Abstract:

There are two different approaches concerning the effects of vocational training/education (VTE) services delivered by business organisations on employees’ leaving tendencies. The positive approach, which is empirically well-supported as well, indicates that the VTE activities lead to increases in organisational commitments of employees. The negative approach, which is mostly restricted to theoretical explanations, predicts that the VTE services offered to employees charge high turnover-related new costs to organisations by increasing the leaving tendencies of employees. Even there are studies supporting both approaches in the global literature, the studies on Turkey seem to be ignoring the unfavourable impacts of VTE services. For the purpose of highlighting this negligence, utilising a sample of businesses those have been operating in Turkey’s manufacturing sectors and somewhat have provided a VTE opportunity to their employees, this study examines whether or not the VTE activities of organisations influence employees’ tendencies to leave current organisations for others. Results from several analyses based on a data set collected from 198 employees working in 25 businesses reveal that VTE programs do not cause any increase in employee leaving tendency, rather, it is found that the increases in the levels of organisational support for training and employee satisfaction with training tend to reduce the tendencies of employees to leave their organisations. Besides, a significant positive relationship is found between enthusiasms of employees for VTE and their leaving intentions. Overall results support the premise suggesting that VTE services benefit both employees and employers and thus the study underlines that the human resources departments in businesses need to enforce more VTE practices. 

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