Turnover - Publications - Faculty & Research

09 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

Summing Up How Do We Encourage CEOs to Manage for Sustainability? Important forces encourage short-term perspectives among managers as well as investors today. These include governance biases, tax policies, faster turnover among leaders,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

18 Dec 2017
Op-Ed

Why Employers Must Stop Requiring College Degrees For Middle-Skill Jobs

Credit: Pixsooz American companies have a problem. Over the past decade, they have begun to demand a bachelor’s degree in hiring workers for jobs that traditionally haven’t required one. This uptick in credentialing, or “degree inflation,” rested on the belief that... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

has been consistent for years: involuntary turnover in sales organizations has remained at 13 percent, since peaking at 14.6 percent in 2009, and total turnover (involuntary and voluntary—i.e., retirements,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

08 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Silos That Work: How the Pandemic Changed the Way We Collaborate

organizations. The authors saw an increase in turnover within communities, meaning silos were less stable after employees began working more regularly from home. “The observed changes suggest that serendipitous, in-person interactions... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

29 Mar 2022
Book

5 Qualities That Help Companies Thrive for Decades—Even Centuries

This function of keeping and nurturing values can be more difficult in public companies, where turnover of top leaders is relatively frequent. “Philosophically-wise, families are the key agent for passing on these value sets from one... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

03 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Desperate for Talent? Consider Advancing Your Own Employees First

Job openings in the United States continue to hover at record high levels, exacerbated by the Great Resignation and a sputtering emergence from the pandemic. Competition remains fierce among companies struggling to find qualified workers. Yet many employers,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

18 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Looking in the Mirror: Questions Every Leader Must Ask

various frustrations she was experiencing-including unusually high turnover among her senior facilities-management staff, as well as various back-office struggles, computer system failures, and so on. I surprised her a bit by asking her... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

includes the line "to provide an opportunity for employees to grow and succeed." When so many workers view the company as their career-long home, what happens when the chain runs out of available manager-level positions? The case notes that full-time employee... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

01 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

First Minutes are Critical in New-Employee Orientation

company. "Considering we just changed one hour on the first day of orientation, the results were amazing," Gino says. The turnover rate in the control group was 47.2 percent higher than that of the individual identity group, and 16.2... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Web Services; Service; Telecommunications

05 Feb 2018
What Do You Think?

Should Companies Disclose Employee Compensation?

experience, autonomy. These are naturally definers of where an individual should be placed within a salary range. Those differences should be easily explained and verifiable upon request." Dan S. pointed out that disclosing pay ranges "can improve morale,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

22 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Failure Analysis

can reach beyond the company walls to include customers. The importance of analysis related to employee turnover at another company, where managers became concerned when they observed high turnover among... View Details

Keywords: by Amy Edmondson & Mark D. Cannon

25 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

The Economic Cost of Physician Burnout

the dollar losses were related to physician turnover and reduced clinical hours. The research adds to previous work showing how physician stress generates negative clinical and organizational outcomes. No studies have previously been... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

careers at the Harvard Business School, we discovered that the turnover of CIOs ran at around 30 to 40 percent per year. As a result of our research, we described the driving cause as the rapid change of IT through the operation of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

14 Apr 2022
Op-Ed

Let’s Move Forward from COVID—Without Forgetting What We’ve Learned

organizational forgetfulness. Organizations have to plan for turnover and teach new members the organization’s norms and practices—and how they apply during a crisis. Organizational forgetting doesn’t only occur because organizations... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

21 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

What's Missing from the Racial Equity Dialogue?

conversation: through employment and procurement. Let’s take employment first. Formerly incarcerated people—as returning citizens—have unique experiences they can bring to organizations. Studies also show that they have lower turnover and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Research Summary

Overview

By: Vincent Pons

Professor Pons studies questions in political economy and development with the goal of understanding how democratic systems function, and how they can be improved.

He decomposes the electoral cycle into four essential steps: the factors affecting voter... View Details

19 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Don't Ignore Your Employees' Misery—TAKE Control

profitability in many instances. So why are so many employers pushing so forcefully for all employees to return to the office, even as employee turnover across industries is increasing? It’s a pattern not isolated to the corporate world.... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

17 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Why Business Should Support Employees Who Are Caregivers

don’t realize that there are material returns associated with helping these workers,” says Fuller, a professor of management practice. “If I told an executive, ‘You could reduce your turnover of key personnel by 3 percent,’ they would... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

06 Sep 2004
Research & Ideas

The Innovator’s Battle Plan

turnover or asset utilization tends to be higher. Disruptive innovations tend to be off-the-shelf products, in which the customer turns either to a group of specialist firms or to themselves to provide postsales service. A company that... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony & Erik A. Roth

01 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 1

antecedent of successful problem solving may harm the other. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/download.aspx?name=14-075.pdf Cases & Course Materials Harvard Business School Case 814-100 Clef Company: Turnover... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Publications