Question

Explain at least one theory or conceptual framework and its relationship to a topic with high turnover rate among personal health care

Answer 1

Retention of employees in any organization is always being an important subject of inquiry by researchers. Any efforts to promote retention or to avoid turnover will be effective in controlling it. The turnover can be either voluntary or involuntary. The retention activities are the sum of all activities to increase the organizational commitment of employees and providing the employees with an environment which is ambitious and loads of opportunities, where they can grow by outperforming others. The voluntary move of organizations to create such an environment can retain employees for a long term. The researchers have proved the value of retaining the efficient and functional for the effective survival of an organization. The possession of a healthy team of committed and productive employees by the organization will lead to the corporate strategic advantage.

The factors such as competitive salary, warm working environment, healthy employee – employee and employee to employer relationships and job security are the main motivational variables which influence the retention of employees in the organizations.

The motivator-hygiene theory or two-factor theory or intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

Frederick Herzberg summarizes that there is a particular set of factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and there is a separate group of factors that can cause dissatisfaction.

Frederick Herzberg was a psychologist and he had found the correlation between employee attitude and workplace motivation. He was focused on the factors which the made people feel satisfied and unsatisfied in the workplace. A two-factor theory is an important theory that explains what satisfies or dissatisfies employees and thereby act as an important framework to explain the employee retention.

The method used was interviewing a large number of employees about the factors of to find out what they feel both good and bad about their employment. From the study, Herzberg developed a theory of workplace motivation known as the two-factor theory. The theory assumes that there are two sets of factors that influence motivation in the workplace by either promoting employee satisfaction or preventing it.

Herzberg named the first of the two as hygiene factors. As per Herzberg’s argument, the term 'hygiene' describes factors that cause dissatisfaction in the workplace. They are:

• extrinsic (or independent of the work itself)
• linked to things such as compensation, job security, organizational politics, working conditions, quality of leadership
• the relationships between supervisors, subordinates, and peers.

The absence of inadequacy of these hygiene factors hinder the motivation in employees and can cause serious dissatisfaction.

Hygiene factors are all about making an employee feel comfortable and convenient. When the hygiene factors are not satisfied, the employees will have the feeling of a missed element in the workplace.

The second factor in Herzberg’s theory is ‘motivators or satisfiers’. These factors are associated with employee motivation. They develop from intrinsic, or dependent, conditions of the workplace itself. They include responsibility, job satisfaction, employee recognition, achievements, chances for growth and development.

As a conclusion of the theory, there are some job factors that gives satisfaction and some other job factors that prevent dissatisfaction. On the basis of this theory the opposite of “Satisfaction” is “No satisfaction” and the opposite of “Dissatisfaction” is “No Dissatisfaction”.

The turnover in the healthcare industry can be minimized by applying the theory of two-factors. By improving the “Hygiene factors’ and ‘motivators or satisfiers’ the goal of employee satisfaction can be achieved and can thereby limit the employee turnover.