ELECTRONIC WORKPLACE MONITORING AND EMPLOYEE TURNOVER INTENTIONS IN COMMERCIAL BANKS IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

The study examined the relationship between electronic workplace monitoring and employee turnover intentions in the commercial banks in South-East, Nigeria. Eighteen Commercial Banks with 655 branches operating in South East, Nigeria were studied. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between electronic workplace camera monitoring and turnover intentions, electronic workplace computer monitoring and turnover intentions, eavesdropping monitoring and turnover intentions, electronic monitoring facets combined to predict turnover intentions and the interaction effect of electronic monitoring facets on turnover intentions. The study adopted a survey design method using a four-point scale structured questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 389 staff from a population of 13,883 nonmanagerial staff of Commercial Banks in South East, Nigeria. Regression Analysis Technique was used to test for significance and jointly predict turnover intentions while Ordinary Least Square Method of Regression was used to test significant interaction effect of standalone or independent variables on turnover intentions. All test conducted at 5% level of significance. The results of this study reveal that electronic camera as a monitoring effort had positive and significant relationship with employees’ turnover intentions. Electronic computer monitoring had positive and insignificant relationship with employees’ turnover intentions. Electronic eavesdropping monitoring had positive and significant relationship with turnover intentions in studied Commercial Banks; and electronic camera monitoring, electronic computer monitoring and electronic eavesdropping monitoring were jointly significant predictors of turnover intentions in the commercial banks in South East Nigeria. Further results reveal that electronic computer monitoring though jointly with electronic camera and eavesdropping significantly predict turnover intentions but its contribution (computer monitoring) in the regression analysis was not significant because its p-value (0.110)  associated with t-value is greater than 0.05. Further analysis of the regression using Ordinary Least Square Method of regression shows that electronic monitoring facets interaction was found to have an overall positive and significant interaction effect on turnover intentions. The specific electronic variables that have significant interaction effect on turnover intentions were camera and computer monitoring while camera and eavesdropping as well as computer and eavesdropping have insignificant interaction effect on turnover intentions.  The study recommends that management of organizations especially banks should educate their employees on the reason behind monitoring them electronically as well as scan their electronic monitoring business environment and adopt the model developed in this study so as to predict actions that are necessary to reconfigure the current resource of the organization, so that the negative attitudes towards electronic monitoring could be effectively taken into consideration in electronic monitoring policy. Attention should be paid to using the monitoring system to trigger favourable behaviour among employees especially in the feedback so as to minimize the significant interaction effect of monitoring on turnover intentions.