Employee Development and Turnover: A Moderated Mediation Model of Employee Perceptions of Development, Job Satisfaction, Supervisor Support, and Intent to Stay

As employee turnover continues to be a major concern for organizations, there is increasing evidence that providing development opportunities can be an effective intervention to decrease voluntary turnover. I propose that an integrated theoretical framework of combining Organizational Support Theory (OST) and the Job Demands- Resources Theory (JD-R) is best suited to explain the relationship between employee development and turnover. Moreover, a moderated-mediation model is developed and tested, whereby the relationship between employee perceptions development (EPD) and intent to stay is mediated by job satisfaction, and this indirect relationship is moderated by perceived supervisor support. A large sample (N = 687) of survey responses from a healthcare organization in the Midwest were analyzed. The results indicated that there is a direct, positive relationship between EPD and intent to stay. Furthermore, the results showed that job satisfaction, did indeed, mediate the relationship between EPD and intent to stay, although there was no support for the moderated-mediation hypothesis. These findings provide further evidence that employee development is an effective intervention to reduce turnover as well as increase job satisfaction