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Escalating work-time demands, in turn, ratchet up the strains on employees in managing all aspects of their lives ( Moen and Yu 2000). The pace of work is escalating in light of a competitive, global labor market and economic turbulence, with employees expected to do more with fewer resources. Most employees live in households where all adults are in the workforce, meaning that most can’t offload (to another household member) the multiple nonwork demands of their lives. Time pressures and overloads also infuse the new reality of American employment. Myriad forces, including low job satisfaction, insecurity, poor health, and low tenure, can contribute to turnover. Contemporary employment paths are often marked by turnover in light of global economic forces and job conditions impelling employees out of particular jobs and even out of the work-force. What used to characterize the paths of white, middle class men in the middle of the twentieth century-a career mystique of continuous employment with the same employer-is no longer the case for even that privileged group ( Moen and Roehling 2005). Turnover is increasingly a fact of contemporary working life, as job shifts and layoffs become the norm. This research moves the “opting-out” argument from one of private troubles to an issue of greater employee work-time control and flexibility by showing that an organizational policy initiative can reduce turnover. Additionally, ROWE reduces turnover intentions among those remaining with the corporation.
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ROWE also moderates the turnover effects of organizational tenure and negative home-to-work spillover, physical symptoms, and job insecurity, with those in ROWE who report these situations generally less likely to leave the organization.
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We find the odds of turnover are indeed lower for employees participating in the ROWE initiative, which offers employees greater work-time control and flexibility, and that this is the case regardless of employees’ gender, age, or family life stage. To model rates of turnover, we draw on survey data from a sample of employees at a corporate headquarters ( N = 775) and institutional records of turnover over eight months following the ROWE implementation. We investigate the turnover effects of an organizational innovation (ROWE-Results Only Work Environment) aimed at moving away from standard time practices to focus on results rather than time spent at work.
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