Improving the workforce's competitive advantage in the remote work context: A moderated-mediation analysis of perceived organizational support, employee retention, and transformational leadership

Organizations are prioritizing policies to manage and assist employees in enabling them to work well and to retain them, to maintain a competitive advantage and overcome crises such as an economic recession and the negative impact of the pandemic. This study, therefore, addresses the research gap, calling on them to improve employees' perceived organizational support (POS), felt obligation (FO), and transformational leadership (TL) to improve employee retention (ER) in remote and hybrid working environments, which are becoming more popular. Employing time-lagged data, we surveyed 300 remote employees working in multi-sector Vietnam. Based on the social exchange theory, the research results revealed that POS is essential to directly and positively promote ER. Importantly, the study indicated an indirect influence of POS on ER through FO. Moreover, transformational leadership partially moderated those relationships. Specifically, the direct relationship between POS and ER is stronger if TL is high, and reversely, the relationship is weaker if TL is low. The research findings thus enable us to make theoretical and practical contributions to the relationship between POS, FO, and TL toward ER in the post-pandemic remote working context. This encourages managers and researchers to focus more on establishing support and creating a remote work policy that retains employees to achieve stability and bring a competitive advantage to businesses. Finally, we also highlight some limitations and suggest ideas for further studies.