How to Retain Staff

HOW TO RETAIN HIGH-PERFORMANCE EMPLOYEES

Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans

Abstract: Keeping high-performing employees has become a top priority for today’s organizations. A two-year study by the authors reveals that managers, supervisors, and team leaders play the greatest role in employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Today’s employees want challenging and meaningful work, opportunities to learn and grow, the sense of being part of a group, and a good boss. This article describes the things that managers and supervisors can do to create these conditions and be “good bosses” in order to contribute to employee satisfaction and retention.

The 2003 Annual: Volume 2, Consulting/© 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

291

THE TIDE HAS TURNED

The tide has turned. No longer can employers tell employees, “Like it or leave it.” Unemployment is at a thirty-year low, and a shortage of labor is expected to last over the next decade. In today’s marketplace, attracting and retaining good employees is a top priority in both large and small organizations. In fact, it is the biggest concern of nearly one-half of today’s CEOs, according to a study by the executive recruiting firm Transearch. With the cost of replacing workers at 70 percent to 200 percent of their annual salaries—not including the effects on the organization of lost knowledge, declining morale and productivity, and customer dissatisfaction—it is no surprise that four out of five respondents rated employee retention as a serious or very serious issue in a survey conducted by the American Management Association (1997). Of course, today’s workers expect fair pay and competitive benefits. They also are interested in job location and job security. But these are not the factors that keep them at the job once they are recruited. Managers and human resource professionals who are familiar with the work of Abraham Maslow (1943, 1970) and Frederick Herzberg and his associates (1966) will not be surprised to hear that...