Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and ensure sustainability. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 80% of its employees in a given period). Employee retention is also the strategies employers use to try to retain the employees in their workforce.[1]
A distinction should be drawn between low-performing employees and top performers, and efforts to retain employees should be targeted at valuable, contributing employees. Employee turnover is a sign of deeper issues that have not been resolved, which may include low employee morale, absence of a clear career path, lack of recognition, poor employee-manager relationships or many other issues. A lack of job satisfaction and commitment to the organization can also cause an employee to withdraw and begin looking for other opportunities. Pay sometimes plays a smaller role in inducing turnover as is typically believed.[2]
In a business setting, the goal of employers is usually to decrease employee turnover,[3] thereby decreasing training costs, recruitment costs and loss of talent and of organisational knowledge. By implementing lessons learned from key organizational behavior concepts, employers can improve retention rates and decrease the associated costs of high turnover. Some employers seek "positive turnover" whereby they aim to maintain only those employees whom they consider to be high performers.
In today's environmental conscious behavior society, companies that are more responsible towards environment and sustainability practices can attract and retain employees. Employees like to be associated with companies that are environmentally friendly.[4]
Cost of turnover
Studies have shown that cost related to directly replacing an employee can be as high as 50–60% of the employee's annual salary, but the total cost of turnover can reach as high as 90–200% of the employee's annual salary.[5] These costs include candidate views, new hire training, the internal recruiter's salary, the costs to retain a 3rd party recruiter, separation processing, job errors, lost sales, reduced morale and a number of other costs to the organization. Turnover also affects organizational performance. High-turnover industries such as retailing, food services, call centres, elder-care nurses, and salespeople make up almost a quarter of the United States population. Replacing workers in these industries is less expensive than in other, more stable, employment fields but costs can still reach over $500 per employee.[6] As of November 2022, Gallup found that 49% of U.S. employees were watching for or actively seeking a new job.[7]
Herzberg's theory
An alternative motivation theory to Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the motivator-hygiene (Herzberg's) theory. The theories overlap, but the fundamental nature of each model differs. While Maslow's hierarchy implies the addition or removal of the same need stimuli will enhance or detract from the employee's satisfaction, Herzberg's findings indicate that factors garnering job satisfaction are separate from factors leading to poor job satisfaction and employee turnover. Herzberg's system of needs is segmented into motivators and hygiene factors. Like Maslow's hierarchy, motivators are often unexpected bonuses that foster the desire to excel. Hygiene factors include expected conditions that if missing will create dissatisfaction. Examples of hygiene factors include bathrooms, lighting, and the appropriate tools for a given job. Employers must utilize positive reinforcement methods while maintaining expected hygiene factors to maximize employee satisfaction and retention.[8]
Retention programs
It is important to first pinpoint the root cause of the retention issue before implementing a program to address it. Once identified, a program can be tailored to meet the unique needs of the organization. A variety of programs exist to help increase employee retention.[9]
Career Development – It is important for employees to understand their career path within an organization to motivate them to remain in the organization to achieve their personal career goals. Through surveys, discussion and classroom instruction, employees can better understand their goals for personal development. With these developmental goals in mind, organizations can – and should – offer tailored career development opportunities to their employees.
Executive Coaching – Executive coaching can be used to build competencies in leaders within an organization. Coaching can be useful in times of organizational change, to increase a leader's effectiveness or to encourage managers to implement coaching techniques with peers and direct reports. The coaching process begins with an assessment of the individual's strengths and opportunities for improvement. The issues are then prioritized and interventions are delivered to target key weaknesses.
Motivating Across Generations – Today's workforce includes a diverse population of employees from multiple generations. As each generation holds different expectations for the workplace, it is important to understand the differences between these generations regarding motivation and engagement. Managers, especially, must understand how to handle the differences among their direct reports.
Orientation and Onboarding – An employee's perception of an organization takes shape during the first several days on the job and continues throughout their first six months, with 90% of employees still deciding whether or not to stay in the organization during this time.[10] It is in the best interest of both the employee and the organization to impart knowledge about the company quickly and effectively to integrate the new employee into the workforce. In addition, providing continual reinforced learning through extended onboarding over the first year can increase new hire retention by 25%.[11] By implementing an effective onboarding process, new hire turnover rates will decrease and productivity will increase.
Women's Retention Programs – Programs such as mentoring, leadership development and networking that are geared specifically toward women can help retain top talent and decrease turnover costs. There are many Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion[12] efforts that can contribute significantly to retaining women employees. By implementing programs to improve work/life balance, employees can be more engaged and productive while at work.[13]
Employee Recognition Programs - Some of the biggest reasons for employee turnover are results of toxic company culture and not feeling engaged or recognized for their work. Companies have now started investing billions of dollars each year into bonus and employee perks programs. Forbes found in 2019 that companies that scored in the top 20% for building a ‘recognition-rich culture’ had 31% lower voluntary turnover rates.[14]
Exit Interview and Separation Management Programs
Retention tools and resources
Employee Surveys – By surveying employees, organizations can gain insight into the motivation, engagement and satisfaction of their employees. It is important for organizations to understand the perspective of the employee in order to create programs targeting any particular issues that may impact employee retention.
Exit Interviews – By including exit interviews in the process of employee separation, organizations can gain valuable insight into the workplace experience. Exit interviews allow the organization to understand the triggers of the employee's desire to leave as well as the aspects of their work that they enjoyed. The organization can then use this information to make necessary changes to their company to retain top talent. Exit interviews must, however, ask the right questions and elicit honest responses from separating employees to be effective.
Employee Retention Consultants – An employee retention consultant can assist organizations in the process of retaining top employees. Consultants can provide expertise on how to best identify the issues within an organization that are related to turnover. Once identified, a consultant can suggest programs or organizational changes to address these issues and may also assist in the implementation of these programs or changes.[15]
Join, stay, leave model
For organizations and employers, understanding the environment is the first step to developing a long-term retention strategy. Organizations should understand why employees join, why they stay and why they leave an organization. This join, stay, leave model is akin to a three-legged stool, meaning that without data on all three, organizations will be unsuccessful in implementing a proper retention strategy.
Why employees join – The attractiveness of the position is usually what entices employees to join an organization. However, recruiting candidates is only half the problem while retaining employees is another. Understanding what your employees are looking for in the job while simultaneously making sure your expectations are correct are both important factors to address in the hiring process.[16] High performing employees are more likely to be retained when they are given realistic job previews. Organizations that attempt to oversell the position or company are only contributing to their own detriment when employees experience a discord between the position and what they were initially told. To assess and maintain retention, employers should mitigate any immediate conflicts of misunderstanding in order to prolong the employee's longevity with the organization. New-hire surveys can help to identify the breakdowns in trust that occur early on when employees decide that the job was not necessarily what they envisioned.[17]
Why employees stay – Understanding why employees stay with an organization is equally as important to understanding why employees choose to leave. Recent studies have suggested that as employees participate in their professional and community life, they develop a web of connections and relationships. These relationships prompt employees to become more embedded in their jobs and by leaving a job; this would sever or rearrange these social networks. The more embedded employees are in an organization, the more they are likely to stay.[18] Additionally, the extent to which employees experience fit between themselves at their job, the lesser chance they will search elsewhere. Organizations can ascertain why employees stay by conducting stay interviews with top performers. A stay survey can help to take the pulse of an organization's current work environment and its impact on their high performing employees. Employers that are concerned with over-using stay interviews can achieve the same result by favoring an ongoing dialogue with employees and asking them critical questions pertaining to why they stay and what their goals are.[2]
Why employees leave – By understanding the reasons behind why employees leave, organizations can better cater to their existing workforce and influence these decisions in the future. Oftentimes, it is low satisfaction and commitment that initiates the withdrawal process, which includes thoughts of quitting in search of more attractive alternatives. If administered correctly, exit interviews can provide a great resource to why employees leave. Typically, employees are stock in their responses because they fear being reprimanded or jeopardizing any potential future reference.[17] The most common reasons for why employees leave are better pay, better hours and better opportunity. These typical answers for leaving, often signal a much deeper issue that employers should investigate further into. By asking relevant questions and perhaps utilizing a neutral third party provider to conduct the interview, employers can obtain more accurate and quantifiable data. Contrary to what most organizations believe, employees often leave due to relationships with manager and/or treatment of employees and not compensation, as this is often a response that employees are uncomfortable expressing to their organization directly.[17] Retention Diagnostic is a rapid benchmarking process that identifies the costs and can help uncover what affects employee loyalty, performance and engagement.[19]
Best practices
By focusing on the fundamentals, organizations can go a long way towards building a high-retention workplace. Organizations can start by defining their culture and identifying the types of individuals that would thrive in that environment. Organizations should adhere to the fundamental new hire orientation and on boarding plans. Attracting and recruiting top talent requires time, resources and capital. However, these are all wasted if employees are not positioned to succeed within the company. Research has shown that an employee's first 10 days are critical because the employee is still adjusting and getting acclimated to the organization. Companies retain good employees by being employers of choice.
Recruitment – Presenting applicants with realistic job previews during the recruitment process have a positive effect on retaining new hires. Employers that are transparent about the positive and negative aspects of the job, as well as the challenges and expectations are positioning themselves to recruit and retain stronger candidates.[2]
Selection – There are plethora of selection tools that can help predict job performance and subsequently retention. These include both subjective and objective methods and while organizations are accustomed to using more subjective tools such as interviews, application and resume evaluations, objective methods are increasing in popularity. For example, utilizing biographical data during selection can be an effective technique. Biodata empirically identifies life experiences that differentiate those who stay with an organization and those who quit. Life experiences associated with employees may include tenure on previous jobs, education experiences, and involvement and leadership in related work experiences.[2]
Socialization – Socialization practices delivered via a strategic onboarding and assimilation program can help new employees become embedded in the company and thus more likely to stay. Research has shown that socialization practices can help new hires become embedded in the company and thus more likely to stay. These practices include shared and individualized learning experiences, activities that allow people to get to know one another. Such practices may include providing employees with a role model, mentor or trainer or providing timely and adequate feedback.[2]
Training and development – Providing ample training and development opportunities can discourage turnover by keeping employees satisfied and well-positioned for future growth opportunities. In fact, dissatisfaction with potential career development is one of the top three reasons employees (35%) often feel inclined to look elsewhere. if employees are not given opportunities to continually update their skills, they are more likely to leave. Those who receive more training are less likely to quit than those who receive little or no training. Employers that fear providing training will make their employees more marketable and thus increase turnover can offer job specific training, which is less transferable to other contexts. Additionally, employers can increase retention through development opportunities such as allowing employees to further their education and reimbursing tuition for employees who remain with the company for a specified amount of time.[2]
Compensation and rewards – Pay levels and satisfaction are only modest predictors of an employee's decision to leave the organization; however organizations can lead the market with a strong compensation and reward package as 53% of employees often look elsewhere because of poor compensation and benefits. Organizations can explicitly link rewards to retention (i.e. vacation hours to seniority, offer retention Bonus payments or Employee stock options, or define benefit plan payouts to years of services)[20] Research has shown that defined compensation and rewards as associated with longer tenure. Additionally, organizations can also look to intrinsic rewards such as increased decision-making autonomy.
Effective leaders – An employee's relationship with his/her immediately ranking supervisor or manager is equally important to keeping to making an employee feel embedded and valued within the organization. Supervisors need to know how to motivate their employees and reduce cost while building loyalty in their key people. Managers need to reinforce employee productivity and open communication, to coach employees and provide meaningful feedback and inspire employees to work as an effective team.[21] In order to achieve this, organizations need to prepare managers and supervisors to lead and develop effective relationships with their subordinates. Executive Coaching can help increase an individual's effectiveness as a leader as well as boast a climate of learning, trust and teamwork in an organization. to encourage supervisors to focus on retention among their teams, organizations can incorporate a retention metric into their organization's evaluation.
Employee engagement – Employees who are satisfied with their jobs, enjoy their work and the organization, believe their job to be more important, take pride in the company and feel their contributions are impactful are five times less likely to quit than employees who were not engaged.[22] Engaged employees give their companies crucial competitive advantages, including higher productivity and lower employee turnover.
Employee benefits - Benefits are a critical piece of the equation in retaining employees. Employees are looking for benefits that span more than the core basics. With a robust rewards and benefits package and an effective benefits communication plan, employee engagement and retention can improve. Nurturing your employees understanding of the total value of their benefits package and how to strategically use it will enhance their experience and total well-being.[23]
Outsourcing employee retention program
Turnover costs can have significant negative impact on a company's performance. Turnover cost can represent more than 12 percent of pre-tax income for the average company and nearly 40 percent for companies at the 75th percentile for turnover rate.[24] Organizations and managers understand the importance of implementing an effective retention program but aren't proactive in implementing one and often leave it for another day. That day hardly ever comes. Organizations that don't have the time or have limited resources can outsource employee retention programs to specialists. Companies can hire third party specialists to pinpoint the root causes of their workforce challenges. By identifying the root causes, customized action plans can be tailored to fit your organization's need to and create a retention program customized to your organization. Another benefit of outsourcing is that organizations can get quantifiable justifying the actions needed to improve their organization.
Related Research Articles
Staffing is the process of finding the right worker with appropriate qualifications or experience and recruiting them to fill a job position or role. Through this process, organizations acquire, deploy, and retain a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization's effectiveness. In management, staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly.
Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in choosing people for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases, public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies such as Executive search in the case of more senior roles, are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based recruitment is now widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Human resource management is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee-benefits design, employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward management, such as managing pay and employee benefits systems. HR also concerns itself with organizational change and industrial relations, or the balancing of organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.
An employee assistance program in the United States generally offers free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals, and follow-up services for employees. EAP counselors may also work in a consultative role with managers and supervisors to address employee and organizational challenges and needs. Many corporations, academic institution and/or government agencies are active in helping organizations prevent and cope with workplace violence, trauma, and other emergency response situations. There is a variety of support programs offered for employees. Even though EAPs are mainly aimed at work-related issues, there are a variety of programs that can assist with problems outside of the workplace. EAPs have grown in popularity over the years.
Workforce productivity is the amount of goods and services that a group of workers produce in a given amount of time. It is one of several types of productivity that economists measure. Workforce productivity, often referred to as labor productivity, is a measure for an organisation or company, a process, an industry, or a country.
Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization's reputation and interests. An engaged employee has a positive attitude towards the organization and its values. In contrast, a disengaged employee may range from someone doing the bare minimum at work, up to an employee who is actively damaging the company's work output and reputation.
Workplace wellness, also known as corporate wellbeing outside the United States, is a broad term used to describe activities, programs, and/or organizational policies designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace. This often involves health education, medical screenings, weight management programs, and onsite fitness programs or facilities. It can also include flex-time for exercise, providing onsite kitchen and eating areas, offering healthy food options in vending machines, holding "walk and talk" meetings, and offering financial and other incentives for participation.
In human resources, turnover refers to employees who leave an organization. The turnover rate is the percentage of the total workforce who leave over a certain period. Organizations and wider industries may measure their turnover rate during a fiscal or calendar year.
On-the-job training is an important topic of human resource management. It helps develop the career of the individual and the prosperous growth of the organization. On-the-job training is a form of training provided at the workplace. During the training, employees are familiarized with the working environment they will become part of. Employees also get a hands-on experience using machinery, equipment, tools, materials, etc. Part of on-the-job training is to face the challenges that occur during the performance of the job. An experienced employee or a manager are executing the role of the mentor who through written, or verbal instructions and demonstrations are passing on his/her knowledge and company-specific skills to the new employee. Executing the training on at the job location, rather than the classroom, creates a stress-free environment for the employees. On-the-job training is the most popular method of training not only in the United States but in most of the developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, etc. Its effectiveness is based on the use of existing workplace tools, machines, documents and equipment, and the knowledge of specialists who are working in this field. On-the-job training is easy to arrange and manage and it simplifies the process of adapting to the new workplace. On-the-job training is highly used for practical tasks. It is inexpensive, and it doesn't require special equipment that is normally used for a specific job. Upon satisfaction of completion of the training, the employer is expected to retain participants as regular employees.
Onboarding or organizational socialization is the American term for the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders. In standard English, this is referred to as "induction". In the United States, up to 25% of workers are organizational newcomers engaged in onboarding process.
Talent management (TM) is the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs. The field has been growing in significance and gaining interest among practitioners as well as in the scholarly debate over the past 10 years, particularly after McKinsey's 1997 research and the 2001 book on The War for Talent. Although much of the previous research focused on private companies and organizations, TM is now also found in public organizations
An exit interview is a survey conducted with an individual who is separating from an organization or relationship. Most commonly, this occurs between an employee and an organization, a student and an educational institution, or a member and an association. An organization can use the information gained from an exit interview to assess what should be improved, changed, or remain intact. More so, an organization can use the results from exit interviews to reduce employee, student, or member turnover and increase productivity and engagement, thus reducing the high costs associated with turnover. Some examples of the value of conducting exit interviews include shortening the recruiting and hiring process, reducing absenteeism, improving innovation, sustaining performance, and reducing possible litigation if issues mentioned in the exit interview are addressed.
The employee value proposition (EVP) is a part of employer branding, in that it is one of the ways companies attract the skills and employees they desire and keep them engaged. It is how they market their company to prospective talent, and also how they retain them in a competitive job market. It is meant to communicate the values and culture of the organization, as well as take the focus off remuneration as the sole reason for working there. The benefits, when done correctly, are a more committed, happier, and productive workforce at a cheaper cost, which are the main goals of any employee-centered strategy. It may also have the side benefit of improving the company's perception in the eyes of consumers.
The war for talent is a term coined by Steven Hankin of McKinsey & Company in 1997, and a book by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, Harvard Business Press, 2001 ISBN 978-1-57851-459-5. The war for talent refers to an increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining talented employees. In the book, Michaels, et al., describe not a set of superior Human Resources processes, but a mindset that emphasizes the importance of talent to the success of organizations.
Employer brand is branding and marketing the entirety of the employment experience. It describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition, as opposed to the more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers. The term was first used in the early 1990s, and has since become widely adopted by the global management community. Minchington describes employer brand as "the image of your organization as a 'great place to work' in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market. The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer brand."
Competency-based recruitment is a process of recruitment based on the ability of candidates to produce anecdotes about their professional experience which can be used as evidence that the candidate has a given competency. Candidates demonstrate competencies on the application form, and then in the interview, which in this case is known as a competency-based interview.
Human Resource (HR) metrics are measurements used to determine the value and effectiveness of HR initiatives, typically including such areas as turnover, training, return on human capital, costs of labor, and expenses per employee.
Compensation and benefits (C&B) is a sub-discipline of human resources, focused on employee compensation and benefits policy-making. While compensation and benefits are tangible, there are intangible rewards such as recognition, work-life and development. Combined, these are referred to as total rewards. The term "compensation and benefits" refers to the discipline as well as the rewards themselves.
Employee morale or workspace morale is the morale of employees in workspace environment. It is proven to have a direct effect on productivity.
A human resources management system (HRMS) or Human Resources Information System (HRIS) or Human Capital Management (HCM) is a form of Human Resources (HR) software that combines a number of systems and processes to ensure the easy management of human resources, business processes and data. Human resources software is used by businesses to combine a number of necessary HR functions, such as storing employee data, managing payroll, recruitment, benefits administration, time and attendance, employee performance management, and tracking competency and training records.
↑ Cascio, W.F. 2006. Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (7th ed.). Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Mitchell, T.R., Holtom, B.C., & Lee, T.W. 2001. How to keep your best employees:
↑ Breaugh, James A., and Mary Starke. "Research on Employee Recruitment: So Many Studies, So Many Remaining Questions." Journal of Management (2000): 305-434. Web. 12 Mar. 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
