Predicting Turnover Based on Relationship Diagnosis – Lessons from Marital Research

Decades of turnover research have identified sets of factors that lead to voluntary employee turnover. However, existing models predict employee separation from organisations with an extremely limited predictive power, which rarely goes far beyond 30%. In contrast, marital research has identified a method for predicting separations which has an accuracy of over 90%, based on a couples’ reflections on their past. This paper presents preliminary findings from a pilot study, which applied this method to predicting employee turnover. The study identifies some indicators of distressed and non-distressed marriage that are transferrable to employment context, and indicators that were only identified in organisational context. The paper concludes with an expectation that this method can extend methods of enquiry used in turnover research.