Week 10 Application Assignment - Cathy Williams

Organizational Culture and High Turnover Rates

One of the patterns I have had to contend with over the past three years of my career is high turnover rates...mine and my employers’. For the past two years, I have bounced from one organization to another because of volatile situations and upheavals ranging from radical structural redesign to bankruptcy. Currently I work for a small PR agency where none of the staff in the main office has been on board for more than 18 months. I have been there three months, and the person I replaced had also been there three months. During the interview process, I was told that a majority of the employees have all been with the company a minimum of 10 years. Perhaps it was my oversight, but it never occurred to me to ask, “are they part-time or full-time?”

It turns out that all of the long-term employees work part-time. As one might suspect, my question upon realizing this has been, “why in the world are turnover rates (among full-time staff) so high?  This week’s readings provide some answers.  For example, the Sorensen (2009) discussion on organizational culture and Hofstede’s (2009) dimensions of organizational culture each offer a perspective that, taken together, contributes to a better understanding of this situation.

First, Sorensen (2009) discusses the ways in which an organization’s culture influences its behavior (p. 1). Specifically, he explains that maintaining control is at odds with delegating authority, which puts managers in the position of having to make decisions in the firm’s best interest in highly uncertain situations. This plays out on a daily basis because the agency is small and the owner moves into and out of projects on a whim. Just as you get into a groove without the boss hovering over the account, it all switches around because they are back in the middle of it again.  This behavior connects with one managerial problem Sorensen (2009) describes, namely the challenge to enact consistent behavior even with ongoing turnover (p. 1).  This company has solved that problem by creating very detailed documents that specify every single action an employee is supposed to take, and it is an overwhelming amount of information to internalize.

About two weeks after I joined, three key people left (two because of disability and one who quit). I was just shown these documents on Friday! This incredibly thick notebook of “dos-and-don’ts” now makes sense. It is a great resource – someone could land from Mars and know exactly how the agency expects things to be done. Given the turnover at this place, it would be impossible to keep retraining staff. My regret is that this information didn’t cross my radar in the first week of employment. This supports Sorensen’s (2009) findings that one must find alternative ways to transmit beliefs unless a company has stable, long-term employees (p. 4).

Next, Hofstede (2011) applies a set of dimensions to organizations (p. 10). My observations are that this agency possesses characteristics that are most likely to result in employee turnover.  I have been told “results” matter, but the daily reality is that adhering to a rigid process is much more important in terms of culture – and friendly interactions among employees are frequently based on the degree to which one executes the process exactly as prescribed.  There is definitely the “tight control” that Hofstede explicates – again, all of this makes sense in an organization with high turnover, but it seems the high turnover instigates some of these cultural realities.

Having a better understanding of how the culture supports the uncertainty (i.e., a small agency is drastically impacted by even one client defection) means that I can begin to take steps to “get in line.”  The company has been so incredibly busy for the past three months, and I have had a difficult time getting a read on the environment, but I do think these readings shed light on what appears to be another short-term career move – though I would be pleasantly surprised if I am mistaken. The agency exists in a state of uncertainty because each client represents a substantial stake in the overall ability to succeed. In order to deal with the uncertainty, a rigid process-heavy culture has been created. This rigidity leads to high employee turnover, in theory, and thus reinforces the agency’s need to strongly enforce its rules and regulations.

References

Hofstede, G. (2009). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context.

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, Unit 2, 2(1), 1-13. Retrieved from

http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol2/iss1/8

Sorensen, J.B. (2009). Note on organizational culture (Case: OB-69). Stanford, CA:

Stanford Graduate School of Business.