Today’s world experiences high job market competition, which brings up the employee turnover effect. The ability of an organization or ability to retain its employees is one of the most common contemporary issues experienced in business management. To create a strong workforce, an organization is supposed to retain its employees so that they become loyal in these days of job-hopping and high employee turnover (Al-Emadi et al., 2015). High employee turnovers, for example, become costly to employers since this costs time and resources, affecting productivity. The costs of replacing employees are often high, considering factors like induction, training, and other expenses that are incurred during the hiring process. However, finding good and competent employees for a company to keep is also a challenge (Al-Emadi et al., 2015). However, once these good employees are found, the other challenge becomes keeping them. The human resource department needs to develop guidelines on how assessments can be done to recognize the employees who are worth retaining and those who must be allowed to leave the organization.
Staff turnover can be a serious problem for an organization. Appointing and developing a new employee’s skills is more costly and time-consuming. The employees who leave go with not only their abilities but also their knowledge of what is supposed to be done in the organization. These include factors like their instincts, judgmental skills, teamwork with the connections they had created with other employees, and other skills they may have developed during their stay at the organization (Singh, 2019). To this effect, the human resource departments of organizations need to consider relationships between the employee and the employers. Many employees get affected by the negative attitudes that some employers might have towards them and therefore making it hard for the employees to be retained in such organizations.
Employee retention is a contemporary issue in the modern world of business management. The most common reasons that lead to challenges in employee retention include career growth, in which case the individual leaves a company or organization to seek a variety of exposure. An example is an employee leaving their job and moving to the Middle East or expatriates moving to China. Also, work and life balance is another factor that may cause the loss of an employee at a personal level that is, the employee leaves because they cannot balance between work and family (Singh, 2019). Peer comparisons happen in that peers become a greater influence because of the increased connectivity on other social platforms, and obviously, employees are ever searching for greener pastures. On the organization or company level, the challenges that lead to poor employee retention include poor management skills, paucity of talent where the organizations fight for the same talent, and other unsound hiring processes.
For an organization t retain its employees, the working environment must be considered first. Then the personal issue of why the employees leave should also be addressed. The creation and maintenance of an attractive workplace would most likely lead to better employee retention. This ranges from the factors such as developing a corporate mission, culture, and a system that values the employee’s outputs. Focusing on employee relationships is another strategy that can lead to better employee retention by the organization. Training managers to have better employee handling skills and help the employees understand their mission and why they work for the organization (Al-Emadi et al., 2015). This will keep fostering the relationship between the employees and the managers, making them feel that they are part of the team, and this will ensure that they can focus and have the urge to keep working for the company.
Employee retention can be dealt with by the management of an organization or company. The major steps that must be included by the human resource departments to ensure employee retention should be considered, as it has been shown that employee retention is one of the main issues facing companies and organization. These include but are not limited to the following;
- Identification of the employees who are of value to the organization. These include those employees whose performance has been analyzed and seen that they add value to the organization (James & Mathew, 2012). This can be done in terms of a competency evaluation.
- Examining the reasons which have been hindering employee retention. This evaluation can be done on an individual level as well as organizational level to find out the reasons why employees have been leaving (James & Mathew, 2012). The reasons could be personal or due to issues within the organization.
- Discussion of the reasons identified above.
- Coming up with a holistic approach strategy to help address the matters that have been identified, for example, by building an appropriate working environment, fostering employee relationships, fostering employee growth strategies, and coming up with employee compensation strategies. More of these strategies are outlined in the table below.
Figure 1 assessment of employee retention strategies
Discussion
Many companies have experienced Employee turnover in recent times. One such giant company is Twitter, one of the biggest social media platforms. Earlier in 2022, news broke that businessman and Billionaire Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Space X and Tesla, was going to buy the company. In June 2022, Musk met with the employees, and ever since, there has been a heavy worker turnover at the company. Among the matters discussed at the meeting included Musk’s vision of one billion users and also making Twitter healthy by the prospective layoff. Weeks after the meeting, hundreds of workers had already left, and by September, the number of workers had reduced to 700 globally; many of those who left were citing instability and Musk as the reason. Court proceedings started when Musk claimed that the media was not portraying his deal correctly. These proceedings led to Musk putting the deal on hold and even said he no longer wanted the deal. 9% of the employees had left by then, and attrition continued.
Initially, before the planned takeover by Musk, Twitter was one of the companies with the best employee retention. Reports suggest that its onboarding process whereby the new employees were met with an already set up. A company swag and a bottle of wine were also provided, and the ne employee would be joined by the manager for breakfast to help the employee feel at home and have a sense of belonging to the company. However, this changed when Musk took over, and his first actions were to threaten the employees about planned layoffs. He even fired the top employees on his first day after the takeover. Employee retention was definitely affected once this takeover was done. Among the top executives that were fired by Musk include the CEO, Parag Agrawal, and financial officer Ned Segal and also legal affairs and policy Chief Vijaya Gade. These top executives were fired on the accusation of misleading him and other investors on the number of fake accounts on the social media platform. Firing employees publicly in such a manner is more likely to lead to more employees leaving the company because of fear, as well as the working environment becoming unfavorable. The headlines have shown that the number of employees has been declining at the company ever since.
Management issue
The main management issue, in this case, is the lack of management in an organization. The organizational management issue leads to the failure of an organization to retain their employees and, therefore, high employee turnover. Lack of trust is another management issue that results in employees not trusting that they will still be working for an organization in a few years to come, for example. This is a matter that demotivates them and leads to poor outcomes in their performance, where most will probably quit to look for greener pastures or better jobs with good working environments. Career growth is normally an important consideration for all employees, and therefore, they should be working having the feeling that their careers are growing. If an organization fails to provide its employees with the same, the risk of losing them becomes high. The employees find themselves with the urge to leave and find opportunities because, most of the time, their peers are doing better in terms of the work environments they are in and in terms of career development. Unrealistic expectations from employers also lead to high employee turnover. Studies show that more than 50% of the workforce is normally stressed at work. This can result from unrealistic expectations from their employers, which most likely drives the employees to quit their jobs. The unrealistic expectations lead to stress due to work overloads, high-pressure deadlines, expectations of unreasonable quality, and unreachable goals. The reasons for unachievable goals include poor leadership, lack of communication, inflexibility in work times, unclear goals, and lack of employee development. Losing morale results from these unrealistic expectations, and an employee is likely to quit in that case.
Surprisingly, another management issue is hiring wrong or unqualified candidates; employee retention begins with hiring the correct candidates. The right people hired into the team mean that they will fit in and be able to achieve what is expected of them; hence, they can be retained. Employees who work at an organization for a long tend to understand the work and become more productive than those who have stayed for shorter durations. Ideally, the best candidate should have stayed for a considerable amount of time in their previous area of work, which provides good evidence of the employee being able to stay engaged and commit to the job they get hired to do. Many metrics can be applied to pick the right person for the job. Salary dissatisfaction also goes a long way in employee retention. In this matter, the salary is always the incentive to keep someone working for an organization. If the employees are not satisfied, that means that they will keep perusing the job market to seek better opportunities and up their earnings. A good package is always seen as how the company or organization shows its concern for the employees. Most employees also look out for retirement packages, sick leaves, and health insurance. This would work as an incentive to keep employees and is, most of the time, the reason employees leave to search for organizations offering the same.
Employee retention issue is much of a contemporary issue like the issues learned in the course. No organization or company wants to keep on hiring employees and then losing them, forcing them to rehire again. This makes it costly to run an organization and meet its objectives. Management must be taken seriously, and employees must be retained in the organization or company.
Plan to Solve the Issue
Strategies that can be implemented to help companies and organizations in this issue include investment in employees’ careers. Investing in the employees’ careers has been shown to make them stay for longer as they need to keep their skills sharp and remain competitive, therefore having the chance to climb the ladder. Investment in better management can also be in the plans to solve the issue. There is a line that goes as, “people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.” (Cloutier et al., 2015). A poor manager is likely to push employees toward quitting their jobs. Leadership skills should be trained to ensure the management is favorable to the employees.
Appraisal and recognition of the employee’s contributions to the company are also one of the ways to solve the issue. An appraisal is the recognition of someone’s efforts and rewarding them (Cloutier et al., 2015). this will, in turn motivate the employees to give their best and therefore making them stay. Employees want to stay in an area they are valued and not where their contribution is unrecognized. Most organizations and companies fail to recognize the efforts of their employees, and it is easier for managers to recognize mistakes that employees make. This leads to the demoralization of these employees, and therefore they are likely to quit. This goes hand in hand with the reassessment of compensation. Since the market is competitive, compensation becomes the largest part of the company or organization to keep its employees (Gupta, 2014). Employees will look for other opportunities if they feel inadequately compensated for their work. There are options available, and those companies that are transparent and clear in their policies regarding compensation are more likely to win over employees.
Benefits package consideration also goes a long way in the employee retention issue. Apart from the salaries, employees consider the benefits they get from the employer. Benefits can form the difference between one employee leaving or staying at a job, such as health benefits and parental leaves (Cloutier et al., 2015). Flexibility in the workplace is a key factor in keeping employees, which also brings in the issue of work-life balance. Managers should do a good check on their employees to ensure that they are not overwhelmed in their work and make some lines for the employees to communicate on workloads (Gupta, 2014). Sometimes the employees are unable to manage, and balance between life work and life, leading to these employees thinking otherwise about work. Some employees find it hard to communicate their issue and would rather leave and find another job that lets them have some balance between life and work.
In summary, Employee retention is one of the major contemporary issues in business management, apart from being costly to the employer. It is also time-consuming as the process of hiring and rehiring with employee induction and training takes time. Companies and organizations should focus on the management of their employees and hence employ retention. Many companies and organizations always tend to ignore the needs of the employees and fire them at the slightest mistake, which hinders employee retention. Management changes have been indicated to be one of the reasons employee retention is difficult. For example, the case of Twitter lost a considerable number of employees once the management changed. The main takeaway point is that all companies would want to retain their employees as this keeps the talent that they have within themselves. The competition in the job market needs any company or organization to put in the best efforts to keep the employees; otherwise, they will be hiring and rehiring. The best employees should be kept; if need be, only the incompetent ones should be left to leave. Strategies should be made to ensure that the employees feel they are part of the company or organization. This means that they have a chance to grow in their careers, and also, they feel they are evenly compensated for the work that they do. Such employees will stay, and their work is always the best considered when some employees get work stress and they end up being demoralized. Employee retention is suitable both for the individual employee and the company or organization, as it will ultimately lead to better profits. Business management should also focus on training managers and supervisors to manage the employees and ensure that they stay in the company.
References
Al-Emadi, A. A. Q., Schwabenland, C., & Wei, Q. (2015). The vital role of employee retention in human resource management: A literature review. IUP Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14(3), 7.
Cloutier, O., Felusiak, L., Hill, C., & Pemberton-Jones, E. J. (2015). The importance of developing strategies for employee retention. Journal of Leadership, Accountability & Ethics, 12(2).
Gupta-Sunderji, M. (2014). Employee retention and turnover: The real reasons employees stay or go. Financial management institute journal, 15(2), 37-40.
James, L., & Mathew, L. (2012). Employee retention strategies: IT industry. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 9(3), 79.
PANDAY, P., & KAUR, G. (2021). Talent Management and Employee Retention Practices: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Agenda. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government| Vol, 27(3), 2896.
Singh, D. (2019). A literature review on employee retention with a focus on recent trends. International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology, 6(1), 425-431.
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