Effectiveness of Various Strategies on New Employees’ Retention

Summary Abstract

Employees are a valuable asset for any organization because there is a lot that is invested in acquiring and retaining them. As such, most organizations would like to retain their employees for longer to avoid the costs that may arise from the need to hire, recruit and train. In order to reach this goal employers employ various employee retention strategies. This is mainly because different employees have different needs and they are motivated differently. Therefore, the challenging secret is the acquisition of the right combination of strategies to enhance retention. Therefore, this proposal is about assessment of needs and the ability to determine which combination of motivational strategies are befitting in enhancing the highest retention.

Introduction

Employees are a valuable asset for any organization and there are a lot of investments in terms of time and money, which are made in order to ensure that any organization acquires and retains an appropriate working force. The acquisition of the proper working force through hiring may be quite simple, but the retention of such employees is quite a challenging because the job marketplace is dynamic and ever transforming (Opportunity Knocks, 2012). As a result, it is often easy for employees to leave and join organizations that offer better remuneration, benefits and greater job satisfaction (NetMBA, 2012). This has been the reason behind the high rates of turnover in most workplaces. Therefore, in the current dynamic and competitive environment it becomes necessary for employers to seek strategies that can help them retain their employees and curb the high rates of turnover. The search is not only about seeking for strategies, but rather the search for highly appropriate and effective strategies that can help prevent high rates of turnover among new employees and the high associated costs of having to recruit and train new employees.

Statement of the Problem

The job market is currently dynamic and very competitive. This fact coupled by the great expectations that the current generation of workers have has led to higher rates of turnover in most workplaces. A large number of leaving employees are usually new employees, and this perhaps results from the fact that their expectations have not been fulfilled (Off-shoring Times, 2012). Perhaps the only factor limiting the high turnover has been the rising of unemployment, but as the economy picks up after the slump from the economic bubble in the 2008 period, higher rates of turnover may once again become a nightmare for most human resource departments. High rates of employee turnover are costly to most organizations because they increase expenses of hiring and training new employees. Additionally, high turnover rates lead to interruptions in the workplace, which directly or indirectly hamper good performance (Opportunity Knocks, 2012). As such, there is a need for employers to know the right combination of strategies to reduce high employee turnover among new workers so as to avoid overheads related to high rates of turnover.

Background and Literature Review

According to Arunachalam, Geetha and Kavitha (2011), there are six common strategies applicable in enhancing employee retention and these include job satisfaction, pay, recruitment, training, benefits and communication. The bid to enhance retention starts from the recruitment stage and progresses thereafter into the improvement of job satisfaction. As such, it is a continuous process that never ceases. According to Maslow’s hierarchy the needs of employees differ depending on where they may be exactly on the hierarchy. According to Maslow there can be no one-size-fit-all provision of favorable employee needs so as to retain them within an organization (NetMBA, 2012). As such, it becomes necessary to customize the provision of pay, benefits and so much more in order to maintain and retain different types of employees according to their individual needs. The common assumption is that pay is the most important element in employee retention. However, this is not the case because (Yazinski, 2009), states that 88% percent of employees leave their jobs because of reasons that may not be related to remuneration. As such, this implies that the retention challenge is much more than pay and it requires the inclusion of many other variables so as to ensure that employees are retained for longer within an organization. According to off-shoring times the mix on employee retention is quite complex and the human resource has to ensure that there is a comprehensive satisfaction of employees and the creation of a happy working place. In essence literature shows that retention is determined by a multiple of factors and differences results from the fact that the needs of employees are quite different. Therefore, the hierarchy by Maslow shows that understanding the right mix of incentives or variables to control one can allow one to achieve greater retention by providing a mix of conditions that most employees will appreciate.

Research hypotheses

The retention of employees is influenced by multiple factors and the outcome of the process starts from the recruitment step.

The fact that employees are different depending on their position on the hierarchy of needs implies that their satisfaction formula or needs are different and their satisfaction too requires different approaches. As such, employees should seek the right mix of provisions for each employee so as to ensure they can retain and satisfy them.

Definition of research variables

The major variables in this research include retention, which is the ability to hold an employee within an organization for a specific length of time within an organization without resignation. The ability of organizations to retain employees shall be accessed based on how long new employees have been staying put before willingly leaving. The second category of variables to be considered shall include the strategic methods used in enhancing retention. Basically, the research process shall entail the process of determining which combination of retention approach variables best serves the purpose of retaining employees for longer. The determination of effectiveness shall be based on how long a specific combination of approaches was able to retain a certain group of employees.

Research design and strategy

The research design and process shall adopt a qualitative approach that shall incorporate the gathering of statistical information on the basic variables and related opinions. A number of business organizations will be sampled for the study. In the actual study information will be gathered through the administration of questionnaires. The questions will target the revelation of information on the methods used within the organization in enhancing retention. The human resource shall be prompted to offer statistical data on how long they have been able to retain new employees. The rate of conducting recruitment shall also be accessed to determine how often the organizations have to replace their employees. The information gathered on retention methods and strategies shall be compared to the actual statistics on retention levels attained with new employees. It is expected that the organizations with the best strategies will have higher levels of retention, and thus showing the best combination of strategies in retention enhancement (Hon & Monsen, 2007).

Sampling technique

Simple random sampling shall be used in the selection of organizations that shall be assessed. This mode of sampling will ensure that all samples having the same size will have an equal chance for being selected out of the population. The organizations undergo a random selection which occurs entirely by chance and all chosen organizations will have the same probability of being chosen (Castillo, 2009).

Data collection procedures

The data collection process will entail seeking for permission to access the human resource (HR) department from the top management. Thereafter, the HR department shall be reached to schedule for an appropriate time in which the questionnaires will be administered. The questionnaires will be distributed to the appropriate HR representatives who will then fill them and give them back to the researcher. Direct visits and distribution of the questionnaires will be effective in eliciting response, more than would be the case if they were mailed because respondents may fail to fill them and send them back.

Data analysis and statistical tests

The chi-square test shall be used to assess whether there is some significance in the difference between two categorical variables (UCLA, 2012). In this case the test shall be used to determine if there is a relation between higher retention and some specific retention strategies so as to determine the most significant strategies that can be employed in retention.

Conclusions

Employees are a valuable asset that should be retained and developed at all costs because they add to the value of an organization. The retention of employees requires strategy and the right strategy is the secret to retention. Different employees have different needs and as such the structure if remuneration, benefits, job satisfaction needs and all else differs according to each employee. The amorphous relation that develops makes it hard to precisely determine which combination of retention strategies makes it possible to attain the highest retention possible. As such, the bid o enhance retention requires employers to seek and find the right combination of retention strategies that are highly likely to work by determining which strategies achieve the highest retention.

Recommendations and future work

Retention is an important thing for the workplace and all employers would like to know how to retain employees at their workplace so as to prevent workplace losses that result from frequent recruitment, training and hiring, which is costly. Much of current research focuses on seeking to determine which methods of retention are effective. The option of seeking to find which elements because the attraction, which takes away employees, is least focused on. There should be as much focus on what causes employee attraction to other organizations just as much as there is focus on that which causes higher retention. The two sides of the equation are related and perhaps knowing about one will better explain the other. Therefore, future research studies should adopt that approach.

References

Aruchanalam, V. Geetha, S. R. & Kavitha, S. R. (2011).An Empirical Study on Employee Retention Strategies in a Biscuit Manufacturing Company in India. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 3 (4), p. 762-772

Castillo, J. J. (2009). Sampling error in Research. Retrieved on May 7th 2012 from http://www.experiment-resources.com/sampling-error.html

Hon, V. L. and Monsen, R. E. (2007). Research Successful approaches, 3rdedition, New York: American Dietetic Association.

NetMBA (2012). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, retrieved on May 6th 2012 fromhttp://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/

Off-shoring Times (2012). Effective employee retention strategies, key to reduce attrition in BPO firms. Retrieved on May 6th 2012 from http://www.offshoringtimes.com/Pages/2006/Article_1261.html

Opportunity Knocks (2012). Tips to Retain New Hires — and Realize Significant Savings. Retrieved on May 6th 2012 from http://content.opportunityknocks.org/2010/08/06/tips-to-retain-new-hires-and-realize-significant-savings/

University of California (UCLA) (2012). What statistical analysis should I use? Statistical analyses using Stata. Retrieved on May 6th 2012 from http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/whatstat/whatstat.htm

Yazinski, K. S. (2009). Strategies for Retaining Employees and Minimizing Turnover. Retrieved on May 6th 2012 from

http://hr.blr.com/whitepapers/Staffing-Training/Employee-Turnover/Strategies-for-Retaining-Employees-and-Minimizing-/