Employee Retention Strategies

Employee retention and turnover are the most objective measures of employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction in businesses. As a result, many employers try to retain employees through basic strategies, such as increased pay and benefits. However, research shows that there are less expensive and more effective ways to retain employees.

William M. Mercer, Inc. (1998) discovered, when surveying 206 medium to large companies in 1998, that businesses with high turnover often lost employees because of dissatisfaction with compensation.

On the other hand, the research also revealed that, in companies with low turnover, the majority of employees cited emotional factors, including work satisfaction and good work relationships, as the main factors affecting their retention. The minority of employees in these companies said that financial factors, such as compensation and benefits, were the motivating factors for their retention.

This literature review looks at the factors affecting employee turnover and recent...
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