The Causes of Poor Employee Retention

Employee retention is the key to long-term success in any organization. Managers who recognize this fact always strive to keep the best talent with the company. They know that recruitment and placement reduces their company profits and they therefore look for the best retention strategies with a view to increase the tenure of the employees with the organization.

This ability to convince the employees that attrition is not always necessary is not an easy option. Many organizations however incur recruitment costs very often because they do not have people management skills. Once they employ, they do not work hard to ensure that they retain the so much sought talent they have acquired.

Employees leave the organization for various reasons. Some of these reasons include medical reasons, retirement or company closure. These factors cause voluntary attrition. Other reasons that make retention a problem is a lack of recognition for employees, poor job fit, financial incentives, lack of promotion, lack of motivation and stagnation. Employees want to grow and advance in your organization and when you deny them the opportunity to climb the career ladder, they opt out.

When employees realize that the organization does not recognize their efforts, they may become demoralized and decide to look for jobs in other organizations. Besides a good pay, employees feel content with an employer when he/she recognizes their contribution towards the achievement of the corporate goals. Poor job fit causes employees to leave the organization because the employees may not completely 'fit' with the organization's culture and therefore the employee will always feel unwanted and that their output not really needed.

There could also be a case of poor match between the person and the job that they are doing. For example, to be a public relations officer, one must have mastery of communication, be pleasant and courteous. A person who lacks these basic qualities will not perform a public relations job competently and might therefore decide to leave.

Poor work relations with other colleagues might also cause employees to leave an organization. This might result to isolation of the affected employee and he/she might consider leaving for another organization.

As an employer, it is advisable to consider the above factors when working out a retention strategy. This is because you do not want to have frequent recruitment and selection processes as these are costly to the organization.

However, it is good to note employee attrition is not always bad. It enables the organization to have new ways of work since new employees bring in new ideas that help the organization to adopt to the ever-changing work environment.

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