Abstract:
Organisations are confronted with the challenges of managing, controlling and putting in place
retention strategies to mitigate against high turnover intention. This is also the case with public
libraries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants of the turnover intention
of public librarians at the City of Johannesburg Libraries (COJLIS) in the Gauteng province of
South Africa, with a view to developing a retention strategy. Turnover intention can bring
devastation to the organisation and can also lead to negative consequences such as decreased
morale and productivity, shortage of skilled and qualified librarians, direct and indirect costs
to library organisation and loss of knowledge. This quantitative research study utilised the
conceptual framework to investigate demographic, personal and organisational factors
influencing turnover intentions of librarians.
The conceptual framework for the present study incorporated aspects of a theory or theories,
concepts from the literature, personal experiences, knowledge of the context and models The
aspects of theory or theories and concepts from the literature on employee turnover “content”
and “process” models such as Mobley (1977), Jerome (2017), Nair, Mee & Cheik (2016), Perez
(2008), Spector (2005), Spector (1997), Price and Mueller (2000) and Price (2001)were
modified to suit this study for public librarians at COJLIS. Mobley’s (1977) turnover process
model was germane to this study, as it theorises a linear sequence consisting of the following:
“dissatisfaction, thoughts of quitting, evaluation of subjective expected utility of job search and
costs of quitting, search intentions, evaluation of alternatives, comparison of alternatives and
present job, intentions to quit and quitting”.
The constituents of the conceptual framework are demographics factors (age, tenure and job
designation level), personal factors (job satisfaction and organisational commitment) and
organisational factors (payment and fringe benefits, location of workplace, working
environment: flexi working hours, perceived alternative employment opportunity, promotion
and recognition, personal interaction, supervision and leadership, training and opportunity to
utilise skills) as well as turnover intention.
This study employed the census method and adopted the cross-sectional survey design method
to collect data from 174 librarians working in 89 public libraries and three support sections at
COJLIS. Data collection involved the use of a closed-ended questionnaire, as well as analysis documents such as strategic plans and human resource policies. Quantitative data were
analysed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) according to the objectives
of the study. The researcher conducted a linear regression test to find the instance of correlation
between personal and organisational variables, and librarians’ intention to leave their
workplace.
The findings revealed that demographic determinants (age, tenure and job designation level)
are significantly related to turnover intention. Tenure was a highly significant predictor of
turnover intention. The major findings to this study were a negative and significant relationship
between payment and fringe benefits, working environment: flexi working hours (work-life
balance) promotion and recognition towards turnover intention. The study concludes that
COLIS may be able to reduce turnover intention through the improvement of factors such as
payment and fringe benefit, working environment: flexi working hours (work-life balance)
promotion and recognition which would lead to increased job satisfaction and organisational
commitment.
It is recommended that in order to mitigate turnover intention and increase retention, the talent
retention policy, strategy and initiatives should be developed which could incorporate the
variables (e.g. payment and fringe benefits, promotion and recognition and training to develop
and utilise new skills) of the suggested conceptual talent retention model for COJLIS. A further
study to validate a newly developed retention model in COJLIS is recommended.
