4.1 Background
The research focused on the graduates’ turnover intention, leaving reasons and the factors attracting them from employers. The questionnaires were sent to 168 graduates in different organisations in China in June and July 2010, of which 116 graduates responded resulting in a 69 percent participation rate.
The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire describing their recent turnover intention, the reasons that they chose to leave their previous jobs (who have worked for more than one company can answer this part), the potential reasons that they might leave their current jobs, and the factors might attract them to the employers in job changes.
The sample comprised of 47 males (40.5%), and 69 females (59.5%). The main age group is 24-to-26-year-old (63.8%) followed by 27-to-30-year-old (30.2%) group. 86.4 percent of the graduates graduated between the year 2004 and 2010. Among the graduates, only 34 of them (29.3%) have worked for one organisation after graduation, while 67 graduates (57.8%) worked for two to three organisations. The main research target is the university graduates (73%).
In the following tables, the “strongly agree” and “agree” responses mean that employees favored the statement while the “strongly disagree” and ‘disagree” responses mean employees opinion differed from the statement. The “moderately” responses mean either favorable or unfavorable.
4.2 What are the attitudes of the respondents towards leaving their current job?
One of the main objectives of this study is to explore the turnover intention of the graduates to their current jobs. To address this question, participants were asked to indicate whether they have considered leaving their current jobs. In other words, the research set out to investigate the turnover intentions of graduates in Chinese organisations. Their responses are shown in Table 1 below. To investigate the degree to which the respondents’ recent turnover intention, five questions were used in the questionnaire.
Table 1: Turnover Intentions of Graduates in Chinese Organisations
|Have you considered leaving your |Strongly disagree|Disagree |Moderately |Agree |Strongly agree |
|current job recently? |% |% |% |% |% |
|I have never considered leaving my |19.0 |25.9 |23.3 |27.6 |4.3 |
|current job | | | | | |
|I have never had an actual and |13.0 |25.2 |23.5 |31.3 |7.0 |
|detailed plan to leave my current job | | | | | |
|I am not willing to leave my current |11.3 |15.7 |23.5 |39.1 |10.4 |
|job in half a year | | | | | |
|I am not willing to leave my current |13.0 |13.9 |43.5 |24.3 |5.2 |
|job in a year | | | | | |
|I wish that I can work until |46.1 |19.1 |27.8 |4.3 |2.6 |
|retirement in the company | | | | | |
As can be seen from Table (1) above, only about a third of the graduates (31.9%) indicated that they never thought about leaving their current job, while 38.3 percent of the graduates have never had an actual and detailed plan to leave their job. It is interesting that only about half