What is I-O?

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the scientific study of the workplace. Rigor and methods of psychology are applied to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work-life balance.

Module 4:  The Leading Edge in Emerging Practice and Research

Session Title:  Increasing Human and Social Capital by Applying Job Embeddedness Theory

 Brooks C. Holtom
Georgetown University 

Abstract:  Through extensive research, my colleagues and I have developed a framework for increasing human and social capital in organizations.  We call this theory job embeddedness.  Across multiple industries, we have found that job embeddedness is a stronger predictor of important organizational outcomes such as employee attendance, retention and performance than job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Learning Objectives

• Describe how differing employees’ competencies, needs and values can affect retention practices.

• Understand the necessity for alignment between business strategy, workers, culture and HR systems.

• Be able to employ the theory of “job embeddedness” as an organizing framework for employee retention

• Identify examples of how firms have applied job embeddedness theory.