Correctional officer turnover: of Maslow's needs hierarchy and Herzberg's motivation theory.

Undoubtedly, many organizations know that employee turnover negatively impacts productivity. Mobley (1) described employee turnover as a potentially costly phenomenon facing many organizations. The study of employee turnover can be conceptually understood by assessing work attitudes such as job satisfaction. Several studies have found job satisfaction to be related to employee turnover, particularly voluntary turnover. (2) Other work attitudes that have also been shown to impact turnover include organizational commitment, intentions to leave, and perceived alternative employment. (3)

Lambert (4) noted that job satisfaction and other variables such as organizational commitment were the most widely studied variables linked to voluntary turnover. Other researchers who have focused on voluntary turnover have debated whether organizational commitment precedes job satisfaction, or vice versa. (5) Whether intention to leave an organization precedes alternative job offers, or vice versa, has also been contended. (6)

This article does not delve into these relevant theoretical arguments. Rather, this article focuses on how the concepts of Maslow hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory can be applied to understanding the problem of high correctional officer turnover by shedding light on work attitudes such as satisfaction. While Maslow suggested that needs, which drive behaviors associated with work attitudes (e. g., satisfaction), can be assigned to various levels, Herzberg made the distinction that needs that influence work attitudes can be met intrinsically or extrinsically. Thus, applying each theory provides a unique perspective on satisfaction in the form of the level and the type of satisfaction to be measured.

Nonetheless, it is quite obvious that current research has moved well beyond these traditional motivational theories. However, given the high rate of turnover for correctional officers in the southern U.S. state studied, this author hopes that revisiting these core, or parent, theories on work attitudes, can provide some meaningful insight into the issue. In fact, while this article was being prepared, Ramlall (7) had begun this process by providing a more general and conceptual application of these and other motivation theories as a way to focus on employee retention within organizations. This article, then, follows Ramlall's lead but focuses more narrowly on only two of the theories and on a specific job class in a specific state agency.

Turnover in this article refers to voluntary turnover. Lambert (8) described voluntary turnover as a consequence of employees initiating the termination of their employee--organization relationship. Previous work on the topic has revealed that voluntary turnover for correctional officers at one state correctional agency in 2002 accounted for 77% of the total correctional officer turnover; and for 2003, it was 76%. Similarly, in the Texas prison system, in the four years preceding 2002, the security force attrition rates exceeded 20%. (9) Without further belaboring the point, the issue of high correctional officer turnover is widespread.

Turnover is expensive monetarily and costly in many other ways. The direct and indirect costs are generally classified as separation costs, learning costs, and acquisition costs. (10) Unfortunately, many organizations fail to either acknowledge turnover as a legitimate organizational problem or challenge or to even bother assessing the impact and consequences of the turnover costs on their strategic and day-to-day operations. (11)

One of several ways to visualize turnover costs in a correctional setting is to focus particularly on the salaries of correctional officers who have left the organization, since this is, perhaps, one of the more obvious and apparent indicators of the effect of voluntary turnover. Salaries are a cost of conducting business and an indication employee replacement value. That is, salaries reflect elements of separation costs, acquisition costs, and learning costs.

Jobs are created with knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) in mind, and both the position and its associated KSAs subsequently reflect the quality of employee hired. The employee will be trained and gain valuable experience over time, which costs money and personal investment, but the organization will lose the dollars and experience when the employee leaves the job.

Table 1 shows the 2003 turnover rates and total salary (direct cost) data for correctional officers who left employment in the state studied for this article. Analysis revealed that there is a strong positive correlation between the total monthly pay for correctional officers and their total monthly turnover rates. In essence, turnover costs money. What the table does not show is whether money was the primary reason for the departure of the correctional officers and this article does not attempt to answer that question. However, other information presented below suggests that elements of extrinsic job satisfaction may contribute to voluntary turnover. In fact, Farkas (12) noted, "Officers attributed their job satisfaction to the extrinsic aspects of the job, including pay and job benefits." What is most important to keep in mind, however, is that correctional officer turnover remains high, and an attempt to understand why this occurs using traditional motivation theories may be important for discovering why it occurs at all.

The state agency studied provided information on the reasons why their correctional officers voluntarily left. As with other organizations, this agency uses elaborate exit interviews to gather this type of information. However, exit interviews do have their problems, one of which is whether all those interviewed report their true reasons for departure and whether the exit interviews will actually capture the information meaningfully. However, the information provided is indicative of elements associated with job satisfactions.

Information gathered from the agency's intranet indicate that 45% of correctional officers who voluntarily left had a high school diploma, 34% had some college experience, 9% had some technical training, and 6% had a bachelor's degree. The highest percentage of those who voluntarily left, 42%, did so voluntarily because of other job opportunities. A full 16% of the respondents who voluntarily left concluded that better job offers most influenced their decisions to leave.

Thirteen percent of those officers who voluntarily left indicated that they loved the correctional agency because of job security, while 14% did not like the agency because of infrequent pay increases, 13% felt the efforts were not rewarded, and 12% felt their entry salary were too low. By far, Stunningly, 80% declared that they were willing to work for the agency again.

Job security, pay increases, and salaries, which were noted in how the employees felt about their jobs, are typically characterized as extrinsic components of job satisfaction. Given that 80% of the correctional officers who left had the willingness to work for the agency again, lack of organizational commitment probably was not a large factor in people's decision to leave. Therefore, viewing the extrinsic factors of job satisfaction through the traditional motivation theories of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory is the focus of this article. The theoretical frameworks are necessary because voluntary turnover cannot be studied by itself. Voluntary turnover exists because employees exhibited behaviors and attitudes that demonstrated their levels of job satisfaction with the organization.

It is likely that studies of satisfaction will continue to be associated with studies of voluntary turnover. For this reason, it is important to continue to focus on some of the traditional theories that have defined the emergence of job satisfaction as a relevant variable. Locke (13) has classified the fundamental theories governing the understanding of job satisfaction into process theories and content theories. Here, the focus will be on content theories and how two of the most traditional ones have molded the understanding and use of job satisfaction.

Why Correctional Officers?

Stemming from his own professional experience, the author finds the job of a correctional officer to be a thankless one, replete with many reasons for an officer to remain infinitely unhappy while working in less-than-hospitable conditions. The environment in which a correctional officer functions is saddled with many dangers and populated primarily by prison inmates. The primary responsibility of a correctional officer is to hold inmates in involuntary confinement against their will. (14) A trip to one of the prisons where correctional officers functioned that the author took while preparing this article was quite a sobering experience. Unrestrained inmates with antiauthoritarian behavior were also functioning around the officers who had no credible means of defending themselves against any unforeseen acts of violence by the inmates, beyond the radios they carry around.

Because correctional officers, just as employees in other organizations, will either like or dislike their jobs, and given the often-inhospitable conditions in which they have to work, it is intuitive to suggest that some correctional officers will voluntarily leave the organization. In the agency studied, they do so at high rates. Correctional officers are an especially telling case study for voluntary turnover for several reasons noted below.

First, Lambert (15) summarized the core need for studying correctional officers' job satisfaction by noting, "Correctional staff are the most important asset of any correctional agency. In fact, they are the heart and soul of any correctional organization. Many staff, however, voluntarily quit. The cost of this turnover is high for correctional organizations. Nonetheless, correctional staff turnover has generated only limited research." Granting this, the importance of the satisfaction levels of correctional officers cannot be overemphasized.

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