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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the determinants of public employee turnover intent and the use of workplace flexibilities, with particular attention on the role that gender plays on the relationship between these two constructs.

Using a cross-sectional quantitative research design, the data collection specifically targeted employees of US municipalities that had a significant portion of their workforce using some type of alternative work schedule. Nine cities from six different states were included in the data collection.

In support of prior research and conventional wisdom, the authors find that the use of alternative work schedules is associated with lower expressions of turnover intent, but this relationship is only significant for female municipal employees.

One limitation of the study is that it is mono-source data. A second limitation relates to the lack of controls for contextual and occupational characteristics. Further research is needed on the relationship between alternative work schedule choice and turnover, particularly exploring how other characteristics might impact the relationship between employment flexibilities and turnover.

Overall, the results of the analysis align with broader observations of the need for increasing workplace flexibilities and scholarship exploring these flexibilities, especially for female employees who are attempting to integrate their work and family responsibilities.

There has been relatively little research exploring the relationship between the determinants of turnover intent and the use of workplace flexibilities at the municipal level of government. This is particularly important given that employment in local government is larger than both federal and state government employment combined in the USA (US Census Bureau, 2017).

Compensation systems serve a critical role in strategic human resources management, and over the past twenty-five years, there have been an increasing number of public sector reform efforts aimed at better aligning compensation practices with institutional workforce needs. While many past reforms have been performance driven, the nationʼs most recent economic downturn has served as potent catalyst for a renewed focus on public sector compensation, particularly reforms to public sector retirement benefits. However, given the traditional importance of public sector retirement benefits within broader bureaucratic structures, these new reforms hold the potential to substantially alter human capital capacity in the public sector. Using wage and retirement benefit data from the U.S. Census Bureauʼs Current Population Survey and National Compensation Survey, this paper finds that state and local governments face significant threats to their long-term human capital capacity in light of potential benefit reforms that place a disproportionate emphasis upon competitive wage rates.