by a career stage moderator, which combines age and employee tenure. The moderating effects were simultaneously tested using data from high-tech personnel in a large Taiwanese manufacturer. The extent to which OC affects JP is similar for the initial and mature stage groups, while the influences of LMX on both OC and JP are stronger for mature stage individuals than initial stage individuals. Finally, JS influences OC more strongly for initial stage individuals than mature stage individuals. The implications of the above findings are discussed.

Firm Specific Human Capital vs. Job Matching: A New Test

We use a unique data set on employee turnover by industry in Arizona to test competing theories of turnover. We find that industries with lower establishment survival rates have more employee turnover, even after controlling for differences in the distribution of employee tenure. This result is consistent with a model of turnover where employees choose how much firm specific human capital to accumulate, but it is inconsistent with job matching models.

Exceptions to Employment at Will: Raising Firing Costs or Enforcing Life-Cycle Contracts?

The common law doctrine of employment at will holds that, unless specified otherwise, the employment relationship can be terminated for any reason. Beginning in the mid-1970s, many state courts became willing to find exceptions to this doctrine. A possible benefit of this new approach is that it provides a third-party enforcement mechanism to implicit labor contracts. This article uses two large micro data sets on employee tenure and wages to evaluate the impact of exceptions to employment at will. Although the results suggest that exceptions to employment at will affected labor markets, there is little evidence that exceptions helped enforce implicit contracts. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Aren't there two parties in an employment relationship? Antecedents and consequences of organization–employee agreement on contract obligations and violations

AbstractPast studies have paid little attention to an organization's perspective on reciprocal obligations in the employment relationship, despite its importance to overall satisfaction and the survival of the relationship. This study assesses parties' levels of agreement on the reciprocal obligations of the psychological contract, and their consequences on parties' perceptions of contract violations. Furthermore, the study examines subsequent reactions of both parties to perceived violations. Results indicate that managers and employees tend to disagree on the employee's obligations and violations of the contract but not on the organization's obligations and violations. More importantly, results from multivariate regression analyses indicate that employee tenure with the manager and leader–member exchange (LMX) as reported by the manager were positively related to agreement on employees' obligations. Agreement on employees' obligations was related to perceptions of violation by the manager, but in a direction opposite to that hypothesized. Both managers' perceptions of employee violations and employees' perceptions of organization violations were related to employee outcomes assessed by the managers and the employees. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Firm Specific Human Capital vs. Job Matching: A New Test

We use a unique data set on employee turnover by industry in Arizona to test competing theories of turnover. We find that industries with lower establishment survival rates have more employee turnover, even after controlling for differences in the distribution of employee tenure. This result is consistent with a model of turnover where employees choose how much firm specific human capital to accumulate, but it is inconsistent with job matching models.