Abstract

The article focuses on premature employee turnover. Focusing on the turnover intentions of resent employees may help curb unwanted turnover. A model of work-role design can help determine which facets of work are critical in the prediction of premature turnover as well as suggest how these facets change during an employee's career. The turnover intentions of employees at different times are affected by different work-role-design factors. To help prevent premature turnover, it is wise to focus not on the whole organization but on different groups of employees. Organizational career stage or tenure appears to be a useful variable. Certainly, as one's career in an organization gets longer, the work-role-design factors change in importance in terms of satisfaction and turnover intentions. To examine the usefulness of this approach, a nursing staff in a large, West Coast hospital was studied. The staff was experiencing what had been determined by the nursing director to be unacceptably high turnover levels.