The Georgia Department of Corrections: an exploratory reflection on correctional officer turnover and its correlates.

Introduction

In recent years, strategic workforce planning has played an increasing role in human resource related activities of many state public agencies in Georgia. The GDC is no exception. The GDC's strategic workforce objectives are aimed at anticipating potential gaps in employee competencies, diversity and staffing, which if unchecked, could potentially create work challenges for the GDC. The GDC has long recognized such work challenges, especially correctional officer turnover, and the consequent costs associated with it.

A recent strategic workforce planning report of the GDC noted that in fiscal year 2004, the turnover rate for correctional officers was approximately 20.45 percent, which was higher than the turnover rates for the entire GDC, which totaled 17.25 percent. Similarly, the Texas prison system--the Texas Department of Criminal Justice--indicated that in the four years preceding 2002, their security force attrition rates had exceeded 20 percent. (1) McShane, et al. (2) reported that turnover rates vary in prisons all across the country, from less than one percent annually in one state to 45 percent in others, and that the average rate for all states was approximately 17 percent.

Not only is the turnover rate for correctional officers high, but both the direct and indirect costs (3) associated with correctional officer turnover accounts for more than 50 percent of GDC's costs attributed to its employee turnover. This is based on GDC's strategic workforce report for fiscal year 2004. Ramlall (4) reported that costs for an exempt employee range from a minimum of one years' pay and benefits to a maximum of two years' pay and benefits. Below is the 2003 turnover and salary (direct cost) data for correctional officers of the GDC.

In response, the GDC has moved proactively in controlling turnover by gathering information on why correctional officers leave the agency voluntarily. The GDC gathers real-time information/data via the organizational Intranet on reasons why correctional officers leave. Elaborate exit interviews are used in this effort. However, exit interviews do have problems--one of which is whether all the correctional officers will report their true reasons for leaving or if the exit interviews will actually capture the information meaningfully. (5) In addition, management practitioners have also raised concerns about the reliability and validity of exit interviews. (6) Based on this, research surveys whose reliability and validity can be determined do a better job of capturing reasons why correctional officers leave the agency, especially while the officers are still employed. This contrasts with exit interviews, which capture comparable data after the officers have made the decision to leave. Nonetheless, research surveys can be quite expensive to conduct. Therefore, the agency must take time to think through the entire process before gathering the data. In this case, the data collected was not only important from a research perspective but also essential to the strategic workforce planning initiatives of the GDC.

The information gathered from exit interviews on correctional officers of this agency clearly illustrates two popular elements known for their association with turnover--organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The data gathered from the GDC Intranet information system indicates that the highest percentage of those who voluntarily left in 2003--42 percent--did so because of other job opportunities. Thirteen percent of those officers who voluntarily left indicated that they left the correctional agency because of job security, 11 percent indicated they left for leave availability, and 10 percent indicated they left for health insurance. Fourteen percent did not like the agency because of infrequent pay increases, while 13 percent felt their efforts were not well rewarded, and 12 percent felt their entry salary was too low. Sixteen percent of the respondents who voluntarily left concluded that better job offers influenced their decisions the most to leave. Stunningly, 80 percent declared they were willing to work for this agency again.

Given that job security, pay increases, job opportunity and salary were factors noted in how the employees felt about their jobs, these factors are among the typical components of job satisfaction. Equally, organizational commitment has played a part in this scenario given that 80 percent of the correctional officers who left were willing to work for the agency again.

Furthermore, while there is a generally held perception of inadequate financial compensation for correctional officers as the primary contributor to their turnover, this research finds that this may not necessarily be the case in the GDC. Given added budgetary constraints, correctional officers are unequivocally a challenging job class for the GDC. In fact, the GDC, as with other Georgia state agencies, had recently been mandated to reduce their annual budget. In the last two years preceding 2004, budget reductions in excess of five percent had been implemented by the GDC.

Consequently, an exploratory research to determine why correctional officers leave the agency at such high rates was conducted, given the preliminary information presented so far. A better understanding of the causes of turnover could help GDC management anticipate and reverse the turnover trends and challenges among correctional officers of the agency. The exploratory study employed the services of GDC's Metro State Prison's (SP) correctional officers, who happened to be mostly female correctional officers. Surveys were administered to the officers and 56.6 percent of respondents returned their surveys. Lambert, et al. (7) noted that, "The correctional research, although again not in total agreement, indicates that there is no significant relationship between either race or gender and job satisfaction of correctional workers." In fact, the literature on the association of gender and turnover for correctional officers has been inconsistent. While female correctional officers have been known to be satisfied with their job in equal proportions as male correctional officers, it is worth noting that some issues inadequately addressed in the correctional literature, as they relate to turnover--such as pregnancy, riskiness of the job, parental responsibilities, and child care issues--are potential basis for a female correctional officer to consider leaving the agency.

Turnover Theory

The model below shows that job satisfaction, acting in concert with organizational commitment, may form a correctional officer's intention to quit their job. While the officer's intention to quit interacts with their perception of finding alternative employment, the officer may actually go ahead and quit his or her job without alternative employment. (8)

Personal characteristics such as age and tenure on the job have also been identified as variables, which affect the turnover process for correctional officers. Lambert (9) acknowledged that "personal characteristics influence how a person sees and reacts to his or her environment."

Other alternative models suggest that job satisfaction, acting in concert with organizational commitment, may form the officer's intent to quit their job. This intent to quit is then followed by a job search, before the employee actually quits. (10) The job search approach is more cognitively oriented, while the model with perceived alternative employment orientation below is more economically oriented. The model below is the economically oriented version of a turnover model. Finally, correctional officers' turnover cannot be studied by itself. It exists because correctional officers exhibit behaviors and attitudes, expressed in their levels of satisfaction or commitment to their organization. This is ultimately reflected in their intent to quit, and in some instance, in their actually quitting; thus, the high turnover rate evidenced in the GDC.

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A correlation matrix derived from the Michaels and Specter (11) study, while validating the research and its underlying theory, is presented below.

The general theory is that dissatisfied correctional officers are far more likely to leave the organization and less likely to stay committed to it. Lambert (12) notes that since job satisfaction and organizational commitment are the most widely studied variables related to voluntary turnover that job satisfaction and organizational commitment should have negative but direct effects on correctional officer turnover. The theory also suggests that perceptions of alternative employment outside of the organization by the correctional officer may also induce the correctional officer to quit. However, this premise remains weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent. (13) The correctional officer's age and tenure on the job are also expected to be related to their propensity to leave their organization. The higher their tenure on the job, the less likely the correctional officer will leave the job, while the lower the individual's age, the more likely the correctional officer will leave the job.

While Michael and Specter's (14) research provided a theoretical construct for this research, Arnold and Feldman, (15) who published in the same journal, provided data on the correlates of their findings, which appear to support much of the findings in this research.