AGE OF EMPLOYEES AS A PREDICTOR OF TURNOVER INTENTION

Abstract

The research was created as an attempt to discover the differences in the turnover intentions in organizations in Serbia about the age of its employees. A survey was conducted on a sample of 236 respondents working in privately-owned IT and publishing companies and one state-owned company. For data collection, a questionnaire was created for the examination of selected variables through appropriate instruments, which was performed via the Internet, by sending the questionnaire to the e-mail addresses of employees in November 2019. One-factor multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine differences in the level of turnover intention in terms of age. Differences in the level of expression of the turnover intention according to the age of the respondents were tested by the chi-square independence test. Despite the generally accepted opinion that younger employees will more easily decide to leave the organization, the results of this research show that the age of employees does not significantly affect the turnover intention, ie there is no connection between the age structure of respondents and the turnover intention. However, significant differences are observed by including other demographic characteristics (gender and level of education of employees). Thus, it was determined that to a greater extent, male respondents over the age of 45 intend to leave their current job, unlike their younger colleagues and female respondents. At the same time, it has been proven that older highly educated respondents, in contrast to those with a lower level of education, think more about leaving the organization.