Investigating the influence of job embeddedness on turnover intention: The mediational role of work engagement

Abstract

South African higher education institutions find it increasingly difficult to retain staff (Barkhuizen et al., 2020). An educational institution, whose employees are their most valuable assets, would undoubtedly prefer to retain its staff to remain competitive. Researchers are moving their focus from why employees leave, and subsequently, there is a growing interest in why employees stay. As a result, there is an increased focus on determining whether the heightened embeddedness of staff and elevated levels of work engagement might be genuine strategies to reduce the intention to leave. The purpose of this study was to find empirical evidence of the influence of job embeddedness on turnover intention and to explore intermediary work engagement, focusing predominantly on non-academic staff. The research studied and analysed the existing literature and other related research previously carried out that was related to the subject matter or job embeddedness, work engagement, and the intention to leave. Building on this foundation, the research methodology was developed, and the study was carried out. The study targeted non-academic employees of an educational institution that has three campuses across two South African provinces. Using the mono-method that adopted a quantitative approach to conduct the survey, online questionnaires were used to gather information from the participants. The questionnaires’ measurement instruments were the Job Embeddedness Scale (JES-9), Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) and Turnover Intention (TIS-3). The study expected responses from 273 people but ultimately received 102 respondents, representing a 37% response rate. The study conducted a descriptive statistical analysis and established that job embeddedness is significantly related to reducing turnover intention. Moreover, an elevated level of engagement at work was indirectly related to job embeddedness to reduce the turnover intention. These results concur with Takawira et al. (2014) and Khan et al.’s (2018) studies, which established that elevated levels of embeddedness and work engagement significantly reduced employees’’ intentions to consider leaving. This study’s results provide practical guidance for educational institutions and other organisations seeking to retain their employees by nurturing strong job embeddedness and boosting work engagement. The insights from this research further provide value to human resource management, organisational leaders, and researchers keen on understanding the factors influencing employee turnover in today's workforce.