My Views on Employee Retention
I would conduct exit interviews for each employee leaving and make a chart of reasons—better prospects, unhappy environment, clash with superiors, lack of growth, personal problems, etc. This will give you an idea of why people leave.
Analyze these inputs with your ideas and discuss them with other HODs. Exit interviews, if well conducted, can be a good source of information, even considering the exaggerations and biases of exiting employees. Attrition is a challenge for HR, though they may not be able to control it by their actions.
HR Considerations for Retention
- Is remuneration fair and equitable considering the industry and their own profitability state?
- What perks are offered? Are they in line with industry standards?
- How do your supervisors and managers deal with staff?
- Personal experience suggests people leave because of their immediate bosses more than the organization. Sometimes shifting an individual to another department retains the employee.
- After all, attrition has its own costs—training, cost of selection, etc.
- Are your roles and responsibilities well defined? Does every employee/supervisor know their place, role, and job?
- Is there a career ladder?
- When employees leave, we must try and find out who is responsible for the departure. What specific factor caused their departure? Which department has the highest exit rate?
- Conduct surveys and manager sensitization capsules.
- Walk around HR practices and meet employees on the shop floor informally. You will understand them better.
- Do not have an attitude of "So what if X leaves, there are many Y, Z, A, B, C, D waiting in line."
- The organization should not have a policy of "come easy, go easy" for employees. Specific attempts to retain and encourage employees should be made.
- Fresh employees should be a special subject of focus to make them comfortable and settled. You train them, guide them, and within 9-18 months, they leave, making the cycle start again.
By maintaining proper policies of accurate job descriptions, friendly coworkers, and access to senior officers, attachment to the organization should be developed in the minds of freshers. Post-induction surveys can be considered. After, say, one month, meet the new employees and obtain feedback.
HR can play a big role in controlling attrition by bringing out facts, figures, and quantified costs of attrition. After all, employees are the main resources and the source of profitability. The human factor makes a lot of difference.
Do you have practices like giving appreciation, get-togethers? Mentor them, coach them, and bring out the best.
Also, those employees who will not be a good fit should be given an exit route, as some said, "The only thing more expensive than a good developer is a bad developer."