Employee Turnover in California Department of Corrections

INVESTIGATION OF CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEE TURNOVER

IN THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Turnover is understood as the rotation of workers around the labor market: between firms, jobs and occupations, and between the states of employment and unemployment (Abbasi & Hollman, 2000). There are few industries or employment sectors in which employee turnover is not regarded as a major cause for concern and a source of economic and operational inefficiencies. Abbasi and Hollman (2000) claim that excessive turnover often engenders far-reaching consequences and, when carried to extreme lengths, may jeopardize the objectives of an organization. There may be a "brain drain" that negatively affects innovation, causes major delays in service delivery, and places excessive burdens on remaining staff. For some departments and agencies of government entities, the loss of key employees may negatively impact the quality, innovation, and safety of services that are delivered (Hacker, 1996).

The problem is especially acute in government agencies or organizations with a strong public safety and security mission component (Abbasi & Hollman, 2000). The human relations department in any such agency, including correctional institutions, must provide personnel services and incentive programs capable of inducing the best workers to stay. The job of the human relations (HR) department is to keep agencies staffed with the skills, inclination, te

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d population of convicted felons (Sunoo, 1997). Increased prison size and capacity mandates increased correctional staffing and highlights the costs that are associated with employee turnover. Correctional officers comprise the majority of the peace officer staff and have a turnover rate of somewhere between 7 and 8 percent. While Libonati declared some years ago that recruiting line officers is not difficult because of good salary and benefit structures, retaining the best and the brightest remains a major problem (Sunoo, 1997). Stojkovic and Kalinich (1997) described a CDC program that trains line officers and correctional administrators to assume leadership positions in their institutions. This program seeks to educate and empower potential leaders for proactive and visionary work within the CDC. It also attempts to reduce the potential that leaders will be drawn away from correctional work because of a lack of job opportunity or inadequate levels of job satisfaction. With inmate populations on the rise and new prisons being built or older institutions expanded, the ongoing need for competent correctional officers is readily apparent (Sunoo, 1997). Thus, the CDC continues to face numerous challenges. Currently, th

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