Staff Turnover as a Problem of HR Risk

Tatiana Pavlovna Volkova

Ural State University of Railway Transport, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Keywords: Staff turnover, organization management, HR risks, railway industry.

Abstract: This article discusses the turnover of personnel of the organization as a problem of HR risk. Special attention

is paid to the theory of the issue and methods of staff turnover management in various sectors of the national

economy. The article analyzes alternative approaches to this phenomenon. Staff turnover is presented as a

problem of HR risk in the organization, affecting the safety of management of socio-economic systems. Based

on the study of various points of view of domestic and foreign researchers, it has been established that the

economic issues of the designated phenomenon have been studied to a greater extent, and to a lesser extent

the organizational, managerial and psychological reasons for the dismissal of employees. As a result of

increased staff turnover, the costs of attracting new employees and their adaptation are increasing, and HR

risks arise in the organization. The author proposed additions to the Target programs: the program of effective

induction into office, the program "for linking and retaining employees", the program of social protection of

personnel, structural and organizational generation of the personnel reserve. The results can be used by the

heads of the railway industry of specific departments and services in connection with a deeper analysis of the

issues of staff turnover in the studied industry.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to experts, high staff turnover is a rather

acute problem of large Russian companies. Russian

Railways JSC, the Sverdlovsk Railway, is no

exception. The natural turnover rate is considered to

be 3-5%. An increased indicator is usually called a

figure above this mark, up to 20%. The purpose of our

study is to study the high turnover of personnel in

individual divisions of Russian Railways JSC,

especially among such a social group as young people

who enter and leave before they have worked for a

year in the organization, including low-skilled

employees of leading professions, to identify the

causes of this process, as well as management and

regulation of this process in unstable economic

conditions, the definition of HR risks of the

organization.

As modern scientists note, high staff turnover

cannot be approached one-sidedly. This should be

understood and analyzed from at least three points of

view: based on the economy of the industry, the

enterprise and a specific person.

It is impossible to consider high staff turnover as

a continuous negative, questions of information

ownership about potential turnover allow you to

predict the activities of the organization for the long

term.

It should be noted that an in-depth approach to the

study of the reasons for the dismissal of personnel in

various sectors of the national economy affects and

determines not only the economic side, but also the

organizational and managerial, as well as extremely

important psychological aspects of personnel

management, which is not always present in socio-

economic consideration.

Along with domestic researchers, these issues

were studied by foreign authors. Names such as

A.Fayol, R.Bennett, W.Harrison, Farrell, Rasbalt,

Lee, Fireman, etc. should be mentioned.

For example, Professor R. Bennett of the

University of London proposed the following

interpretation of a retiring employee, who can be

controlled by registration, having information that a

new employee will be hired in place of the dismissed

one. R. Bennett made calculations of the labor

turnover index; characterized the level of turnover in

individual departments and groups of employees

(Bennett, 2020).

Henri Fayol, a classic of the school of

administrative management, wrote that increased

286

Volkova, T.

Staff Turnover as a Problem of HR Risk.

DOI: 10.5220/0011583900003527

In Proceedings of the 1st International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Transport: Logistics, Construction, Maintenance, Management (TLC2M 2022), pages 286-290

ISBN: 978-989-758-606-4

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

staff turnover is the result of poor management, and

low turnover can lead to depression, stagnation.

Another idea of the view on staff turnover was

reflected by Harrison (Harrison, 1996). He argued

that this is not an event that takes place at any point

in time, but a process that takes place over time and

contains changes between the employee and the

organization (Dickter, 1996).

Rassbult and Farrell (Rassbult, 1981; Farrell,

1983) believed that a low level of loyalty to work is

the cause of increased staff turnover.

Such scientists as Lee (Lee, 1994), Fireman

(Fireman, 1996) justified their own conceptual theory

of staff turnover, where, in our opinion, most of all

the employee evaluates his psychological feelings

that allow him to leave the organization or stay (Lee,

1996).

The problem of staff turnover was dealt with by

many domestic scientists: Odegov Yu.G., Kibanov

A.Ya., Shchekin G.V., Zhuravleva P.V., Kartashova

L.V., Kozina I.M., Grigorieva I., Filippov A.V.,

Kondakova A.A., Volkova I.A., Notchenko V.V.,

Zhukova M.V., Boikova M.A., Bulgakova M.A.,

Gagarinskaya G.P., et al, the published works

summarized the essential causes of staff turnover and

the features of overcoming them (Volkova, 2018;

Notchenko, 2013; Boikova, 2017; Bulgakova, 2017;

Gagarinskaya, 2017).

So, Yu.G. Odegov noticed that the essence of

the category "increased staff turnover" may be due

to: the specifics of the industry (in the field of trade,

hotel service staff turnover is higher); the status of

personnel (administrative and managerial personnel

has a lower turnover than linear); the location of the

company geographically (in companies located in

small cities, staff turnover is lower than in large

cities); employees are more likely to be dismissed

with low unemployment. Unstable employment of

young people in modern conditions was also noted

(Odegov, 2018).

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

Quantitative indicators are put forward as one of the

methods of analyzing staff turnover in our study. We

have analyzed these data on the whole for Russian

Railways JSC for the last five years, and specifically

for one of the divisions – the Tyumen Center for the

Organization of the work of railway stations for 2018-

2020. We especially note that we are considering not

only quantitative data. We also emphasize that staff

turnover is rarely considered in relation to HR risks.

HR risks in modern conditions are becoming one of

the objects of research in the digital economy

(Personnel management in the digital environment: a

monograph, 2021). Moreover, staff turnover acts as

one of the factors of HR risk, where the main role is

played by low wages, work schedule, unsatisfactory

working conditions, psychological atmosphere in the

team (Sahakyan, 2016).

Staff turnover is included by some authors in the

personnel security of the enterprise, information

threats (Kuznetsova, 2019; Boydalo, 2017; Korolev,

2019; Fursov, 2020).

Turning to statistics, let's consider the percentage

of staff turnover of Russian Railways JSC over the

past few years. According to the annual reports of

Russian Railways JSC in 2020, 723.5 thousand

people worked, in 2017 - 755.0 thousand people. The

reduction in the number of personnel occurred by

4.2% compared to 2017. The turnover rate has

decreased slightly over the past 5 years (See Table 1).

Table 1: Indicators of staff turnover of Russian Railways

JSC for 2016-2020, in %.

Rates

of staff

turnove

2016

year

2017

year

2018

year

2019

year

2020

year

As % 7,5 6,7 6,4 6,7 6,2

Compiled by the author: according to Reports on the

activities of Russian Railways JSC in the field of

sustainable development.2019 p.137; 2020 p.171

Table 2: Indicators of staff turnover, including by position Central Suburban Passenger Company JSC

for 2018-2020, in %.

Rates

2018 2019 2020

Total turnover percentage, %

15,2 16,2 11,4

% turnover by position "Cashier-controller"

19,6 20,4 18,9

% turnover by position "Electric locomotive driver"

1,3 1,6 1,9

% turnover by position "Electric locomotive driver's assistant"

3,1 5,6 8,0

Compiled by the author: according to the Annual Report of Central Suburban Passenger Company JSC according to the

results of work for 2020. p.27.

Staff Turnover as a Problem of HR Risk

287

The threshold value of staff turnover in

accordance with the internal calculation methodology

of Russian Railways JSC is set at 8%. Today, this

indicator is steadily kept below the threshold. But if

we take specific railway divisions, branches,

individual professions, regions, the statistics are very

different. Thus, in recent years, the turnover of

personnel on the Sverdlovsk Railway was 10.1%. In

Central Suburban Passenger Company JSC of the

Central Federal District, the statistics are as follows:

The turnover threshold is not a static indicator.

Thresholds vary by industry and category of

personnel. Based on practice, we note that the

turnover of unskilled employees (movers, cleaners)

can reach 50%.

Staff turnover is influenced by many factors:

employee qualifications, education, age, and much

more.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Among the most significant, in our opinion, and not

always systematically studied, are psychological

factors. As a rule, they rarely come to the attention of

managers. Therefore, firstly, it is necessary to identify

important socio-psychological reasons for staff

turnover at the enterprise, determining what kind of

character they have: objective or subjective.

Secondly, as possible reasons for dismissal from the

organization, to study and present the methodology

for the diagnosis of individual characteristics of the

employee. This is carried out at the selection stage:

professional tests, personal questionnaire,

motivational questionnaire of RZD, SHL test of RZD.

In other words, the dismissal of an employee is

determined by the unsuitability of the employee's

personal qualities to the nature and content of

professional occupations, and this leads to increased

personnel turnover.

Turning to the practice of individual railway

transport units on the issue of interest to us, and

performing an analysis of the movement of personnel

and staff turnover in the Tyumen Center for the

organization of work of railway stations, a structural

subdivision of the Sverdlovsk Directorate of Traffic

Management, a branch of Russian Railways JSC for

2018-2020, we observe a staff turnover of 14.58% in

2020 (See. Table 3)

The age group of those who quit voluntarily are

young people aged 20 to 30 years who have worked

in the organization for about a year (See Table 4.5).

63.89% leave the organization before they have

worked for a year; 66.7% are young people aged 20

to 30 years. These statistics are also relevant for other

departments of the studied industry.

What is being done to consolidate the personnel

in Russian Railways JSC:

− A detailed analysis of the reasons for the outflow

of staff in the first year of work is being

conducted.

− Analyzes the statistics of retiring personnel by

category, especially by age category — up to 35

years.

− On the basis of questionnaires filled out by

dismissed employees, statistics are generated for

Table 3: Calculation of staff turnover coefficients in the Tyumen Center for the organization of work of railway

stations for 2018-2020.

Key indicators

Years Absolute deviation Growth rate, %

2018 2019 2020

2019/

2018

2020/

2019

2019/

2018

2020/

2019

Staff, average number of

ees,

le.

590 573 569 -17 -4 -2,88 -0,70

Total turnover of the workforce,

le.

179 222 159 43 -63 24,02 -28,38

Acce

ted,

l. 82 95 76 13 -19 15,85 -20

Dismissed,

l. 97 127 83 30 -44 30,93 -34,65

including:

voluntaril

47 108 34 61 -74 129,79 -68,52

retirement 45 19 48 -26 29 -57,78 152,63

violation of labor disci

line 2 0 0 -2 0 Х Х

service in the Armed Forces 3 0 1 -3 1 Х Х

Staff turnover rate, % 16,45 22,18 14,58 5,73 -7,61 34,86 -34,29

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reasons of outflow, Roadmaps and Programs for

securing personnel are developed.

In our opinion, Targeted programs related to

reducing staff turnover should be supplemented with

the following issues:

− carry out a more objective final control by the

mentor on the problem of the appointment of

an accepted employee; to monitor on an

ongoing basis in order to study the potential

turnover of personnel in the organization; to

perform promotion to the personnel reserve

after three years of work in the company; to

staff the personnel reserve not only for key

specialists, but also for lower-level managers;

to reduce staff turnover among employees

enrolled in the personnel reserve.

4 CONCLUSION

The conclusions that we came to in the course of our

study of the problem.

− When characterizing the turnover of personnel

by the personnel management department,

calculate the turnover intensity coefficient on

an ongoing basis, which allows you to track

stabilization issues in individual divisions and

structures of the enterprise.

− Strengthen the study of socio-psychological

aspects of staff turnover, using the latest

techniques and technologies to analyze these

processes of a particular enterprise

− Carry out constant monitoring in the

departments of the studied industry, where

there is a high turnover of personnel among

various categories of personnel.

− Analyze and identify HR risks arising from the

dismissal of employees using digital

technologies in this activity, paying attention to

the information component, material costs

provided by the organization.

REFERENCES

Bennett, R., 2020. Coefficients of calculation of staff

turnover. HR-maximum: information portal.

http://www.hrmaximum.ru/articles/management/430.

Table 4: Number of employees by age, who left voluntarily in the Tyumen Center for the organization of work of

railway stations for 2018-2020.

Indicator

Absolute deviation

2018 2019 2020

2019/

2018

2020/

2019

erson %

Dismissed at his

own request

47 100,00 108 100,00 34 100,00 61 -74

includin

age from 20 to 30

years

59,57

66,67

18 52,94

-54

age from 30 to 40

ears

25,53

31,48

13 38,24

-21

age from 40 to 50

ears

12,77

1,85

38,82

-4

over 50

ears 1 2,13 0 0,00 0 0,00 -1 0

Table 5: Number of employees of the Tyumen Center for the organization of work of railway stations by work

experience, dismissed at their own request in 2018-2020.

Dismissed employees with

work experience

2018 2019 2020

erson %

up to 1 yea

28 59,57 69 63,89 23 67,65

from 1 to 5 years 8 17,02 17 15,74 3 8,82

from 5 to 10

ears 7 14,89 4 3,70 2 5,88

from 10 to 15

ears 2 4,26 9 8,33 4 11,76

over 15

ears 2 4,26 1 0,93 2 5,88

Total 47 100 108 100 34 100

Staff Turnover as a Problem of HR Risk

289

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