Employee Retention

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Employee Retention

The business environment nowadays is so competitive that companies should do their best to find appropriate employees and to create a good working team and environment, so that they can stay in business and make high profits. Managers spend a lot of time and money in finding and attracting responsible, innovative, knowledgeable, and motivated to work employees. Moreover, when the company succeeds in finding such a person, the issue of how to increase his satisfaction and performance occurs. Reduction of the employee turnover is a main goal for the companies’ senior management. In order to achieve this goal, managers use various tools. The most common of all is giving the employees praise and recognition after they do a job well.

Curt Coffman states “71 percent of U.S workers are “disengaged””, meaning that employees don’t care about the organizations they work for. The case described in the S. Robbins and T. Judge “Organizational Behavior” book (Chapter 7 - Motivation) explores that feeling lack of appreciation results in a decrease in the of employees’ performance.

The case explores the complicated issue of how to show recognition and how to award employees for their good performance. Companies fail when they have to say “Thanks” to their employees in moments when they deserve it. Research among various organizations has shown that, actually, payment bonuses are not enough to increase workers’ satisfaction. Presents given insincerely and in an inappropriate way would not please employees, and such recognition has no value to them. Eric Lange, working for a trucking company, gives an example of the presents given to his company’s vice-presidents. He says that even though they received expensive gifts – luxurious Cadillac Seville automobile, and a new Rolex wristwatch, they were not distributed in a proper way. These presents not only didn’t please them, but also made them feel even more undervalued, which lead to a decrease in their performance.

Performance is believed to be a function of three factors: ability, motivation and opportunity to perform. Managers should not only make sure that rewards are based on performance, but also that employees receive feedback and are given interesting and challenging tasks. The last step for managers is to provide an opportunity to perform –a suitable working environment, free of obstacles that constrain the employees. In case managers go through all three steps, it is very likely that employees’ performance will significantly increase, according to the formula.

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