A Case Study on Employee Retention Strategies

Vijayakumar A B and Dr. K.Nagendra Babu

AbstractEmployee retention is a critical aspect for every company regarding competitive advantage because human resource is themost critical asset of todays modern world. Other resources can be arranged effortlessly but to get efficient and retain talented human capital is the most difficulttask. Therefore, organizations are now more focused towards employee retention. Organizationsuse different HR techniques for retention. This research paper is emphasised on employeeretention as relating to the efforts by which employers attempt to retain employees in theirworkforce.Key Words: Human Resource Management, retention strategies, motivation, employee retention.______________________________________________________________________*****Research objectiveThe present study aimed to deepens our understanding and improve the shortage of literature by focus on to the main determinate of employee retention to existing in private sector. The main research objectives can be summaries as follows:To explore what types of benefits those are most important for the private sector workforce.To assess the most important organizational strategies that contributes to the retention of the private sector workforce.To investigate what issues related to organizational culture contribute to the retention of the private sector workforce.To explore the future plan of Private sector workforce that contributes to their retention.Employee retention strategies1. First know the cost. This is the most basic and initial part of the retention process. A good retention plan needs all the facts. The turnover cost includes cost of selection process, hiring, induction, training, lost productivity, etc.2. Hire the right people. Retention starts with recruitment itself. Identify the characteristics of the people you want to hire who fit in organizations culture. To retain employees, the people who are productive and are likely to stay for a longer time should be hired.3. Focus on employee orientation. It is the first impression that the employee takes home with him. A proper welcome form the management will encourage the employee to stay with the organization.4. Individual development.Develop career plans for employees. Initiate mentorship and higher education programs to keep the learning and development moving.5. Training for managers.An important factor that keeps the employee in the organization is the manager. Employees need a manager who manages them well. A manager should be a good listener and motivator. Proper training should be given to the managers.6. Find the reason why employees are leaving. Conduct exit interviews with the employees after3-4months of leaving the job. This is because most of the employees would not like to reveal the true reason of quitting the job as long as they are in the organization and are associated with the job. The exit interviews can be conducted online. Then the employees can talkstraight-from-the-shoulder.7. Employee recognition.Star of the month, top performer, picture on bulletin boards, appreciation cards and certificates, etc, increase employee morale and confidence. This is a great way to retain employees of a call centre.Review of LiteratureRetention defined as an obligation to continue to do business or exchange with a particular company on an ongoing basis (Zineldin, 2000, p. 28). A more detailed and recent definition for the concept of retention is customer liking, identification, commitment, trust, readiness to recommend, and repurchase intentions, with the first four beingemotional-cognitiveretention constructs, and the last two being behavioural intentions.A more detailed and recent definition for the concept of retention is customer liking, identification, commitment, trust, readiness to recommend, and repurchase intentions, with the first four beingemotional-cognitiveretention constructs, and the last two being behavioural intentions (Stauss et al., 2001).Literature of employees retaining again show that attracting existed employees Costs less than acquiring new talents as organizations know their employees and what they want, and the initial cost of attracting the new employees has already been expended (Davidow and Uttal, 1989).The literature of employee retention clearly explain that satisfied employees who are happy with their jobs are more devotion to doing a good job and vigorous to improve their organizational customers satisfaction (Hammer2000; Marini 2000;Denton 2000).Other studies indicated that effective communications improve employee Identification with their agency and build openness and trust culture. Increasingly, Organizations provide information on values, mission, and strategies, competitive, Performance, and changes that may affect employees enthuse (Gopinath and 2000; Levine 1995).Studies indicated that employees stay when they have strong relationships with others with whom they work (Clarke 2001). this explain the efforts of organizations to encourage team building, project assignments involving Work with colleagues and opportunities for interaction both on and off the job(Johns et al 2001).Role of H.R. in Employee RetentionThe Human Resource team plays an important role in employee retention. Let us find out their role in the same:Whenever an employee resigns from his current assignments, it is the responsibility of the HR to intervene immediately to find out the reasons which prompted the employee to resign.It is the duty of the HR to sit with the employee and discuss the various issues face to face.The HR person must ensure that he is recruiting the right employee who actually fits into the role.The human resource department must conduct motivational activities at the workplace.The HR must launch various incentive schemes for the top performers to motivate them.Performance reviews are a must. The HR along with the respective team leaders must monitor their team members performance to ensure whether they are enjoying the work or not.Case study on Employee Retention1.Pay and Benefits:Compensation constitutes the largest part of the employee retention process. The employees always have high expectations regarding their compensation Packages. Compensation includes salary and wages, bonuses, benefits, prerequisites, stock options, bonuses, vacations, etc.Employee benefits4

typically refers to retirement plans, health life insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans,etc.Chart 1: Responses for pay and benefit2.Career growth:Career Growth can be defined as a way of success where at every regular interval we must have new challenges to face, new activity to do, responsibilities to handle and most importantly new process to learn.

Chart2: Responses for career growth3.Training and Development:According to the recent review by Harvard Business Review, there is a direct link between training investment of the companies and the market capitalization. Those companies with higher training investment had higher market capitalization. It clearly indicates that the companies which have successfully implemented training programs have been able to deliver customer goals with effective results.6

Chart3: Responses for training and development4.Work Environment:A healthy corporate culture of caring for the workers, community and environment will strengthen the social spiritual capital, leading to a positive work climate of empowered and supported workers.TCS has an open door policy in which any employee can approach the CEO or the top management with work related problems.Open-housesession and engagement programmes allow the employees at all levels meet and discuss various work issues. Employees can also take part inone-on-onesessions where they can interact privately with senior management.

Chart 4: Responses for work environment5.Job Satisfaction:Benefits and high profits are key essentials when it comes to having a high job satisfaction among the companys employees and a low turnover rate. Job satisfaction describes how content an individual is with his or her job. The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be Job satisfaction is in regard to one's feelings orstate-of-mindregarding the nature of their work. Job satisfaction can be influenced by a variety of factors, eg, the quality of one's relationship with their supervisor, the quality of the physical environment in which they work, degree of fulfillment in their work, etc.8

Chart 5: Responses for job satisfaction6. Factors affecting Retention in WiproRetention is a costly affair for any company. Wipro, with the highest rates of attrition, needs to work really hard on its retention management strategies. Wipro registered an attrition rate of 0.3% in the year2008-2009.When an employee leaves an organization, the organization not only looses out on the cost of training the employees but also the loss of intellect from the talent pool. Today, every organization is trying to increase its talent pool. The organizations strive on their intellectual capital and any loss on the same hits the company really hard. This is so because the projects undertaken by the company would require talent of special expertise and loosing that level of expertise would make it difficult for the company to complete the same projector even take up a new one.. The case with Wipro is no different. Wipro conducts campus recruitments in all major engineering colleges in India. The number of recruits per year is large. However, so is the level of attrition, the number of recruits barely balances the number of cases of attrition per year. These effects the companys cost and the budget for the year concerned. When asked about the reasons why people would generally leave Wipro, the answers were varied. However, most employees agreed on some common parameters. They feel they are not paid at par with industry standards. Some feel that the training does not develop their skills enough. The following graph represents the factors affecting retention in Wipro.

ConclusionsA huge fraction of the people have less experience only one to tw o years in Wiproand hence high level of importance should be given to employee retention All thefactors viz. Pay and Benefits, Career Growth, Training and De velopment, WorkEnvironment andJob Satisfaction are important for employee retention.The study of rank correlation between the two age groups show that there is asmall level of correlation which implies the needs of the two age groups aredifferent however, the small level of correlation implies the importance of careergrowth in both the sections of employees differs.For retaining a talent from an age group of 20 to 30 years, the H R manager mustconcentrate moreon career growth and charting out a good career plan When it

comes to an employee of an age group of 30 to 40 years, more emphasis must be paid on training and development as without training, this cadre of employees may not be on par with the current technology.Performance Based Pay should be given utmost importance. Employees are happier if they are paid according to their performance and this encourages them to perform better. Benefits are important for retention however with varied opinions.Career Aspirations of all employees have not been met uniformly. However, mentoring in Wipro is pretty successful as most employees feel its being done in the right direction.The data reveals that equal opportunity is not being given to all employees to attend the training programs of their choice. Therefore this aspect should be taken care.More than 60% feel they are being appreciated for their work, which shows the rewards and recognition programmes are strong.The opinions regarding the friendliness and approachability of managers seem varied. Almost 67% take pride in the work. However, employees do not know how their work reflects in the growth of the organization.SuggestionsThe younger group of employees should be well appreciated to increase their morale to enable them to work better.The experienced group of employees should be exposed to the current case technology to enable them to move forward and not be redundant in the industry.The HR managers should check on the career paths drawn for all employees.To retain the good talent who are new to the industry, they must be given a pay package according to industry standards.Employees should be rated correctly according to their performance and paid accordingly.The career aspirations of all employees should be carefully understood by the HR managers and career paths should be designed accordingly. Training provided should be at par with industry standards. All employees should be provided the training of their choice, and no favoritism should be shown amongst the employees.The managers should be friendly and approachable so as to realize the first signs of attrition. If attrition is stopped at the preliminary stage then steps can be taken to curb the same.Employees should be encouraged to take pride in the work they do.Employees should be informed about the relevance of their work in the organizational development.BibliographyBranch, Shelly (1998, November). The new economy: You hire em. But can you keepem?Fortune,247.Carney, Karen (1998, November). How businesses can reduce high employee turnover.Inc,47.Denton, D. Keith (1992).Recruitment, retention, and employee relations.West Westport,CT: Quorum.Lynn, Jacquelyn (1997). Hard to hold: Conquer the tight labor market by retaining valuable workers.Entrepreneur,34.Marx, Mary (1995, December). Keeping your best employees.Journal of Property Management,26-29.www.Wipro.inwww.Citehr.comwww.Talkstats.com