Research on Dispatched Employees’ Voluntary Turnover in Electronics Industry
Xu-tao Zhang1,2, Zhen He1, Yun-na Liu1, Yun Wang3
1
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Equipment Support Department, Military Transportation Academy, Tianjin, China
3
Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Tianjin Engineering Technical Institute, Tianjin, China
(lonewind1981@126.com)
2
Abstract - In the context of “labor shortage” in china,
dispatched employees’ voluntary turnover in electronics
industry is researched. In view of the characteristics of
dispatched employees, employee retention model considered
all possible variables is established based on analysis of
traditional employee turnover model. 300 questionnaires are
handed out by random sampling in three typical electronics
industries in Tianjin. The key factors affecting dispatched
employees’ voluntary turnover are figured out by ANOVA
and multiple regressions. Moreover, the motivation of
turnover and some feasible suggestions are discussed, which
can be referred by enterprises to improve job satisfaction
and retention will of dispatched employees.
Keywords – Dispatched employee, employee turnover,
job satisfaction, retention will
I.
INTRODUCTION
As the approaching of Lewis turning point and the
gradually disappearing of demographic dividend in china,
“labor shortage” has gradually become a common
phenomenon in the country. According to the report, labor
shortage phenomenon has spread from east to west and a
structural shortage of labor has been normalized. In the
context of recruitment difficulties and rising labor costs,
enterprises in China have to face the problems of high
voluntary turnover rate of direct labors. In china, the
direct labors in enterprises are very special group because
most of them are “dispatched employees”. Dispatched
employees are that hired by labor dispatch companies
with whom they have employment relationship; they are
dispatched to the employer for labor services if they
consent to the dispatching [1]. This form of labor using is
called labor dispatch, which has been prevail nowadays
because it saves cost for organizations and brings
flexibility to both organizations and employees[2].
Traditional researches on employee turnover are mainly
about enterprises management personnel or the general
staff [3-5], however, the researches on the turnover of direct
labor in particular the dispatched employees are still
blank. In this paper, based on the analysis of traditional
turnover model, dispatched employees’ retention model
considered all possible variables is established in view of
the characteristic of dispatched employees. Questionnaire
is designed based on the model and 300 questionnaires
are handed out by random sampling in three typical
electronics industries in Tianjin. The key factors affecting
dispatched employees’ voluntary turnover are figured out
by ANOVA and multiple regressions. Moreover, the
motivation of turnover and some feasible suggestions are
discussed, which can be referred by enterprises to
improve the satisfaction and retention will of dispatched
employees.
II. Dispatched Employees’ Retention Model
Since 1950s, many scholars have conducted in-depth
study on the construction of turnover model [6]. They
studied the determinants of employee turnover from the
individual level, and tried to explain the decision making
process of employees. The classic models of employee
turnover include: the multipath Unfolding Model [7]
established by Lee and Mitchell (1994), the Job
Embeddedness Model [8] by Mitchell and Lee (2001), and
the Casual Model [9] by Price (2001), and so on.
The Unfolding Model holds that multiple paths lead
to employee turnover and that some decisions are
independent of job satisfaction, but for "shock", namely,
the external events that generate implication for the job,
which will cause a conscious judgments on the current
employment status. Job Embeddedness (JE) is the degree
to which individuals are enmeshed by all the factors in
their jobs. JE model summarizes all the organizational or
community factors that predict an employee’s tendency to
stay in a job despite the unsatisfactory feeling or an
external opportunity which might cause him/her to quit.
Price’s Casual model is generally accepted by scholars as
a classic model; it comes down to satisfaction, employee
turnover and organizational commitment problem, which
will in turn impact by affecting the turnover behavior.
There are four variables related to turnover taken into
consideration in this model: environmental variable,
individual variable, structural variable, and process
variable. The model absorbs results of multi-disciplinary
studies, including a large number of variables and shows
good predictive ability in terms of the employee’s
psychological process of change.
The Unfolding Model further explains the turnover
act under high work satisfaction and organizational
commitment; while JE theory can better explain the
retention when the degree of work satisfaction and
organizational are low. However, the business usually
concern on finding the key to "work" factor, rather than
employee turnover behavior path analysis. On the other
hand, non-work factors in employee turnover are often
part of a business’ controllable range. Compared to
multipath model and JE model, Price’s casual model is
more suitable for enterprises to reduce employee turnover
rate. In view of this, this study builds the All Factor
Retention Model of dispatched employees on the basis of
Price’s casual model. It consists of three mediating
variables (oval), 18 external variables (rectangles), with
the model structure shown in Figure 1. The model takes
retention will as the explanatory variable for employee
turnover,
work satisfaction and organizational
commitment as intermediary variables, and the other 18
variables like family responsibility, salary & benefits, and
work pressure as external variables. To meet the
characteristics of dispatched employees and corporate
form of employment, the model added factors like
converting opportunity, shutdown, overtime etc. in
comparison to Price’s casual model.
Family
responsibility
Job hunting
Salary & bebefits
PM system
Work pressure
Rotation system
OT system
shutdown
Work
satisfaction
Working
environment
Retention
will
Organization
fairness
turnover
Humanistic care
Personal
relationship
Career
development
Organization
commitment
Training
Converting
opportunity
External
opportunity
Organization
culture
Employee
development
Fig. 1. Dispatched employee retention model considered all possible variable
III. Data Collection
Questionnaire is designed based on the model
mentioned above, which uses five-point Likert item. It
refers to Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, Job
Descriptive Index, Hewitt Engagement Survey Scale etc.
in the process of questions design. Besides, the process of
the survey is also a process of organization culture
promotion, so all questions asked in the questionnaire are
positively directed. We use SPSS18.0 to analyze the
reliability and validity of the questionnaire. The
Cronbach’s α is 0.931, KMO 0.928>>0.5, Bartlett’s Test
level 0.000<<0.05 ， indicating good reliability and
validity[10].
300 questionnaires are handed out by random
sampling in three typical electronics industries in Tianjin,
283 of them are handed in afterwards and 279 of them are
proved valid, amounting to 93% of the total. Table I
below shows the structure of the sample.
Table I. Individual Variables Constituting the Questionnaire
Proportion
Category
Number
（%）
Male
66
23.7%
Gender
Female
213
76.3%
Contents
Age
16-20
55
19.7%
21-25
156
55.9%
26-30
44
15.8%
31-35
20
7.2%
35 and above
4
1.4%
Married
67
24%
Unmarried
212
76%
0-6 months
96
34.4%
7-12 months
37
13.3%
1-2years
120
43%
2 y. and above
26
9.3%
Marriage Status
Working Years
The characteristics of dispatched employees in
electronics industry can be reflected by the constitution of
people investigated. Women are the majority, occupying
76.3%. Their age is young, employees aging 16-30
occupying 92.8%. Most of them are unmarried,
occupying 76%. Working years are short, working years
less than 2 years occupying 90.7%.
IV. Data Analysis
A. ANOVA Analysis
In order to test whether individual variables have
significant impact on satisfaction, organization
commitment, and retention will, ANOVA analysis is done
to gender, age, and years of service. Table II shows their
significance respectively.
Table II Significance of Individual Variable on Retention Will
Organization
Satisfaction
Retention will
commitment
Gender
0.843
0.591
0.383
Age
0.736
0.735
0.324
0.023***
0.366
0.511
0.707
0.029***
0.054**
Years of
Service
Marriage
Status
As the table shows, gender, age, and years of service
have no significant impact on retention will, but marriage
status has significant impact on retention will. To be
specific, married employee is more apt to retain than
unmarried employee. This might be resulted from married
employee’s consideration in family responsibility and
social relationship out of which they cherish more about
current work opportunity and they are more committed to
the organization.
B. Multiple Regressions
Factorial analysis of retention will is carried out first.
The significant levels of family responsibility, PM
systems, overtime work, working environment and
organization culture are surpass 0.10, indicating having
no significant impacts on retention will. Those variables
whose significant levels surpass 0.10 in Figure 1 are
regarded as insignificant ones and are discarded. Multiple
regressions are done to significant variables and
dispatched employee turnover path model is built (Figure
2). All the external variables, intervening variables, and
explanatory variables and their inter-relations are shown
in the model. The path coefficient is applied to show the
weight.
Job hunting
Humanistic care
0.154
Personal
relationship
0.148
Career
development
0.172
Shutdown
- 0.0776
- 0.128
Work
satisfaction
0.0892
Rotation system
0.214
0.174
- 0.168
Salary &
benefits
Retention
will
0.189
Work pressure
Training
Organization
fairness
Converting
opportunity
Employee
development
0.222
0.0684
turnover
0.589
0.0754
0.106
Organization
commitment
0.218
0.170
-0.0799
External
opportunity
Fig. 2 Path of Dispatched Employee Turnover
As Figure 2 shows, organization commitment has
more impact on dispatched employee’s retention will than
work satisfaction does.
Humanistic care, personal relationship, career
development, salary& benefits, have significant positive
impact on working satisfaction; working pressure,
shutdown has significant negative impact on it;
performance system, OT, working condition, training etc.
have no significant impact on satisfaction.
Salary & benefits, converting opportunity, working
pressure, rotation system, management, training, and
career development have positive correlation to
commitment while external opportunities have negative
correlation to it. However, organizational culture,
traditionally an important factor affecting commitment,
doesn’t pass the test. This might be caused by the identity
of dispatched employee.
C. Figure out Key Factors
For further comparison of the affection of external
variables on turnover intention, absolute value proportion
of the correlation coefficient on each path is calculated, as
shown in Table III.
Table III. Path Coefficient and Proportion of each Significant Variable
Impact on
Impact on
Impact on
Absolute
Variables
satisfaction commitment
retention will percentage
Salary &
0.143
0.222
0.161
18.38%
benefit
Converting
0.218
0.128
14.61%
opportunity
Job hunting
-0.128
14.61%
Employee
development
Rotation
system
Organization
fairness
External
opportunity
Training
0.170
0.10
11.42%
0.120
0.09
10.27%
0.106
0.062
7.08%
-0.0799
-0.047
5.37%
0.0754
0.044
5.02%
0.172
0.036
4.11%
0.128
0.027
3.08%
0.0892
Career
development
Humanistic
care
Personal
relationship
Shutdown
0.148
0.032
3.65%
-0.0776
-0.017
1.94%
Work pressure
-0.168
0.004
0.46%
0.0684
It can be concluded from Table III that salary &
benefits is the most important variable that affect
dispatched employees, and it has more impact on
organization commitment than on work satisfaction. This
conclusion could be explained by the fact that most
dispatched employees in electronics industries are young
people who value money a lot.
Converting opportunity and job hunting are of
paratactic significance to contractors. On the one hand,
this shows that dispatched employees are more cared
about their identity recognition by the company. On the
other hand, it indicates that contractors are easily to
pursuit new opportunities with the help of internet and the
development of HR companies.
V. Conclusion and Discussion
The research on dispatched employees’ voluntary
turnover results in some new findings. Due to the unique
characteristics of dispatched employees and the special
form of labor using, factors affecting their turnover are
different from traditional turnover model. Dispatched
employees values salary and benefits more than regular
employee, desire for organization recognition, and pursuit
individual career development. For enterprises, increasing
salary is always the first choice to retain employees.
Without any doubt, this choice will cause burden to an
enterprise which is going through declining profit. Under
this circumstance, the enterprise should pay more
attention to employee career development and provide
more training opportunities so as to enhance its attraction
and competence. Individual variables like gender, age,
years of service have no significant impact on retention
will, while the status of marriage has obvious impact on it.
The new finding shows that family responsibility and
social relationship have certain impact on employee’s
decision making in leaving a company. With the
spreading of information in internet and the development
of HR companies, external opportunities and job hunting
become important factors in motivating a frequent flow of
contractors. Organization culture has no significant
impact on employee retention will. How to strengthen ties
between dispatched workers and the employers by
organization culture is an issue worth noting. The
fluctuation of orders of an enterprise leads to random
overtime working or shutdown. Higher income out of
overtime working can’t strengthen employee retention
will, but shutdown directly results in lower satisfaction
and weaker organization commitment which causes
intention to leave. Therefore, enterprises should pay more
attention to the rationality of their manufacturing plan.
These findings have enriched researches on employee
voluntary turnover. Meanwhile, they provide references
for enterprises in form of labor using and system
designing for dispatched employees.
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