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The aim of the study was to compare the explanatory power of the dissatisfaction-based account of aged care employee turnover against that of Lee and Mitchell’s (1994) unfolding theory of turnover.

Mixed method prospective cohort study with three waves of employee survey data and an exit interview drawn from employees of a large Australian not-for-profit aged care provider. Independent t tests and mediated logistic regression analyses were conducted. Final sample: nStayers at Wave 3 = 138; nLeavers by Wave 3 = 42).

The classic dissatisfaction-based theory accounts for 19% of actual leavers. The five unfolding theory exit pathways accounted for 73.8% of all leavers. Stayers had the same dissatisfaction as leavers. Shock-based turnover (40.5% of all leavers) was more common than dissatisfaction-based turnover (33.5%). An additional 11.9% of leavers resigned to retire from paid work.

Dissatisfaction-based theory provided a relatively weak explanation of aged care turnover in this organisation. The unfolding theory provided a better and more nuanced account of employee leaving.

Unfolding theory exit interviews will assist aged care employers to better identify organizationally specific exit patterns and assist in finding appropriate organizational solutions to employee turnover.

This paper provides the first direct comparison of two explanations of aged care employee turnover and provides guidance to better retention at a time of labour shortage.

Work intensity causes employee stress. This paper demonstrates that off-the-job embeddedness (OffJE), a potential source of social support resources, buffers the negative effect of work intensity on employee stress.

Guided by conservation of resources (COR) and job embeddedness theory (JET), this paper reports on the moderated regression analysis of the survey responses of 385 adult employees from a variety of industries in Queensland, Australia, using a student-recruited sampling strategy.

Higher levels of work intensity were found to be associated with higher levels of employee stress. However, this effect was weaker for employees who had higher OffJE. In this sample, work intensity has no relationship with stress for employees who report OffJE beyond the 70th percentile.

This paper demonstrates the positive role of outside workplace relationships embodied in OffJE on workplace employee experience, justifies employer work-life balance initiatives and community involvement, demonstrates the potential positive return for employer involvement in helping employees manage the experience of work intensity and contributes to the social support, COR and job embeddedness literature studies.

Does client embeddedness lead to improved employee quality of life, such as job satisfaction, affective commitment and employee engagement? If so, is this relationship affected by gender, age, tenure and psychological contract breach (PCB)? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Regression and ANOVA analysis of a two-wave sample (n=121) of employees working for an aged care provider.

Client embeddedness at Time 1 predicts employee quality of life at Time 2. However, in this sample, this relationship is unaffected by gender, age and length of service. High levels of PCB weakens the relationship between client embeddedness and job satisfaction.

The employee-client relationship directly improves quality of working life. However, it is unclear whether this finding is unique to this organisation, or whether client embeddedness can be cultivated over time or is a characteristic of an employee.

Organisations can substantially benefit from encouraging appropriate client-employee relationships. By adopting HR practices aimed at acquiring and cultivating client embeddedness through recruitment, performance management and training practices, organisations may increase employee quality of working life, and reduce employee turnover.

This paper substantially increases the understanding of client embeddedness by clarifying the direct effects of the client-employee relationship, and by identifying boundary conditions on the effect of client embeddedness. It also points to a distinct approach to recruiting and developing employees in client-facing industries.