1.Employee Retention and Importance

 Employee Retention

The biggest challenge that organizations are facing nowadays is retaining and securing the skilled employees since they play an important role in any organization, because employees’ knowledge and skills are essential for companies to gain competitive advantage.According to Silva et al. (2019) Employee retention is one of the major problems that every company faces in this competitive environment. The big business challenge is to align your goals with the growing demand for a balanced organizational climate that meets basic human needs and where work is synonymous with personal fulfillment. Shoaib et al. (2009) emphasized the Retention as “the ability to hold onto those employees you want to keep, for longer than your competitors”. Furthermore, studies have also indicated that retention is driven by several key factors, which ought to be managed congruently: organizational culture, communication, strategy, pay and benefits, flexible work schedule and career development systems (Chandranshu & Ruchi, 2012).Mathimaran and Kumar (2017) mentioned that, effective employee retention is a systematic effort by employers to create and foster an environment that encourages current employees to remain employed by having policies and practices in place that address their diverse needs. A strong retention strategy becomes a powerful recruitment tool. Retention of key employees is critical to the long-term health and success of any organization. It is a known fact that retaining your best employees ensures customer satisfaction, increased product sales, satisfied colleagues and reporting staff, effective succession planning and deeply imbedded organizational knowledge and learning. Employee retention matters as organizational issues such as training time and investment;
lost knowledge; insecure employees and a costly candidate search are involved. Hence, failing to retain a key employee is a costly proposition for an organization.
 

Employee Turnover
 
Numbers of studies have found that managing turnover is a challenge for organizations, as different organizations using different approaches to retain employees. Retention is considered as all-around module of an organization’s human resource strategies. It commences with the recruiting of right people and continues with practicing programs to keep them engaged and committed to the organization (Shoaib et al., 2009).
18Turnover occurs when employees leave their jobs and it becomes necessary to replace them, which entails costs for organizations. The increased cost related to recruitment includes advertising and overlapping of salary; making it difficult to maintain positive employee culture and morale.
High employee turnover also leads to missed opportunities for meeting production matrices and budgets set within the departments, adding additional cost to the organization (Cloutier et al.,2015). Silva et al. (2019) states that, the impact of turnover is not limited to economic-financial performance; it also affects the social relations developed in the organization. From this perspective, further it says that turnover is a threat to the efficiency of transactional memory organizational systems. The loss of sharing internal opinions ends up implying a delay in  problem solving, that is, the departure of experienced employees and the entry of new employees affects the whole system of the organization. Studies have shown that employees typically follow four primary paths to turnover, each of which has different implications for an organization:
 
Employee dissatisfaction - Outbreaks this issue with traditional retention strategies such as monitoring workplace attitudes and addressing the drivers of turnover and handling the organizational culture.
 
Better alternatives - Retain employees by ensuring that the organization is competitive in terms of rewards, developmental opportunities and the quality of the work environment. Be prepared to deal with external offers for valued employees.19A planned change - Some employees may have a predetermined plan to quit (e.g., if their spouse
becomes pregnant, if they get a job advancement opportunity, if they are accepted into a degree program). However, increasing rewards tied to tenure or in response to employee needs may alter the plans of some employees.
 
A negative experience - Employees sometimes leave on impulse, without any plan for the future.
Generally, this is the result of a negative response to a specific action (e.g., being passed over for a promotion or experiencing difficulties with a supervisor). Analyze the types and frequencies of work-related issues that are driving employees to leave. Provide training to minimize prevalent negative interactions (e.g., harassment, bullying, or unfair and inconsistent treatment) and provide support mechanisms to deal with those problems (e.g., conflict resolution procedures, alternative work schedules or employee assistance programs).
 
Additional predictors of turnover that worth of careful attention includes Organizational commitment and job satisfaction,Quality of the employee-supervisor relationship, Role clarity,Job design, Workgroup cohesion (Managing for Employee Retention, 2020).
 

Importance of Employee Retention
Kamalaveni et al. (2019) mentioned that, Employee Retention helps in human resource planning in an organization. Human resource planning estimates the gap between the demand and supply of workforce required for the future based on the objectives of the organization. It also helps in succession planning whereas it aims to determine the competent strategic positions in an organization. It helps to have a talented and committed workforce that would reduce recruitment costs and training and development costs.