PurposeCongruent with the world-wide call to combat global warming concerns within the context of advancements in smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, algorithms (STARA), and digitalisation, organisational leaders are being pressured to ensure that talented employees are effectively managed (nurtured and retained) to curb the potential risk of staff turnover. By managing such talent(s), organisations may be able to not only retain them, but consequently foster environmental sustainability too. Equally, recent debates encourage the need for teams to work digitally and interdependently on set tasks, and for leaders to cultivate competencies fundamental to STARA, as this may further help reduce staff turnover intention and catalyse green initiatives. However, it is unclear how such turnover intention may be impacted by these actions. This paper therefore, seeks to investigate the predictive roles of green hard and soft talent management (TM), leader STARA competence (LSC) and digital task interdependence (DTI) on turnover intention.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a cross-sectional data collection technique to obtain 372 useable samples from 49 manufacturing organisations in Nigeria.FindingsFindings indicate that green hard and soft TM and LSC positively predict turnover intention. While LSC amplifies the negative influence of green soft TM on turnover intention, LSC and DTI dampen the positive influence of green hard TM on turnover intention.Originality/valueOur study offers novel insights into how emerging concepts like LSC, DTI, and green hard and soft TM simultaneously act to predict turnover intention.