Does perceived support in employee development affect personnel turnover?

Abstract

This article focuses on whether it is beneficial for firms to invest in the general skills of their workforce or whether these training investments merely encourage personnel turnover. Estimation results derived from a sample of 2833 Dutch pharmacy assistants show that participation in general training does not induce employees' intention to quit, as predicted by human capital theory. We find that a firm's investments in general training significantly contribute to the perceived support in employee development (PSED) among the workforce, as predicted by social exchange theory. Moreover, we show that PSED is negatively related to employees' intention to quit the firm; however, this effect is to a large extent mediated by employee job satisfaction. Our findings support the importance of social exchange theory in explaining turnover behaviour as a consequence of personnel development practices.

Keywords:

• human capital theory
• intention to quit
• job satisfaction
• social exchange theory
• training

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Bas van Diepen and Piet Van den Bossche from Maastricht University and an anonymous reviewer for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article.