Disentangling Rationales for Leaving: A Quantitative Multidimensional Account of Employee Turnover in Southwestern Nigeria Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

This paper appraised major reasons employees of Nigerian manufacturing and service SMEs’ exit their jobs from a holistic perspective rather than the seemingly parochial voluntary employee turnover angle alone.Following pre-field interviews, quantitative data was collected from 696 respondents adopting two structured survey questionnaires; data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Contrary to widely held belief, results revealed that most exits are not necessarily voluntary, but reflect three multifaceted issues (Employee-Induced, Organisationally-Induced and Externally-Induced). Employees reported job alternatives (Exp(β) = 1.438), organisation as a great employer (Exp(β) = 1.301), reward-performance ratio (Exp(β) = .676) and internal opportunities (Exp(β) = .695), as critical to their exit decisions. Owners/managers indicated external job opportunities, employee leaving after training and low salary as playing major roles in their employees’ exit decisions. A Revised Model of Turnover of Nigerian SMES employees resulted from the findings.