CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF EMPLOYEE TURNOVER IN INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS ETHIOPIA MISSION

Abstract

This research is aimed at assessing the causes and consequences of professional employee international Medical Corps considering personal, pull and push factors as causes of turnover and separation and hiring costs, team cohesion, patient satisfaction, quality of services, productivity and workload and burnout as consequences of turnover. Respondents were only professional employees (existing and those quitted their job) who are on and above Officer position. The employee was categorized into three strata, namely employees on the job, employee who already quit their job and vital employees who are responsible for coordinating project activities and managing employees at the five field Offices who have a direct relation with human resources of the organization. Thus, stratified convenient sampling method was employed and 173 respondents were selected from 305 employee who are on the job and who quitted. The response rate was 85%. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed. Interview data generated qualitative data and the questionnaire responses generated quantitative data. Descriptive summary was used for quantitative data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that most of personal factors are not the vital causes for turnover but not misbehavior of boss and what they expect from the job was not available. The study reveals that employees who quitted their job, the actual causes from personal factors are disliking personality of their boss and unavailability of what they expected from job. From this one can conclude that employees who have leading role lacks leadership skill and the role of each employees lacks clarity. From pull factors, they have mentioned that availability of high salary elsewhere, more financial benefits, career advancement, less work load and availability of higher education support are crucial causes made them to leave the organization and also and the value and more respect other organizations has for their employee made them to quit their job. From this the researcher concluded that the organization benefit package is less than other NGOs and no professional advancement in the organization plus there is high workload. Regarding push factors, employees quitted their job said that they quitted their job due to less fringe benefits, lack of freedom, absence of career advancement, more work load, absence of work life balance, misbehavior of bosses and absence of justice and fairness when compared with other similar organization working in the area. The study has also revealed that turnover negatively affect completion of projects as planned, increases recruitment and on boarding costs, increase pressure on existing employee which leads them to burnout, reduce the time devoted to program quality, lowers level of team cohesiveness and leads to dissatisfaction of beneficiaries, partner organization, donors and regulatory bodies. The study concluded with the recommendation to the senior management of the organization to improve factors that could be controlled by the organization and reduce turnover and to have staff retention strategy.