Two Sides of the Same Coin? An Investigation into Factors Influencing Employees' Intentions to Stay and Leave

Abstract

This study investigated Australian aged care employees’ intentions to stay and leave. Much research has been conducted on why people leave; however, an emerging body of research is also examining why people stay. While a few studies have investigated the factors influencing employees’ intentions to stay and leave, only one study (Howe, King, Ellis, Wells, Wei, & Teshuva, 2012) has investigated the factors influencing Australian aged care employees’ intentions to stay and leave. No study, however, has investigated the combined influence of personal factors (age, education status, marital status, tenure, perceived health of self and family, employment status, and area of employment) and organisational factors (perceived organisational support, perceived supervisor support, job embeddedness, and job satisfaction) on employees’ intentions to stay and leave. Additionally, there has been no study that has investigated these factors using the “Resource-Based View of the Firm”, which is the theoretical framework for this study. Therefore, this study makes original contributions to the literature. Examining employees’ intentions to stay and leave is particularly important within the Australian aged care sector, which is characterised by high turnover, an ageing workforce, and the impact of the global shortages of nurses (King et al., 2012). Consequently, research that investigates the factors affecting the sustainability of this sector, such as employee retention and turnover, is needed. Only one study has investigated the similarities and differences in the factors influencing both community care and residential care (i.e., long-term care institutions) employees’ intentions to stay and leave (Howe et al., 2012). However, that study was limited in the data collected by the national census of aged care employees and as such did not study the same variables as the present study. Therefore, the present study makes valuable contributions to understanding the Australian aged care sector by investigating further similarities and differences among the factors influencing intentions in these two groups of employees, as well as providing additional knowledge to the sector regarding the general factors influencing employees’ intentions to stay and leave.