High Employee Turnover: A Direct Consequence of Poor Design

Organizational design serves as the structural blueprint of an organization, profoundly influencing employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention. When this design fails to enhance the employee experience or foster a pro-active-adaptive environment, it will lead to a cascade of challenges — most notably, high employee turnover.

To counter these challenges, organizations must incorporate six psychological criteria for optimally fulfilling work: responsibility and decision-making, opportunity to learn, variety, mutual support and respect, significance, and a desirable future. These criteria can transform any organizational design into one that attracts, retains, and motivates its workforce.

Responsibility and Decision-Making

A hallmark of poor organizational design is role ambiguity, where employees lack clarity about their duties, objectives, and expectations. This uncertainty creates frustration, diminishes motivation, and makes employees feel undervalued.

Enhancive design addresses employee accountability by ensuring that roles are well-defined, responsibilities are optimally aligned with individual capabilities, and feedback loops are robust.