Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover

Today, most of the companies believed that in order to achieve and sustained effectively, human resource management (HRM) needs to be efficient. Effective HRM can be main factor for the success of an organization. In the new economy, it has become a trend of employees staying on for a short duration in any one organization, which results to many problems. Failure in managing human capital will create fatal problems to the company. Therefore, most of the organizations, both domestic companies and multinational corporations (MNCs) tend to focus more on HRM as a key of success.

Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover

1. Hiring the Right People

Hiring the right people from the start would also reduce employee turnover. Managers should have a clear idea of the types of people they want to hire for each position, write detailed job descriptions and commit to hiring the best candidates rather than the first candidates who meet minimum requirements. An organization is encouraged to use personality traits and leadership style theories to determine the personality type and leadership style posses by job applicants and future candidates before actually employing them. A computer-based application that integrates personality traits and leadership styles will be valuable to any organization seeking the right people with the right personality and the right competencies. With this, there are more chances for an employee to be satisfied with the job given, and reduce employee turnover.

2. Employee Retention

Most companies try to reduce costs by eliminating search, advertising and referral fees. They spend countless hours calculating cost per hire. With the current competitive marketplace, companies often utilize every source available to locate and hire top personnel. Companies should concentrate on retaining key employees, because real costs begin to add up when employees leave. Retaining your most seasoned and talented employees helps ensure your organization’s strength. It’s more important than ever to put strategies in place to avoid the overarching costs of employee turnover causes, and keep skilled, high-level producers motivated and invested.

Employees in an organization have always been key asset, as their departures could have a significant effect on the implementation of the organization’s business plans and may eventually cause a parallel decline in productivity. As such, employee retention was important to the long-term growth and success of the company. Retaining the best employees would ensure customer satisfaction and effective succession planning. It would also increase investor’s confidence, as they are concern with the organization’s capacity to perform in such ways that would positively influence the value of their investment in the company. Hence, it is undeniable that uncontrolled employee turnover could damaged the stability of the company and consequently the national economy.

Too often employee retention is viewed as a process or function of the human resources department. Somehow there is an expectation that the recruiting staff should not only identify and hire employees, but that they should also ensure their retention through some sort of strategy or program. The reality is that employee retention is everyone’s responsibility. Managers are able to reduce employee turnover because the most important factors driving employee satisfaction and commitment are largely within the direct view and control of the manager. These included providing recognition, regular feedback and ensuring fair reward accordingly to an employee’s contributions and value to the organization.

3. Creating a Positive Relationship between Employer and Employee

Good communication and feedback between management and employees is a means to reduce these problems. A positive relationship between communication and commitment was detected highlighting the importance for management to ensure that communication channels remain open to allow for better transmission of information. Employees may also have a desire to pursue with a higher education or to improve their performance, so that they can accomplish more tasks within the same period of time. By increasing their inputs, employees may get higher outputs such as better pay and benefits. By doing so, it may lead to a higher level of satisfaction. However, factors like the lack of financial resources may prevent the employee from the opportunity of taking additional courses to upgrade themselves. In addition, other factors like problems from outside of work may affect an employee’s job satisfaction. Therefore, employees may wish to discuss and express their concerns with their immediate superiors. Bringing the problems that employees have to the manager’s attention will indeed be benefiting for the employee as they can work together to make any special arrangements in mutual agreement. When employees interact with their superiors, the manager will be able to determine the employees’ level of job satisfaction and in turn determine the employees’ level of commitment.

To maximize human resource usage and reduce employee turnover, companies could focus on building relationship and support, as well as develop programs to handle stress management, decrease work dissatisfaction and enhance loyalty to the organization. It is proactive to deal with employee turnover at the thinking stage by enhancing commitment that has to do with building relationship and increasing participation as well as contribution to organizational goals. It is also vital to involve staff in the organizational process that not only empowers them but also increases their loyalty to and identification with the company.

There are also cases when the employees leave because of their fellow employees or his superiors. Clashes of personalities are common in the workplace. When an employee can no longer stand the tension in the workplace, he may opt to leave the organization. It does not matter if he finally got his dream job or receiving a generous paycheck. If he no longer has peace of mind, he will look for another job. The relationship between employee and employer or their direct supervisor is also crucial. Not only do organizations need a performance management system that recognizes and rewards supervisors for meeting objectives that reduce employee turnover, supervisors need to understand what steps they can take to meet their responsibility in employee retention and job satisfaction. The only way to truly understand employees is to ask them what they want and to find out what can be done to help them reach their goals. By asking, becoming involved, and being accountable, supervisors can go a long way in improving employee job satisfaction as well as retention.

4. Increasing Job Satisfaction

Those employee’s who feel that they are cared for by their organization and managers also have not only higher levels of commitment, but that they are more conscious about their responsibilities, have greater involvement in the organization, and are more innovative. Managers and organizations must reward and support their employees for the work that they do because this perceived support allows for more trust in the organization. All people have a desire to be needed and to feel valuable, including at their place of business. Consistent praise from a manager boosts an employee’s confidence and makes him happy about his place inside the organization. People perform at a much higher level when they feel happy and confident. When they don’t feel important, people become withdrawn and complacent and start looking for other places to work. Being an employer is somewhat like being a parent figure. One must continuously provide security and make your employees feel wanted and needed. In terms of assessment and promotion, the fairness in the decision making process is crucial for commitment. The organization should communicate clearly how decisions are made and why some people and not others did get promotions.

Satisfied employees tend to be more loyal to their organization. Generally, when people are satisfied with their jobs, they will have a positive attitude feeling about their jobs. In their minds, other jobs would not be better than the current one. Therefore, it is unlikely that they will change their jobs. Employees prefer to stay in their company and work hard for a return. If employees feel that the company treats them fairly or well, the workers will feel that they are responsible to keep working hard for their companies. Also, in order to maintain their current satisfied jobs, employees will perform well and work effectively, which is beneficial for the company. Therefore, in order to increase the employees’ level of commitment, the manager can try to increase their employees’ level of job satisfaction. For an organization to be successful, its managers must ensure that their employees have a high level of job satisfaction in order to mutually have a high level of organizational commitment. Managers may also apply job rotation so each employee will have an opportunity to perform different tasks using various skills and talents. By using this method, it may be able to further increase the interests the employees would have in their job. Moreover, managers should motivate employees to be more helpful, considerate, friendly and good-natured to their co-workers and supervisors, because this would increase the employees’ job satisfaction and may motivate the urge to help out other co-workers. Indeed, providing sufficient opportunity for promotion to employees would significantly increase job satisfaction because promotions reflect valued signals about a person’s self- worth.

5. Increasing Organizational Commitment

Organizations can increase employee commitment by providing them with fair and reasonable working practices in a rather cost-effective way. Research has found that the more committed the employee is to the organization, the greater the effort exerted by the employee in performing tasks. Highly committed employees wish to remain associated with the organization and advance organizational goals, and are therefore less likely to leave. Job performance has been reported to be higher for employees with strong affective commitment. The underlying assumption is that they will work harder at their jobs and perform them better than those with weaker commitment. On the personal level, there are benefits for strong affective commitment; for example, working in an environment in which one is positive about has implications for reduced stress levels. Alternatively, affective commitment could lead to negative consequences for life beyond the organization.

By obtaining affective commitment from employees may have positive effects for the organization, even though some of the magnitudes of the findings are not very high. To stay committed, employees should feel valued and recognized by management.

Motivation constitutes a central element when going through the process of human learning. If the organization does not possess the ability to motivate its employees, the knowledge within the organization is not practically used to a maximum. Therefore, it becomes the aim of every learning organization to find the factors that enable it to motivate its employees to continuous learning and to take advantage of this knowledge to ensure its living. It is unlikely that employees will be committed if they are not sufficiently motivated. Another key to employee satisfaction is implementing formal training programs that provide employees with clear paths for advancement. Employees are more likely to remain loyal to businesses committed to staff development and promoting from within. Induction training and socialization are carried out, which are vital in gaining employee commitment. It is essential to reinforce a sense of self-worth within newcomers, which can be achieved through a supportive environment.

In addition, employees may try to increase their intrinsic motivation, which is self-applied. If employees set goals for themselves, and these are achieved, the employees will be able to feel a sense of accomplishment. This may in turn lead to an increase in the level of satisfaction at their job and thus affect their level of organizational commitment.

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