Korean labor market is rapidly being westernized and traditional employment relationship between employers and employees has been changed. While the relationship has been based on strong trust and commitment in the past, it is more on contract-oriente...
Korean labor market is rapidly being westernized and traditional employment relationship between employers and employees has been changed. While the relationship has been based on strong trust and commitment in the past, it is more on contract-oriented decision in these days. Moreover, those changes had to be made within considerably short period due to rapid industrialization and currency crisis. Consequently, those resulted in separated layers of employment structure even in an organization, making it difficult to determine how to organize the structure correctly.
Under these changes in Korean labour market, it is time to reconsider traditional HR approach in order to build employees' positive attitude and behavior. Especially, motivating workers in IT industry is truly important issue, because employees turnover means not only to lose brains but also to leak confidential information to competitors.
Employee's Job satisfaction and organizational commitment depends on whether his/her needs meet expectation within a company. Firms that better meet individuals' preferences are more likely to retain employees and gain their satisfaction and commitment. When it comes to preference, it is subject to change as the workers grow older and have different priority. Obviously, age is expected to be one factor that can make differences in workers’ satisfaction and attachment toward their work, and that can further affect hugely on their turnover intention.
The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of age as a moderator between turnover intention and its antecedents. For this study, the antecedents of turnover intentions is subdivided into job attitude variables which mean job satisfaction and organizational commitment and motivational factors which contain job insecurity, leader-member exchange(LMX), and work-life balance. This study proposes a structure of an employee's internal decision process, the way the motivational factors affect turnover intention which is mediated by job attitude.
For correct results, surveys answered by 238 workers from the top–twelve-frequent-turnover Korean IT companies were sampled out, dividing the group into that of less than the age 35 and that of more than that, to learn the relationship of motivation factors and job attitude. Motivation about LMX is more strongly related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment of young workers than old workers. The motivation about work-life balance is also more strongly related to organizational commitment of young workers. However, there is no significant difference about job security between age groups.
The result indicates two important findings. First thing is that the interpersonal relationship with a leader is strongly meaningful factor to secure young employee's satisfaction and commitment. LMX is the only motivation factors which affects on turnover intentions mediated by both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Second finding is that a company needs to start to care about employees’work-life balance in Korea. We need to note that there is no age difference on job satisfaction from work-life balance.
The result of this study shows that the different preference of motivation exists along the age which affects turnover intentions through job attitude. From ignorance about age differences, present management system fails to build employees' satisfaction and commitment and to retain people with a simple HR approach. Therefore, a company should count on age effect and this study can be utilized to understand the process.
This study pays attention to the age effects which have been looked down on in actual business circumstance and academic filed. HR management is challenging more to build employees' satisfaction and to retain them than before. At this point, this study indicates what a company is supposed to do and the way they should be in viewpoint of an advanced HR strategy.