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The Truckers and Turnover Project is a statistical case study of a single large trucking firm and its driver employees. The cooperating firm operates in the largest segment of the for-hire trucking industry in the United States, the “full truckload” (TL) segment, in which approximately 800,000 people are employed. The TL segment has a high turnover labor market for its main employee group, tractor-trailer drivers, and the project is designed to address a number of academic and business questions that arise in this setting. The most distinctive innovation of this project component is the data collection process, which combines traditional survey instruments with behavioral economics experiments. Using behavioral economics field experiments, this chapter examines the context and design of the Truckers and Turnover Project. It first describes the U.S. trucking industry and the role of the TL segment within it. It then discusses the nature of the labor market for TL drivers, explains why it has had a high turnover equilibrium for about twenty-five years, and presents preliminary findings on employee turnover and productivity.

This chapter explores the richness of the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data set by augmenting it with publicly-available data on employee benefits offered by different companies. It demonstrates that the level of benefits offered by a firm is negatively associated with employee turnover. Firms that offer benefits have higher-skilled workers and these skilled workers have lower turnover rates. Moreover, firms offering benefits have higher labor productivity and are more likely to survive, even after controlling for worker and firm characteristics and wage compensation. Benefits in general are negatively related to churning rates. Firms with high churning rates tend to grow more slowly. The firm wage effect has a strong positive relationship with growth rates. The results generally confirm that there is a correlation between a firm's decision to offer benefits and the mobility and productivity of its labor force as well as the firm's length of life.

Gary S. Becker's (1964) seminal work on investment in human capital makes a fundamental distinction between general and firm-specific skills, which has implications for investment and employee turnover. Firm-specific human capital is defined as having value only to the current employment relationship, while general human capital is valuable to both current and potential employers. Becker's theory predicts that employees will bear the full cost of general skills training—either by paying for training directly or by accepting lower wages during training periods—because employers face the threat of not capturing the return on their investment due to “poaching” of trained employees by other employers. Tuition reimbursement programs are an example of general skills training provided by firms. This chapter examines empirically whether employees who participate in tuition reimbursement have higher retention rates than non-participants using a case study analysis of workers at a nonprofit institution. The results indicate that participation reduces employee turnover. Hence, general skills training increases retention.

This chapter visits the world of professional work in the Silicon Valley as a model for the ‘high-velocity labour markets’ of the future, and in which post-war assumptions of long-term job attachment and guarantees of ‘career’ employment have little purchase. It asks whether these novel employment arrangements have any positive potential and explores strategies to protect employees who find themselves in such labour markets. It considers the implications of a labour market with rapid employee turnover and consequent re-employment by other firms, for the meaning of equal employment opportunities, and the operation of post-employment restrictions governing trade secrets or covenants not to compete.

This chapter explores how Wal-Mart succeeded in the retail industry by taking an anti-unionist stand. It explains that the retail store’s policy of paying its employees the lowest amount possible and its lack of a proper health care package could be two of the reasons behind its success. It contends that its large employee turnover rate of 40 percent shows its disregard of the needs of its employees.