Employee Retention For a Technical Workforce

摘要

"Retaining key employees is corporate America's number one problem," writes Beverly Kaye, a leading authority on management and employee relations issues. Jack Deal, another consultant, says, "Employees are becoming the competitive advantage for business in the modern world. Bad employees can cause a business to fail; mediocre employees can cause a business to break even. Good employees can make even a so-so business soar." The St.Louis Business Journal states, "As organizations face a shrinking skilled labor pool and increased competition for talent, the ability to retain high performing employees will be the key to survival." These emphatic statements would certainly seem to make the case for all organizations to immediately begin to look at their existing employee retention policies and to create a world class retention strategy if they do not already have one. However, do we actually know if retention is as big an issue as one would be led to believe by these statements? This paper will look at several issues dealing with retention. First, why bother? Can't we just replace people as they leave? Second, is it just an issue that HR and management literature can use to fill magazines or is there research that documents that this a problem that the business world must address? Third, if we do need to worry about retention, what do we know about why people leave? Fourth, and finally, are there solutions to a retention problem?