Examining Turnover Issue in the Construction Companies of Oman: Employees’ Perspective

Purpose: The objectives of the study were to analyze the Work Environment of Construction Companies leading to turnover; to critically investigate the company culture, salary and the benefit factors, and the company policy & the related components causing a turnover problem in the Construction Companies of Oman. Design/methodology/approach: The data was collected from 217 employees who were actively involved in the construction work of the companies from the Government Sector, Oil Sector, and Housing Sector and were selected on a random sampling basis. Findings: The results of the study reveal that the employees prefer environment wherein they need the freedom to work, speak and act. The study also reveals that the company policies should be clear and proper guidance should be given by HR department on job progression and training. It is also revealed that the Salary and after service benefits should be attractive along with better service compensation. Research limitations/Implications: The study implies that the employees should be given a free environment, Attractive Salary and better service benefits.The present study covers the population from the selected largest construction companies of Oman, and a wide range of study will give us a clearer picture. Social implications: The study suggests the management should act wisely in handling the workers employed below them as the human resources can do a lot for their organizations. Further, the company policies should be crystal clear, and employee benefits and perquisites should be made at par with that of the niche market. Originality/Value: Only a very few have examined the causes for the turnover issue in the construction companies of Oman, and it is a first-hand study of its kind, and the results will be useful to the stakeholders.


INTRODUCTION
Turnover refers to the number of workers leaving an organization in a given period. Yang and Cherry (2008) claimed that the turnover affects the level of service provided by an organization whereas Walsh and Taylor (2007) considered employee turnover as a natural process of downsizing the workforce, but they have also confirmed that the employee turnover will adversely affect the production and the profit of the organization. Employees' turnover is the movement of workers between the firms, employments,and occupations, and between the conditions of business and joblessness. Employees' turnover can occur in any organization which may be either willful or automatic. According to Reggio (2003), employee turnover refers to the movement of employees out of an organization. It is a negative aspect, which might lead to the failure of employee retention strategies in the organizations. Walker (2001) stated that retaining promising employees is a fundamental mean of achieving competitive advantage among the competitive organizations.Thus, analyzing employee turnover issue will be very beneficial for the organization as the turnover-causing factors will help the budget process through the estimation of the future cost of hiring etc. The low rate of turnover denotes a significant organizational efficiency and thus understanding the root cause of employee's turnover problem becomes essential to reduce the causes and the implications so as to minimize and avoid the impact especially in construction companies.
Construction Sector plays an important role in building the national economy of Sultanate Oman (Ali et al., 2017). Construction sector tops the private sector and plays the key role in eradicating the unemployment problem and in the economic development of the country on the whole. Though the sector involves most of the expatriates working for the construction companies in Oman, the Government of Sultanate of Oman is encouraging Omanis to take up jobs in the construction sector though Omanization (-compulsory recruitment of a percentage of local Omanis by the companies). However, the employees have their individual preferences and try to look for jobs in the public sector or in Government sector. Even though there are plenty of employment opportunities prevail in the Construction Sector, people move from one company to another for their preferences, and the turnover rate keeps increasing among these construction companies. In fact, the turnover problem is a prickling issue among the construction companies throughout the Globe. Sultanate of Oman is no exception to it. Off-late, the rate of turnover of talented employees leaving the construction companies in Oman has been increasing. Thomas (2013) identified few factors causing the employee turnover in the construction industry as company culture involving Unionization, Career Promotion satisfaction, low morale, management frustration, influence co-workers, Training and development cost, poor performance etc. Though such identified factors can be traced to cause employee turnover, the root cause of the employee turnover problem in the construction companies of Oman remains unsolved and thus is the need for the study.
The study aims at answering the following questions viz. what kind of working condition causes a turnover of employees in the construction companies of Oman? What sort of company culture creating a turnover problem in the construction companies of Oman? And what factors causing the Turnover crisis in the construction companies of Oman? Jehanzeb, & Rasheed (2013) proved that the turnover problem causes extensive disruption in operations, and overall performance and the employers remain unaware of the fact why the employees decide to leave. Tremblay (2005) stated that during non-availability of laborers (due to the turnover problem), developed countries bring professionals from other countries. There will be an increase in cost due to turnover in the form of manpower replacement cost, the cost of time delay in production due to such vacancy, and the training cost for the new employee (O'Connell, and Kung, 2007). Gadekar & Pimplikar (2014) stated that the replacement cost of employing a new worker in place of a primary worker leaving the firm would be too high as the cost of training becomes more than double the cost of an unskilled worker. Simon and Hinkin (2001) observed that the turnover causes serious organizational instability and the employees prefer to stay in a stable organization. Abiola (2004) claimed that the consistency of workers' performance is maintained when an organization has a stable working condition. Arnone (2006) claimed that the loss of professionals could result in a talent gap in the key areas of the firms. According to Bhuian and Al-Jabri(1996), the attitudes of employees and the prevailing culture cause high degrees of employee turnover and low job satisfaction which greatly affects the employees. Al Fazari & Khan (2016) claimed that to retain employees in the companies, it is necessary to pay attention towards motivating their employees through amending the company policies towards increasing employees' satisfaction. Woods & Macaulary (1989) stated that when there is no motivation, and the employees are not satisfied, the level of service offered by them deteriorates. Darwish (1999) found that there is a positive correlation between intrinsic motivation, organizational commitment, and job performance, and the commitment can be due to age, experience and the service tenure. Liu, Li, Lin, & Nguyen (2007) found that there is high turnover in the construction industry due to improper treatment of technical staff and the adopted strategies for retention. Ali et al. (2017) claimed that the Omani workers in the construction sectors would like to switch over to Public / Government sectorial jobs as they look for higher salaries and the related workmen benefits. Solomon et al. (2012) confirmed that controlling employee turnover is a challenging task for the management requiring streamlining of working condition. Leung and Chan(2007) claimed that the responsibility of the construction professionals towards the major antecedents of commitment -goal assignment and acceptance, achievement and membership maintenance, can be performed only through proper company policies and organization commitments. Wright & Bonett (2002) also confirmed that the job tenure of an employee plays an important role in organizational commitment. Arunkumar (2013) proved that the factors motivating employees are Good salary, Monetary benefits, Non-monetary benefits, the prospect of promotion, job training, and development. Llorens & Stazyk (2011) claimed that the late disbursement of salaries negatively impacts the employee's dedication towards work thereby triggering them to look out for new rewarding employment opportunities leading to high employee turnover. Al-Belushi & Khan (2017) confirmed the same that the management should identify the right kind of monetary benefits to their employees so as to retain their employees with job satisfaction and organizational loyalty. Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner (2000) observed that the pay and the pay-rate variables have a modest effect on turnover. Buchko (2008) also confirmed that employees with low job satisfaction have greater turnover intentions and exhibit increased absenteeism. Dartey-Baah, and Amoako (2011) identified the job satisfying factors as career advancement opportunities, employee recognition, rewarding achievements, good working environment, etc. whereas the demotivating factors are bad working conditions, supervisors, salaries etc. and insisted that the companies should promote the motivating factors and reduce the demotivating factors so as to boost the employees' morale. Homer (2007) claimed that safe working environment leads to increased level of employees' job satisfaction and helps to retain employees for a long time. Viswanathan, Srinivasarao & Khan (2017) found that the factors -health care, communication, management policies, education and training which the workers give more importance and make them comfortable for a long stay in the construction companies. Thatcher, Stepina & Boyle (2002) claimed that employees with good working condition providing sufficient facilities such as proper lighting, furniture, clean restrooms, and other health and safety provisions suitable to will Humanities & Social Science Reviews eISSN: 2395-7654, Vol 6, No 2, 2018 https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2018.627 54 |www.hssr.in ©Authors stay for long in such companies. Young (1991) observed that the reasons for key personnel professional in the construction industry to change their jobs dependent upon the occupational background, management and organization culture. Danso (2012) confirmed that the impact of job satisfaction is more on the turnover and depends upon the administration of the firm. Gans & Zhou (2002) argued that that the poor communication causes of high turnover among the blue collar employees. Further, the employees were of the opinion that the drivers were considered by the management as second-class citizens. Al Hosni & Khan (2016) observed that the daily security practices followed in a company violate the individual privacy and led to ethical conflict causing the employees to become untrusted and tend to leave the organization. Long, Perumal and Ajagbe (2012) claimed that the good human resource practices in the construction industries could bring in an effective and efficient change in the negative impact on the organization due to high employees' turnover. Cadwallader, Jarvis, Bitner, and Ostrom (2010) evidenced that motivation level was very low among the employees due to the absence of proper managerial skills among the human resources resulting in poor quality output and dissatisfaction in the present jobs. Aryee, (1992) reported that the public sector employees show weaker internal work motivation than their private sector counterparts.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
After thoroughly going through the above literature review, the questionnaire was prepared in line with the variables identified and the data was collected from the respondents.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A questionnaire was developed involving the four factors identified through the above literature review viz. Working environment, Company Policy, Company Culture and Workman benefits. The questionnaire had one section with demographic details and another section with the analyzing factors. A pilot study was conducted to verify whether the questions are relevant with respect to the objectives of the study and subsequently the required modifications were carried out before the main survey. The data was collected from 217 employees, who were actively involved in the construction work of the companies from the Government Sector, Oil Sector, and Housing Sector. The samples were selected on a random sampling basis.The collected data was then recorded, summarised and tabulated. SPSS was used to analyze the data. Chisquare analysis, ANOVA and ranking analyses were carried out arrive at a conclusion. Null Hypotheses: There is no relationship between the Company policies and the choices of the respondents.

FINDINGS
The table above indicates that the p-value is < 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis gets rejected, i.e. there is a significant relationship between the Company policies and the choices of the respondents. Comparing the K-S value obtained from Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it is observed from choice of the respondents that 'Management quite often reorganizes, shuffles and keep changing its direction' ranks the first, followed by 'There is no guidance by HR Department on job progression and training for the employees' and 'I am not satisfied with the existing company policies'.

3.15
Null Hypotheses: There is no relationship between the Company culture and the choices of the respondents.
The table above indicates that the p-value is < 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis gets rejected. i.e., there is a significant relationship between the Company culture and the choices of the respondents. Comparing the K-S value obtained from Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it is observed from choice of the respondents that 'Informal atmosphere prevails in the company such as eating in office and enjoying conversations with from different teams etc.' ranks first, followed by 'Most of the employees are unhappy with their jobs and gossips' and 'Full freedom to work and make own judgment'. Null Hypotheses: There is no relationship between the workman benefits and the choices of the respondents.

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The table above indicates that the p-value is < 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis gets rejected. i.e., there is a significant relationship between the workman benefits and the choices of the respondents. Comparing the K-S value obtained from Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it is observed that 'Salary benefits are low in this company' ranks first, followed by 'After service benefits are not satisfactory in this company' and 'There is no award/rewards compensation for better services in this company.' Null Hypotheses: There is no relationship between the Turnover problem and the choices of the respondents.
The table above indicates that the p-value is < 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis gets rejected i.e. there is a significant relationship between the Turnover problem and the choices of the respondents. Comparing the K-S value obtained from Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it is observed that 'The conflicts with the line manager make me rethink of another job, followed by 'As there is no growth opportunities, many left the company' and 'Work-life balance could not be maintained by the employees'.

Tables.7 (a), (b), (c) & (d)
Variables i.e., there is an association between working environment, company policies, age factor, designation of the employee and the Turnover Problem. It also connotes that there is no impact of Company Culture, Workman Benefits on Turnover Problem. Further Gender and Nationality also does not stand as a cause towards the existence of a turnover problem in any company.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
From the above, it could be observed that the employees prefer environment wherein they need freedom while working and they would like to feel secure as long as they do good jobs. They also would like to opine without fear. They prefer company culture in a way that the management do not shuffle people quite often and there should be proper guidance by HR department on job progression and training for the employees. The employees prefer the company policies to be crystal clear, available and accessible. The employees also prefer the Salary benefits to be reasonable, and the after service benefits need to be attractive, and there should be compensatory award/rewards for better services. One of the reasons which create turn over problem seems to be the conflicts with the line manager make, and the other ones are no growth opportunities and Work-life balance issues, etc.
It is observed that there is a linear relationship between the turnover problem, work environment, company policies, age and the designation of the employees. There is no connection between the gender and nationality towards the turnover problem in the companies. Age and designation play important role in the turnover issue. Aged persons prefer to stay in the same company, and the highly designated person decides to stay if niche benefits are offered by the company. Therefore, it can be suggested that i. The employees should get an environment wherein they need the freedom to work, speak and act. ii.
The company policies should be crystal clear. iii.
There should be proper guidance by HR department on job progression and training. iv.
Attractive Salary and after service benefits should be determined along with better service compensation. v.
Last but not the least, the management should act wisely in handling the workers employed below them.