How do job demands and job resources relate to well-being, turnover intention and performance in retail? Insights from Swedish trade union members

The retention of front-line staff in retail has proven challenging. Simultaneously, there are high demands for performance, in a working environment that is often characterized as being detrimental to personal wellbeing. In this paper, we test hindering job demands and job resources as predictors of individual well-being and work-related attitudes and behavior. Retail employees may need to manage their own emotions (emotional dissonance) and can even be exposed to threats and harassment in face-to-face interactions with customers. As a sector with high levels of part-time employment, insecurity around working hours may be an important demand within retail that has not received much attention in previous research. We also consider the role of job resources, namely job control, social support from the supervisor, and possibilities for development. We investigate outcomes related to employees’ well-being (exhaustion), thoughts about leaving the job (turnover intention) and job performance through moderated hierarchical regression analyses with interaction terms. Data was collected cross-sectionally by electronic survey using established measures, in collaboration with a large union that operates in the Swedish retail sector. Emotional dissonance predicted all outcome variables, threats and harassment predicted exhaustion, and worktime insecurity predicted exhaustion and turnover intention. All job resources were significantly and directly related to the outcome variables, but job control showed the strongest negative relation with exhaustion, possibilities for development the strongest negative relation with turnover intention, and supervisory support was a strong positive predictor of job performance. The findings mainly confirm that job demands themselves need to be managed actively, and that job resources have to be present to directly protect wellbeing and performance, and prevent turnover intention. However, evidence for moderating effects of job resources in this sample was weak.