Winning the game of Talent Retention

 

What is employee retention?

Today human factor in the organization considered to be the most important factor of an organization. Earlier human factor consider to be cost to an organization today it is consider to be human capital or the most valuable asset to the organization. But today, for many reasons employees leave their organization. Employees leaving affects all the aspects of the organization, specially  to the productivity. Therefor employee retention is the process of human resources management professionals to make sure to retain their employees. Employee retention can be defined as the number of employees retained each year (Lee et al, 1994).

Why people leave?

Today retention become major challenge for HR people. Organizations spend huge amount of money for their employees for training and development, leaving such an employees is a big issue and replacing such employee is cost them too. Here are some reasons why people leave the organizations.

       I.            Strong economy

With the economic growth there are new business and new opportunities created in the business environment. There for employees have the opportunity to choose wherever they have the most suited place to work.     

       II.            Changing work force

Today younger people enter in to the labor market. They are always seeking for growth opportunities and their future success and carrier advancement. They bounce quickly due to minimum obligations hold them down. 

       III.            Technology

Technological advancement crates new businesses and also technology make it easy to find new job opportunities. Today Click of a button can find you jobs with your mobile or PC.

    IV.            Side income

Today people move away from traditional jobs and move towards the self-employment opportunities. With the aid of information technology they can start new business with a low cost and effort as well,

Cost and performance?

Leaving of talented people effects the performance of an organization. Retention of knowledge workers can become a source of competitive advantage for a company (Sigler, 1999). Replacing a worker means a cost to it. 

·         Employ retention help to improve the efficiency of the work force.  Experienced employees know about the process and the objectives of the organization and it improves the efficiency.

·         Employee retention save resources, Haring and replacing an old worker is a costly thing therefore retention save the time and the money in the organization.

·         Employee retention improves the customer experience. Experienced employees automatically transfer their experience to the customers which they serves.

·         Employee retention boost staff productivity and moral, when employees retain longer it will boost their moral and results in high productivity.

How to retain?

Number of researches identified the factors that are associated with employee retention. Employee commitment and retention are influenced by a number of factors rather than just a single issue.

 (Fitz-enz , 1990). Christeen (2014) identified eight retention factors: management, conducive environment, social support and development opportunities, autonomy, compensation, crafted workload, and work-life balance (Christeen, 2014)

Following are some of the factors effects the employee retention.

·         Development opportunities- Employee retention is determined by personal and professional progress, and promotion possibilities encourage employee commitment to stay (Horwitz et al, 2003)   development opportunities inspire employees and it will positively impact on them to stay.

·         Compensation - Pay for performance has been identified as a retention factor. (Rambur et al, 2005). Relation between pay and retention is strong and proven by many studies.

·         Work Life balance- The level of sacrifice an individual is willing to make in other areas of life determines the balance between personal and professional lives (Loan-Clarke, 2010). Work life balance determine the employees’ decision to stay in the organization. Flexible working conditions help to take care of both professional and personal life.

·         Management and leadership- To have a favorable impact on retention, the manager should be "a good boss (Kaye and Jordan-Evans, 2002). Studies shows that good leadership connect with the retention.

·         Work environment-favorable working conditions helps to retention.

·         Social support- satisfactory relationship between peer workers positively impact on retention.

·         Autonomy-autonomy of the job is a determinant factor of job satisfaction and retention.

·         Training and development- training and development help employees to enrich their carrier objectives, and it ties the relationship between employee and the organization which positively influvance retention.

Conclusions

Retention of talent employees in the organization is critical to organization to achieve its objectives. Leaving of talented people effects the performance of an organization. There are many reasons for employees to leave their job, and there are many factors to retention as well. Therefore

HR professionals in the organization have to take steps to make sure to retention of good talent.

References

Bodjrenou Kossivi, Ming Xu, Bomboma Kalgora, (2016) Study on Determining Factors of Employee Retention.

Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2016, 4, 261-268 Published Online May 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jss http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2016.45029