CONTINUED SERVICE? UNDERSTANDING MILITARY VETERAN TURNOVER INTENTION AMONG FEDERAL EMPLOYEES

This dissertation studies the turnover intention of military veterans working in the federal government through a series of three separate, stand-alone essays. On November 9, 2009, Executive Order 13518 established the Veterans Employment Initiative and invigorated veteran hiring within the federal government. By fiscal year 2014, 612,000 veterans accounted for 31 percent of the federal workforce, an increase seven percent in just five years (Office of Personnel Management, 2015). To account for this growing employee demographic, the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey began tracking veteran status in 2012 and analysis of this data shows that veterans are more likely to express turnover intention than nonveterans. This raises a troubling question: is the policy objective of the Veterans Hiring Initiative achieved if these veterans are more likely to turnover than nonveterans? This leads to the primary research question for this dissertation: Why are veterans reporting higher turnover intention than non-veterans? All three essays address distinct but related research questions. The first chapter examines whether or not military veterans express higher turnover intention as compared to nonveterans when controlling for the traditional antecedents of turnover. After accounting for job satisfaction, pay satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, gender, age, race, tenure, and work location, initial results find that veterans are 14.1 percent more likely to express turnover intention than nonveterans. Interestingly, when analyzing the type of turnover intention, veterans are 21.9 percent more likely to express intention to leave their current organization but are 23.5 percent less likely to express intention to leave the federal service than nonveterans. The second chapter conducts a follow-on study by interviewing 20 federal employees to determine why veterans are expressing higher organizational turnover intention than nonveterans. Through an analysis of the 2012-2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys and semi-structured interviews, this study finds that veterans may express higher organization turnover intention than nonveterans because their military background normalizes frequent job change; and federal veteran hiring preferences creates a human resource management structure facilitating ease of movement for veterans. Additionally, the extensive benefits provided for veterans by the military combined with the comprehensive benefits available to federal civilian employees incentivizes veterans to remain in the federal service. The third chapter explores whether diversity management can mitigate lower levels of job satisfaction among military veterans working for the federal government and whether veterans should be considered a standalone demographic in diversity scholarship. This study finds that perceptions of fair and effective diversity management are associated with higher job satisfaction among veteran employees, but slightly less so than among nonveterans. This chapter demonstrates that veterans are a unique employee demographic by showing statistically significant differences in job satisfaction between veterans and nonveterans while controlling for other demographics. Overall this dissertation contributes to public management research by highlighting retention challenges for veteran employees and offering insight into an understudied employee population accounting for approximately 30% of the federal workforce.