Psychological Safety as a Potential Predictor of Turnover Intention

Voluntary employee turnover is a large cost factor for organizations. This fact justifies the research, development, and deployment of effective interventions. About four dozen predictors of voluntary employee turnover have been studied so far, but the construct of psychological safety has largely been ignored as a potential predictor of turnover in prior research of voluntary employee turnover. In this cross-sectional study, a multiple linear regression model is tested in which voluntary turnover intention is predicted by psychological safety alongside eleven strategically selected and already well-established predictors of turnover. This study is based on a sample of N = 223 workers from Denmark and Sweden. The multiple regression analysis shows that psychological safety is a significant, as well as sizeable, predictor of turnover intention alongside several of the other predictors. This finding suggests that more investigation of the psychological safety construct in the context of employee turnover research is warranted