Retention Strategy

Retention Strategy

What is a Retention Strategy?

Employee retention strategy refers to the policies and plans that companies use to reduce the turnover of employees and ensure that employees are committed and profitable in the long run. The main challenge for companies is to ensure that their retention policy is aligned with their business priorities to get the best return on investment.

Why employee retention is important?

Employee retention has ever been a tricky task for organizational concerns. This is never a novelty phenomenon; instead, it has been happening for ages till now and shall always remain a point of focus. Here a question arises that why is it so? The reply is very simple that every organization wishes, and must wish to, retain its potential employees who can never be replicas in other settings by the competent forces. Machines, systems, artificial intelligence, standard operational procedures, ethics, marketing strategies, management tools, good governance, etc. are all those which might be, one way or the other, duplicated. Still, human resources are the organizational capital in its actual essence which can be modeled but could never be tried to be exactly like when it comes to not only usual knowledge, skills, and abilities but exceptional human skills’ parameters, of those some are in-born; others grown-refined with the very life-experiences at both the levels that is personal as well as professional.

Another key concern for organizations to retain their competent workforce is the existing job experiences of the employees who not only know their job descriptions well and perform so, but at the same time, the time (in terms of months/years) serving the existing institution(s) is a vital area for the sake of organizational ethics, culture and design know-how, which could be a difficult or at least time taking activity for the newcomer(s), hence saving the time via capitalizing in existing workers is a better option rather investing on the new job entrants.

How retention strategy can be strengthened?

Organizational strategic levels are concerned with the mission, vision, future plans, growth, market share, serving the segments well, and profitability. At the middle management or senior middle management levels, senior managers are concerned with operationalizing the SOPs properly, tasks completion by the subordinates, targets achievement, goal completion, and importantly, retention for the smooth working of the routine organizational affairs. But on the contrary, they become, sometimes, hasty in doing so and might lose the competent workforce in a run to follow the competitor’s tactics followed by market share and profitability graphs shared by the management. And afterward, when the time is up, and the competent workforce personnel has switched, they repent.

What then should organizational managers do?

The response to this very question is, the managers concerned about retention should:

• Devise the policy for retention well in time with the help of co-managers at the horizontal communication level
• Get evaluated the retention policy by the senior management levels if the situation allows so
• More importantly,  the workforce itself by not directly asking so but by projective techniques (Projective technique is the tactical working on a certain phenomenon so that the answer giver should not know what is being asked and the question asking person get to know the answer. For example: if it is to be seen that how much employees get with anger management while something has gone wrong at the workplace?” The projective technique question might be like: “I can usually control my emotions well and let it not get mixed up with my work at the office/factory”).
• Introduce programs of social clubs memberships  
• Invite to a family gathering of office holders
• Monthly certificates or badges for recognition of performance
• Start a social forum on your company website and recognize employees’ good work on that
• Initiate giveaway of the yearly scholarship(s), which might be a minimal amount in terms of financials, to the studying children of the employees (might provide to the top three position holders or so).
• Offer travel discounts and leisure trips
• Offer paid days off
• Arrangements of annual picnics
• Facilitation in terms of a modern gym, swimming pool, rest area, babysitting; car wash, etc. at office premises, for after office or in between lunch hour time, and that way might charge some fees but that charges minimal as compared to the market and for the sake of maintenance only purpose(s).
• Any other as per the Organizational policies in vogue and which can not only be initiated but maintained and continued