The Customer-Employee Relationship Revisited: A New Perspective for Human Capital Management?

Retaining qualified and productive employees is an important goal for companies, since high turnover is costly (Rust et al., 1996) and diminishes organizational performance (Meifert, 2005). Thus, high churn rates also negatively affect a firm’s financial bottom line and its accumulated social capital (Griffeth et al., 2000; Koys, 2001). This problem is exacerbated by the demographical change in Europe, with its ageing societies and sinking birth rates (Horx-Strathern and Horx, 2001). Hence, a ‘war for talent’ arises due to there being a smaller qualified workforce available and a higher demand for ‘knowledge workers’, especially in the professional services sector (Horx-Strathern and Horx, 2001; Scholz and Stein, 2002; Terjesen and Frey, 2008). Professional services employees are especially difficult to retain, which is shown by the high turnover rates of professional service firms. This retention problem is caused by professional services employees’ loose contact with their employers. Many professional services employees work very closely together with their clients, and often remote from their employers. This situation makes many professional services employees, such as management consultants and planning engineers, more similar to contingent employees than ‘usual’ white-collar workers such as administrative staff (Lee and Mitchell, 1994; Lee and Maurer, 1997; Scott, 1998; Donnelly and Quirin, 2005). Because of these framing conditions, and the resulting influence of clients on professional services employees’ work environment, motivation, and satisfaction, we suggest considering clients for employee retention management.