Will They Stay or Will They Go? The role of HR practices for the creation of voluntary employee turnover

Abstract

Voluntary employee turnover is an issue that has received extensive attention among top management and human resource professionals. As a response to this problem, organizations develop various HR practices that aim to enhance the retention attitudes among employees. In particular, retaining employees is argued to be crucial within the management consulting sector, which is a knowledge-intensive industry. Although, a gap has been found in previous research, concerning the investigation of the issue of voluntary employee turnover despite the presence of HR practices. Furthermore, there is a lack of research within the field of voluntary employee turnover that investigates this process in practice. The purpose of this study has been to investigate the role of HR practices for the creation of voluntary employee turnover within a management consulting firm. This article is based on a case study conducted at a business area within a Swedish management consulting firm that experiences a high level of voluntary employee turnover, despite the use of HR practices. The result indicates that HR practices, through their use in practice, not only are the solution but could also be a contributing cause to the creation of voluntary employee turnover, due to both an including and excluding character.