Employees’ connectedness to executives predicts job attitudes and quitting
Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance
ISSN: 2051-6614
Article publication date: 24 January 2023
Issue publication date: 15 August 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Against the backdrop of a competitive hiring market and historically high rates of quitting, the current research examines a factor that could support talent retention in organizations: employees’ feelings of connectedness to their top executives. The authors examined the relationship between workers’ feelings of executive connectedness and job attitudes relative to other antecedents and its predictive power for quitting over and above manager and team connectedness.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, the authors measured the relative predictive power of executive connectedness, along with 14 other antecedents, for the outcome of job attitudes in ten samples totaling over 70,000 observations, including two longitudinal samples. In Study 2, the authors used path analysis to test the relationship between executive connectedness and actual quitting, controlling for workers’ feelings of connectedness to their manager and teammates, in two (related) longitudinal samples.
Findings
Executive connectedness was robustly related to concurrent and future job attitudes, and it outranked manager variables in all samples. Executive connectedness predicted quitting, even when controlling for manager and team connectedness; this effect was mediated by job attitudes in one of two samples.
Practical implications
Executive connectedness could be an underutilized resource for understanding and possibly improving employee attitudes and retention. Executives should not delegate all responsibility for employee attitudes and retention to managers.
Originality/value
This research is to the authors' knowledge the first to systematically test the unique predictive validity of employees’ feelings of connectedness to executives for important outcomes. The results suggest that executive connectedness may be an important factor in employees’ workplace experience.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
All authors are or were employed by the Truist Leadership Institute, a business unit of Truist Financial, during some or all of the time this research was conducted. Any opinions expressed are theirs and not necessarily those of the Truist Leadership Institute or Truist Financial. Two of the authors, Smith and Coley, are reporting that they are employed by one of the companies described in the reported research. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Sarah Coley, sarah.coley@truist.com, upon reasonable request.
Citation
Gallagher, P., Smith, S.C., Swavely, S.M. and Coley, S. (2023), "Employees’ connectedness to executives predicts job attitudes and quitting", Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 330-348. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOEPP-03-2022-0076
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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