Employee Retention - Annotated Bibliography Example

18th May Employee Retention Employee retention entails the efforts put by firms’ managements to ensure that the rate ofstaff turnover remains at minimal. That is, the phrase denotes a series of strategies and tactics that help to keep staff in the organization long enough to see them fully utilize their learn skills and accumulated experience at the particular station. Failure to effect productive staff retention strategies not only affects interpersonal relations in the firm but also leads to increased costs of training, rehiring, law suits, and send-off packages among other opportunistic costs. Several employers and academicians have come up with varying recommendations on how to best treat employees so their skills can be of more use to the firm and to help reduce costs associated with heavy staff turnover. More specifically, certain factors have been attributed to heavy staff turnover rates. For instance, disrespect for employees, low motivation, poor pay, poor personal growth schemes (where well performing members are held in the same position for too long), among other negative factors of management. Conerly, Bill. Quits Are Up: 7 Employee Retention Strategies Your Company Must Have. (Nov. 2013). Forbes. Web. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/12/11/quits-are-up-7-employee-retention-strategies-your-company-must-have/. Conerly began by introducing the general outlook of employee retention. He noted that loopholes in management that could have given way to staffs’ decisions to quit employment were relatively difficult to detect for the period leading to 2013, indirectly referring to the effects of the 2008 economic downturn that made new jobs extensively hard to get. The lack of adequate opportunities at securing other jobs across firms and government institutions had helped reduce the rate of staff turnover, wrongly creating the impression that managers were doing exceptionally well in retaining their staffs, while the real motivator was actually fear of missing out on alternative employment if they quit their present jobs. The author then goes ahead to state and explain seven important staff retention strategies. The first approach explained by the writer is enacting a system that helps the management to assess the staff retention rates at different times (self-revaluation). The next available strategy is training of supervisors as a way to reduce conflicts between them and those they supervise. Hiring the right employees, based on qualifications, job trends and other assessments is touted as another important factor in the attempt to retain staffs for longer. The next strategy is ensuring that the firm has in place a system that recognizes employees’ efforts by offering them the opportunities to earn higher, get more recognition for their efforts and promote them to higher positions. Next, accommodating the non-work needs of employees is encouraged to help create better understanding and reinforce a sense of empathy to their other needs. Identifying factors that could be possible reasons for disagreements and demotivation is explained as another important approach in ensuring staffs remain in their present stations for longer. Finally, the article hints at revaluation of benefits packages (without necessarily increasing them) as a way to ensure they remain in line with trends and expectations, and that they are realistic of the conditions of the job. Published in a non-academic journal, the article is written on a sensitive human resource management topic by a non-HR writer (as he indicated in par. 4). Being a business writer, the article therefore lacks deep HR insights. However, the article retains substantial authority over the subject, adopting an exploratory approach as opposed to an analytic one, thereby remaining focused on the topic. It also increased credibility of the argument by highlighting important statistics, and the level of writing is kept significant simple in view of being understandable to unsophisticated audience. The Forbes Magazine is a trusted publication in all matters, leadership, management, and business. The article targets companies by analyzing employee retention strategies that every company should employ to avoid employee turnover. The article relates to my topic because it presents approaches that a company needs to adapt to retain employees. Florentine, Sharon. How to Improve Employee Retention. (Jan. 2015). C.I.O. Web. http://www.cio.com/article/2868419/careers-staffing/how-to-improve-employee-retention.html. The author provided a basis for managers’ need to reevaluate their employee retention capabilities by highlighting the need to tap top talent and retain it as a fundamental way to ensure growth of the firm. Moreover, the writer provided information showing how costly it is to lose an employee, citing Deloitte’s estimates of 1.5 to 2 times an employee’s salary. Methods of promoting employee retention were explained in sequence. Proper recruitment is touted to be the first step towards retaining staff members. Acquainting oneself with individual employees’ trend through their work history is shown to provide insight into whether they could possibly remain for long if hired to an existing position. Recognition of employees, including offering a path to promotion and better pay is explained as another way to increase employees’ retention rates. Retraining of staffs to provide them with the most recent skills and job requirements helps them feel in the right place, thereby advancing their chances of staying longer in the job. Equally important is offering the right incentives and benefits to employees, including identifying which other benefits could be needed for a particular job specification, besides such ordinary benefits as healthcare coverage. Promotion of transparency and shedding light on operations and why certain decisions are made rather than forcing employees to blindly enforce new work ethics ensures harmony and promotes a sense of ownership of the greater aims of the firm. Finally, getting employee feedback is explained as a way to identify possible weaknesses and strengthen relations between various departments. The writer is alive to the fact that it is not always possible to prevent exit of staffs, some of who quit to pursue other interests or to simply change careers. This way, she intended to exonerate management from the entire blame of being the only cause of staff turnover. The article was meant for a fairly simple audience, and is therefore simplistic in its approach. This has helped the author to capture the imaginations of readers (many of who are thankful in a separate comments’ section). Intended for the IT sector, the article takes a general outlook bearing in mind that the topic is of general applicability across disciplines. The objective as outlined in the topic header was achieved with ease, with little introduction to the topic and existing job dynamics, and later linking it with the other headlines. The CIO.com is a respected website that has been offering career and management advice since 1994. Florentine highlights several aspects of employee retention starting from recruitment to superannuation. The article targets managers and employers. The article relates to my topic by highlighting ways to motivate and retain valuable employees. The Wall Street Journal. How to Reduce Employee Turnover. (May 2015). Dow Jones and Company, Inc. Web. http://guides.wsj.com/management/recruiting-hiring-and-firing/how-to-reduce-employee-turnover/. The article adds insight into why employee retention is such a valuable topic for managers, citing the high costs of replacement and training of replacement workers and low morale among remaining staffs as two worthy reasons why the issue should be critically incorporated in management’s agenda. Employing the right people for a particular job, setting right compensation and benefits, including pay review on at least an annual basis, ensuring flexibility to accommodate employees’ non-job needs, outlining challenges and clearing career paths, bolstering engagement with employees, and reviewing the workplace environment such as congratulatory and recognition paths are highlighted and explained briefly as the most important factors for managers to raise their firms’ employee retention rates. The author is affiliated to the Dow Jones and Company Inc., a well-respected business and management organization. The WSJ offers systematic guidelines on how to reduce employee turnover. The article targets managers and organizations. The article relates to the research topic by highlighting ways to retain employees. Focusing mainly on financial matters, the WSJ is positioned as a possible place to find such important information that enlightens on how to reduce costs by retaining employees. Works Cited Conerly, Bill. Quits Are Up: 7 Employee Retention Strategies Your Company Must Have. (Nov. 2013). Forbes. Web. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/12/11/quits-are-up-7-employee-retention-strategies-your-company-must-have/. Florentine, Sharon. How to Improve Employee Retention. (Jan. 2015). C.I.O. Web. http://www.cio.com/article/2868419/careers-staffing/how-to-improve-employee-retention.html. The Wall Street Journal. How to Reduce Employee Turnover. (May 2015). Dow Jones and Company, Inc. Web. http://guides.wsj.com/management/recruiting-hiring-and-firing/how-to-reduce-employee-turnover/. Read More