Lecture 6: Employee Attitudes Engagement & Retention

Why is every number in Session 6 described as a stand-in?

• Satisfaction, involvement, commitment, and engagement are self-reported survey scores standing in for what managers want to know

  • whether people will put in discretionary effort, do good work, and stay.

• The gap between score and truth is where mistakes happen.

Why can't the Statistics Canada 80% satisfaction figure be compared directly with Gallup's 31% engagement figure?

They measure different constructs with different samples, questions, and definitions

• (80% of employed Canadians rated satisfaction 7-10 in October 2023

• 31% of US and Canadian employees were engaged in 2025).

What are the three components of an attitude?

1. Affect (how I feel)

2. cognition (what I believe)

3. intention (what I may do).

What are the 4 target that change the meaning of attitude? and Why is behavior imperfect evidence of an attitude?

• Job satisfaction

• Job involvement

• Organizational committment

• Work Engagement

Ability, opportunity, norms, and incentives can constrain action.

What is job satisfaction?

An overall or facet-based evaluation of the job experience.

What are the five facets of job satisfaction?

1. Work itself

2. pay

3. promotion

4. supervision

5. coworkers.

What diagnostic question should you ask about job satisfaction?

Satisfied with what, compared with which expectation?

What is job involvement?

Psychological identification with the work and its importance.

What is organizational commitment?

Attachment to and identification with the organization.

What is work engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2002)?

Energetic, dedicated, absorbed investment in the work role.

Where do attitudes come from?

1. Dispositional influence (stable tendencies, core self-evaluations, selection effects)

2. social information (coworkers signal what deserves attention, leaders frame fairness and meaning, shared narratives).

How do attitudes predict behavior?

Through a constrained path: attitude <-> intention <-> behavior, shaped by constraints and opportunity

What does cognitive dissonance prompt?

A change in attitude, behavior, or the explanation connecting them.

What is the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance (Judge et al., 2001)?

An estimated true correlation of about r = .30 across 312 samples: a meaningful average association, but no guarantee about one employee or intervention, and room for reciprocal effects and common causes.

What are the three dimensions of work engagement?

1. Vigor (energy, resilience, willingness to invest effort)

2. dedication (significance, enthusiasm, pride, challenge)

3. absorption (concentration and deep involvement).

How do satisfaction, commitment, involvement, and engagement differ?

• Satisfaction = evaluation (do I like what the job provides?).

• Commitment = attachment (do I identify with and stay connected to the organization?).

• Involvement = identity (how central is the job to how I see myself?).

• Engagement = investment (how much energy and presence do I bring?).

What are Kahn's (1990) three psychological conditions for engagement?

1. Meaningfulness (is this worth investing myself in?)

2. safety (can I show up without fear of harm?)

3. availability (do I have the resources to engage now?).

What does the job demands and resources model say?

• High job demands can drain energy

  • workload

  • emotional demands

  • role conflict

  • time pressure

• job resources support motivation and help people meet demands

  • autonomy

  • feedback

  • support

  • development

What outcomes does engagement predict, and what caveats apply?

Predict:

• Task performance

• contextual performance

• lower turnover risk

but shared causes, self-report measures, and reverse direction can inflate simple associations

Who owns the definition of engagement?

• The research construct (Kahn's conditions; vigor-dedication-absorption) is public and inspectable

• the commercial construct is a proprietary score with benchmarking and consulting attached, where items, weighting, and norms belong to the vendor.

What are the three forms of organizational commitment (Meyer et al., 2002)?

1. Affective (I want to stay: identification, belonging),

2. normative (I ought to stay: obligation, loyalty),

3. continuance (I have to stay: costs of leaving, limited alternatives).

How do the forms of commitment relate to outcomes (Meyer et al., 2002)?

• Affective shows the most favorable pattern

• normative also relates to desirable outcomes

• continuance reduces mobility but shows weak or unfavorable links with outcomes

  • can retain presence without discretionary contribution, and raises an ethical risk when dependence replaces attachment.

What are the sequential steps in the withdrawal cognitions path from satisfaction to turnover?

Job satisfaction -> organizational commitment -> thoughts and intentions -> search and comparison -> voluntary turnover

• Shocks and constraints can create other paths.

What are the five retention myths from Allen, Bryant & Vardaman (2010)?

• All turnover is bad

• people mainly quit for pay

• dissatisfaction drives most exits

• managers have little influence

• one best retention program works everywhere.

What are the three decision-relevant dimensions of turnover?

1. Initiator (voluntary vs involuntary)- did employee choose to leave

2. value impact (dysfunctional vs functional) - high-performing employee vs poor performing employee

3. influence (avoidable vs unavoidable) - could management have prevented it?

Which turnover predictors are strongest/weakest/consistent, and what does that imply?

STRONGER

• Turnover intentions

• Thoughts of quitting

• Search intentions and behaviour

CONSISTENT

• Organizational commitment

• Supervisor relationship

• Role clarity

• Job satisfaction

WEAKER ALONE

• Pay level

• Pay satisfaction

• Demographics

• Training

What is job embeddedness (Mitchell et al., 2001)?

Why people stay

• links (connections to people, teams, activities, community)

• fit (compatibility with job, organization, career, community)

• sacrifice (what would be lost by leaving).

What do desirability and ease of movement (March & Simon, 1958) explain?

• Leaving needs both wanting to go (satisfaction, commitment, manager, work) and being able to go (labor market, transferable skills, alternatives).

• Most retention programs target desirability, but ease of movement is largely outside employer control and moves with the economy.

What is the "shock" route to quitting?

Many people leave on a sudden event (an unsolicited offer, a new manager, relocation, a birth) without any slow decline in attitudes; surveys do not see it coming.

What are the retention levers from before the first day to supervision? (prevent employees from leaving from before they’re hired to their daily work)

1. Recruitment (realistic job previews)

2. selection (fit)

3. socialization (clear expectations, mentors)

4. development

5. rewards (procedural fairness)

6. supervision (relationship quality, accountability),

7. engagement (meaning, autonomy, support, recognition).

What are the five steps of a retention strategy?

1. Analyze (rates, costs, functionality)

2. interpret (strategy, labor market, trends)

3. diagnose (drivers, segments, pathways)

4. target (a coherent bundle for the priority group)

5. evaluate (compare outcomes and revise).

What are the four sources used to triangulate a retention diagnosis?

1. HR data

2. employee voice (pulse items, stay interviews)

3. exit evidence

4. context (labor market, strategy, workload, pay position, change events).

A single exit reason rarely establishes causation.

What did the Northstar Analytics case show?

Voluntary turnover rose from 12% to 18% (31% among analysts with 1-2 years' tenure); pay satisfaction held steady, but voice, role clarity, development, and confidence in managers fell, so the problem pointed to non-pay drivers.

What are the five links of a defensible retention recommendation?

Pattern, concept, mechanism, intervention, and test.

What are the four steps of the Northstar team task?

1. Classify (type of turnover and where)

2. explain (one attitude concept, one engagement concept, one retention pathway)

3. target (a priority group and one coherent bundle)

4. test (a leading measure, an outcome, and a comparison).

What is an attitude?

A predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable way to objects or persons in one's environment.

What is affect?

Dealing with a person's feelings toward the person or object.

What is job satisfaction (readings version)?

A pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience.

What is job involvement (readings version)?

The extent to which a person is interested in and committed to assigned tasks.

What is the dispositional approach to attitudes?

It argues that attitudes represent relatively stable predispositions to respond to people or situations around them.

What is the situational approach to attitudes?

It argues that attitudes emerge as a result of the uniqueness of a given situation.

What is the social-information-processing approach to attitudes?

It asserts that attitudes result from "socially constructed realities" as perceived by the individual.

What is behavioral justification?

The need to ensure that one's behaviors are consistent with one's attitudes toward the event.

What is cognitive consistency?

The need for behavioral justification to ensure that a person's behaviors are consistent with their attitudes toward an event.

What is body language?

The way people express inner feelings subconsciously through physical actions, such as sitting up straight versus being relaxed, or looking people in the eye versus looking away.