Employee bonding and turnover efficiency

Abstract

This study explores how bonding contracts improve employee attraction and retention. These bonds are payment schemes tied to employment duration, such as the vesting of pensions and stock options. This study presents an employee turnover model in which only the worker knows their taste for their current job. This taste gives the current employer monopsonistic power, resulting in deadweight loss from excessive turnover. Bonding contracts serve as a commitment device for future wages and eliminate such deadweight loss, but only when the roles of bondholders and wage setters are separate. Firms that do this are more competitive to new hires. This model offers several empirical findings regarding a variety of common bonding practices.