There is a crisis in healthcare that we have never seen to this degree and it doesn’t seem to be getting better anytime soon. It’s employee turnover and the inability to attract new employees who will stay on the job for an extended period of time.
Employers are providing big sign-on bonuses, allowing employees to make their own schedule and offering perks like never before, and nothing seems to be effective at slowing turnover. What then might work?
What is Job Embeddedness?
Some experts believe that creating a work environment that encourages and embraces emotional commitment might do the trick. Job embeddedness is a catch-all term for a set of influences on an employee’s decision to stay with an employer.
These influences include on-the-job factors like:
- Genuine human bonds with co-workers and colleagues
- The fit between the employee’s skills and the demands of the job
- Employer-sponsored community activities like fundraisers for charity
Off-the-job influences include the employee’s personal, family and community commitments and trying to honor them as much as possible such as attending spiritual services weekly or caring for an aging parent.
It’s All About Connections…
Job embeddedness can be boiled down to the series of connections among different aspects of an employee’s work and professional life. Employees who have more integrated roles, responsibilities and relationships have more connections and can be considered to be more embedded.
Employees with more connections may experience intense disruption across multiple aspects of their lives if they leave the major point of these connections, which is their job. They may avoid leaving because of these connections that will become broken once they move on.
Or Lack of Connections
On the other hand, employees who aren’t integrated in job-related roles, responsibilities and relationships tend to have fewer connections, low embeddedness and as a result, find it easier to leave their current employer.
Core Elements of Job Embeddedness
According to the Job Embeddedness theory (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski and Erez), there are three critical elements that help to indicate the degree of connection employees may develop within their workplace.
1. Fit
The employees’ perception of how compatible or comfortable he or she is with the workplace and environment as a whole. Fit is also influenced by the employees’ values, goals, talents and knowledge and how they line up with the workplace. When there is strong job embeddedness in terms of fit, the employee is likely to feel a stronger bond with the organization and stay.
2. Links
Links are the connections between the employee and other employees, the workplace, company and greater community. Links may be formal like those between management and employees, and informal such as co-worker interactions and friendships. The more quality links the better the chance of staying with the employer.
3. Sacrifice
Just like it sounds, sacrifice involves the perceived cost of financial or emotional benefits that will be lost when the employee leaves. This includes formal benefits including income, insurance, stock options and opportunities for advancement as well as informal benefits such as friendships among co-workers, taking part in significant projects or tasks, and one’s reputation associated with the organization.
How to Use It
To fully understand and activate job embeddedness, leaders must become aware of the common factors contributing to employee turnover within their organization. They must also examine predictors of turnover, strategies related to job embeddedness and how the organization can leverage this information to achieve their goals.
- Some Predictors of Turnover
- Negative workplace culture or no identifiable culture exists at all
- Pay is at least 5% lower than competitors
- Working in healthcare and senior care, IT, the government, and media
- Age of the employee – 18-24 year-olds and 40-48 year-olds leave within one year in the organization
Strategies Related to Job Embeddedness
To fully embrace and utilize the concept of job embeddedness, a few strategies can help the process along so the organization can achieve higher employee retention. They include:
- A culture that the employee is fully connected to and identifies with
- Workplace values are similar to those of the employee
- Career outlook and opportunities for advancement and promotion
- Income that is around 10% higher than the average pay for their position
Potential Downsides
While job embeddedness has so many upsides, it’s important to know what the possible downsides might be. Since the goal of job embeddedness is retention, some employees may feel committed to stay no matter what, including those for whom turnover would be preferable. Similarly, there may be instances in which the employee is no longer a good fit for the position he or she has held for some time, and are now no longer ideal. They may also feel compelled to stay in their current position.
Final Thoughts on Job Embeddedness
In almost every industry or job sector, hiring and retaining enough quality employees is a daily struggle. It is worse in healthcare and senior care in particular. While many perks and bonuses are being used, most fail to retain talented employees. This is why it’s important to look deeper into job embeddedness.