Exploring onboarding success, organizational fit, and turnover intention of software professionals

The IT sector struggles with talent acquisition and low retention rates. While several field studies have explored onboarding of software developers, the software engineering literature lacks studies that develop and evaluate theoretical models. This study seeks to explore the link between onboarding of new hires and turnover intention of these professionals. In particular, we develop a theoretical model that identifies a number of onboarding activities, and link these to onboarding success. We then look at what we have termed “organizational fit,” which we define as two aspects of software professionals, namely job satisfaction and the quality of their relationships on the workfloor, and investigate how these mediate the relation between short-term onboarding success and a longer-term intention to leave (or stay with) an organization. We test our model with a sample of 102 software professionals using PLS-SEM. The findings suggest that providing support to new hires plays a major role in onboarding success, but that training is less important. Further, we found that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between onboarding success and turnover intention, but workplace relationship quality does not. Based on the findings, we discuss a number of implications for practice and suggestions for future research.