THE EFFECT OF INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK ON EMPLOYEE RETENTION INTENTION: EVIDENCE FROM SRI LANKA

Abstract

The prime purpose of this study is to assess the effect of informal relationships at work on employee retention intention, featuring the main three aspects of informal relationships at work: friendship; romance and negative relationships. Building on Maslow's (1954) hierarchy of needs theory, a narrative literature review of all the relevant research papers known to the authors was conducted first. It was found that the underlying relationships between informal relationships at work and the employee retention intention are not clear and consistent in the extant literature. Hence, this quantitative, crosssectional, field study was designed to be conducted in the Sri Lankan context. Primary data were collected through a standard questionnairethrough a survey. The Convenience Sampling technique was applied to select the sample where the final sample consisted of 215 professionals working in Sri Lanka. Data were analyzed with the aid of SPSS, employing the correlation, regression, t-tests, and the ANOVA test. Findings revealed that friendship at work has a significant, moderatepositive nexus with employee retention intention where there is no significant association was found between negative relationships and romance at work with employee retention intention. Further, it is found that 16.80% of the variation in the dependent variable (employee retention intention) could be explained by the fitted regression model of friendship at work. Moreover, prior engagement in romance at work is not a statistically a significant factor affecting employee retention. Also, there is no significant impact on current participation status in romance at work on employee retention intention. The findings of the current study supports the general notion that the workplace is not a mere place to come and work, but it is a complex social system through which people try to fulfill their social needs, including informal relationships.