Retention

INCREASING THE ORGANISATION'S LEVEL OF PROFESSIONALISM. Employees leave companies where intra-organisational interactions are unstructured, and decisions, ad-hoc and driven more by personal prejudice rather than professional consideration. By adopting systems that introduce an element of objectivity into its internal operations, a company can create a better workplace. MOVING FROM FAMILY TO PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT. In most family-managed organisations, professional managers leave because they cannot see themselves holding key positions, or functioning with the level of independence that their designations merit. By inducting professionals into senior management positions, a company can lower its attrition-rate. MAKING PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS OBJECTIVE. Employees like to know how, when, and by whom their performance is going to be measured. An appraisal process that lists objective and measurable criteria for performance appraisal removes the uncertainty in the minds of employees that their superiors can rate their performance any which way they please. INVOLVING EMPLOYEES IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS. People like to work in organisations where their opinions count. The higher an employee's involvement in decision-making, the higher the organisation's retention-level. A participative decision-making process is good; total empowerment, better. ENSURING A MATCH BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. Most companies fall into the trap of holding an employee accountable for a specific activity without empowering her with the authority to perform it well. Often, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that they vest another employee with the same authority, but do not hold him accountable! MEASURING EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION. Obsessed with catering to the demands of their external customers, companies ignore their internal customers. Periodic employee satisfaction surveys can highlight the potential flashpoints, and enable the company to take corrective action. ACHIEVING A MATCH BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANISATIONAL GOALS. Many companies fall into the trap of expecting their employees to subsume their individual objectives before the organisational one. Which forces employees to leave. The best companies achieve a balance between the two. DESIGNING A COMPETITIVE COMPENSATION PACKAGE. Money isn't a motivator, but it is an effective de-motivator. While organisations that pay bestin-industry salaries may find themselves unable to use that fact to motivate their employees, those that do not could find their best employees leaving. INCREASING ORGANISATIONAL TRANSPARENCY. People do not like to work in black-box like organisations, where information is rationed out on a need-to-know basis. They prefer a transparent organisation that is willing to share every aspect of its functioning with its employees.

PROMOTING EMPLOYEES FROM WITHIN. A company that constantly fills vacancies by hiring from outside is certain to face retention problems. Employees who realise that they are unlikely to be promoted to fill the vacancies will leave the organisation. Growing your own is a sound retention strategy. HELPING EMPLOYEES ACQUIRE NEW SKILLS. As the job-profiles and desired skills-sets for a particular job change, companies may feel the need to hire employees with new skills, or retrain their existing employees. Companies that choose to do the latter will find it easier to retain their people since the training signals that the organisation values their contribution, and is willing to invest in upgrading their skills. OFFERING STOCK OPTIONS. ESOPs are a sign that the organisation recognises the role of the individual in its performance, and is willing to share the benefits with her. FOCUSING ON WELFARE MEASURES. Employees are not just warm bodies; they are individuals with families and lives of their own outside the workplace. Organisations that recognise this, and help employees achieve a better balance between life and work are likely to face fewer problems than those that do not. Across industry-types, increasing the organisation's level of professionalism, instituting an objective performance appraisal system, and ensuring a match between responsibility and authority are the 3 most-used techniques to improve retention. In addition, infotech companies focus their efforts on 3 more techniques: increasing employee satisfaction, designing competitive compensation-packages, and involving employees in decision-making. Hi-tech companies differ from other industries in one other aspect. Most manufacturing, marketing, and services companies are not able to achieve the desired level of performance along any of the retention techniques they adopted, but infotech and telecom companies exceed the desired level. High potential attrition-rates, and the growing demand for trained infotech professionals is, evidently, a motivation enough for companies operating in this sector to focus on retention management. BEST PRACTICES. The best companies focus on professionalisation, appraisal, employee satisfaction, and participative decision-making. However, their higher-than-average retention levels can be attributed to the way in which they go about these initiatives rather than the choice of initiatives themselves. So, the best companies set themselves stretch targets on each dimension, and then, try and better them.