The impact of work-nonwork balance on turnover intention: Evaluating the great resignation in South Africa after COVID-19

Abstract

Retaining critical employees has become increasingly important with the growing competition for valuable skills and employees’ increasing discernment of employment acceptability criteria. Significantly, changing working circumstances to work-from-home, necessitated by social distancing protocols under COVID-19 regulations, caused people to reevaluate their employment circumstances. As a result, organisations have recorded many resignations among knowledge and skilled workers in South Africa. In addition, knowledge work has swiftly transformed into mobile knowledge work, enabled by digital technologies, adding complexity to the balance between employee roles in work and life. This research empirically quantified the factors driving knowledge workers' voluntary turnover. Specifically, the research investigated the role of work-life balance in turnover motivation. The research's first objective was quantitatively measuring the impact of work-nonwork balance on turnover intention. The second research objective investigated the moderating behaviour of the influence of employment equity practices in South Africa on the balance-to-intention relationship. The sample for the research contained 218 knowledge or skilled workers. The empirical evidence from this study shows that work-nonwork balance is significantly associated with employees’ voluntary termination of employment. Furthermore, the study found that employment equity practices’ influence did not moderate the relationship between work-nonwork balance and turnover intention. The findings contribute to the human resource management literature, justifying businesses' investment in non-financial reward programmes.