Job turnover intentions among certified pharmacy technicians

Objective: To describe the job withdrawal intentions of a nationwide sample of Certified Pharmacy Technicians (CPhTs). Design: Cross-sectional descriptive design. Setting: A random sample of 3,200 CPhTs whose names and contact information were acquired from the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board. Interventions: Mailed survey. Main Outcome Measures: Responses to questions eliciting job withdrawal intentions, reasons for remaining/staying with the employer, and various quality of worklife attitudes. Employment intentions were regressed over quality of worklife and practice environment variables in a forward-conditional logistic regression procedure. Results: Nearly 4 in 5 respondents indicated intentions to remain with the current employer during the next 12 months. Relationships with coworkers, good benefits, and work schedule were frequently cited as reasons to stay. Poor salary, lack of advancement opportunity, and insufficient staffing were cited frequently as factors among those indicating intentions to leave. Mean hourly wages differed among respondents with intention to leave due to salary, those not citing salary as a reason to remain or leave, and those citing salary as a reason for staying. Intention to remain was associated with higher pay, perceived employer support, number of years with the current employer, and lower career turnover intentions, with organizational commitment acting as a powerful mediator for all of the variables. Conclusion: Differences in CPhTs' future employment intentions were described more comprehensively by perceptions of the employing organization than by perceptions of managers/supervisors and coworkers or personal/work environment variables. Implications for pharmacy organizations are discussed.