Psychological empowerment as a strategy for personnel retention in the oilfield service industry

The intellectual gap experienced by the oil and gas industry has created a hyper competitive environment forcing organizations to look for ways to retain their best talents beyond the traditional benefit offerings. This paper examines if components of psychological empowerment contribute to employee retention. To examine this, a survey was administered to 37 oilfield service personnel from different companies in Malaysia. The results indicate that psychological empowerment components of role ambiguity, span of control, sociopolitical support, access to information, access to resources, and participative unit climate encourage employee retention suggesting that retention programs which are cognitive in nature can yield intended result.