Employee turnover and creativity
Organizational experts strongly emphasize the merits of retaining productive
employees and minimizing, undesirable and controllable (dysfunctional) turnover.
Dysfunctional turnover has been cited as costing between 100 per cent and 150 per cent
of an annual worker’s salary. This cost is largely due to hidden expenses such as
additional training, replacement costs, lowered productivity, expert knowledge loss,
damaged relations with external markets, and impaired motivation of co-workers
One proactive approach to curb such losses is to design and nurture a set of
organizational dynamics that encourage employee retention and loyalty
Furthermore, early detection of employee job dissatisfaction through
an intent to turnover measure is a valuablemethodwithwhich to identify and resolve the
underlying problems before actual leaving takes place. The existing literature suggests a
meaningful relationship between employee perceptions of the creative environment and
intent to turnover which merits further investigation. Intent to turnover, along with job
satisfaction and organizational commitment, have been strongly associated with
employee perceptions of environmental reinforcement for creativity
In fact, Shalley, Gilson, and Blum (2000) showed significant support for their
hypothesis that workplace inducements for job innovation requirements will be
positively related to higher job satisfaction and retention
Relatedly, subordinates perceptions of supervisory
relationships and salespersons’ cognitions of organizational equity and justice have
shown significant links with turnover intentions
Likewise, customizing rewards, assignments, and job
responsibilities to match individualized motivations are all incentives for employee
retention and extend beyond pure job design to include leader communication skills
such as active listening
Finally, for the purposes of this study, we consider turnover intentions to be robust
predictors of actual turnover since intent to turnover is a widely accepted substitute,
and has been substantiated as such by a number of research investigations
Furthermore, the creative
environment will serve as an independent variable here since this investigation
measures the construct’s influence on creative output.
These parameters and preceding literature lead to a critical and the focal question:
is there a similar rapport between employee perceptions of the creative environment
and intent to turnover?
Based on the previous research literature presented in this article, we expect that a
worker’s creative environment perceptions will be significantly and negatively related
to the worker’s turnover intentions. This expectation is formally presented in the
following hypothesis (presented as the alternative to the null hypothesis for clarity):
H1. Worker perceptions of the creative environment will be significantly negatively
related to their turnover intentions.