Abstract:
Employee turnover has been an important research area in social science over the
past involving the discipline of human resource management. But these types of studies in the
military are very few. This paper makes use of quantitative research methods to assess the
effect of work life balance and job stress as predictor variables on job satisfaction which is
intervening variable towards the turnover intention as the outcome variable in the schematic
diagram of the study. Data were collected from 327 Commissioned Officers of the military in
Sri Lanka through a structured questionnaire and processed those data by using correlation
and regression analyses. The results of the analyses indicated that the survey was reliable, and
the study model is significant. Data analysis of the research study revealed that the correlations
among turnover intention, job satisfaction, job stress and work life balance are highly
significant. As per the regression results, both work life balance and job stress affect both job
satisfaction and turnover intention of Commissioned Officers. But job satisfaction doesn’t
mediate the relationships between work life balance and turnover intention as well as job stress
and turnover intention. The fallouts indicated that job stress and work life balance are the
determinants of the turnover intention of commissioned officers although there is no
significant mediating relationship of job satisfaction between them. Based on the study, it is
suggested that remedial actions should be proposed to reduce the job stress in order to mitigate
the turnover intention while encouraging work life balance practices. Moreover, it is suggested
that management needs to put more emphasis on improving the counselling and stress
reducing aspects while enhancing working conditions to minimize the turnover intention
among military officers.
