The psychological mechanism linking employee work engagement and turnover intention: A moderated mediation study

In the global economy, motivating people to engage and stay in their work is a challenge for organizations. Researchers are increasingly recognizing the need for promoting strong employee engagement in the workplace. OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the effect of employee work engagement on turnover intention. The study focuses on the mediating role of trust that underpins the relationship between employee work engagement and turnover intention, and the moderating role of job embeddedness in influencing the effect of trust. METHOD: Survey data were collected from 418 employees from private media organizations. Hierarchical regression analysis and moderated mediation analysis were employed to test the hypotheses. RESULTS: The results indicate that trust mediates the relationship between employee work engagement and turnover intention. Job embeddedness moderates the strength of the mediated relationship between employee work engagement and turnover intention via trust, such that the mediated relationship is weaker under high job embeddedness than under low job embeddedness. CONCLUSION: This paper described the relationships among the concepts of work engagement, job embeddedness, trust, and turnover intention from a novel direction. Theoretical and practical consequences of these findings are discussed.