It goes without saying that the term Retention and Attrition are not one and the same.If we go by definition, both are in fact opposite phenomenon.
Retention
This is a phenomenon where employees are encourased to remain within the organisation for some long period of time.
Whether Retention Matters
Retention matters for the organisation in normal course as loosing high performers will leads to high replacement cost and it it also ultimately associated with with low levels of customer satisfaction, in a way customer loyalty other than just loosing revenues.
When people stay with their organisation
Though its not very easy to highlight or focus which particular factor is very important for a particular employee retention, still there are some generic facts that works in the same way for most of the employees irrespective of specific factors:
- If organization acts as a source of pride and affiliation,
- When they respect their supervisors,
- If they are fairly compensated and
- When they perceive their work as meaningful
Retention of employees are getting very challenging day by day due to the some of the facts i.e.
- Dynamic workforce who are ready for any eventualities
- Growing imbalance in the supply & demand of qualified personnel
- More focus on work life balance
Effective Employee Retention Strategies
Its very important for any organisation to understand the reason why an employee is ready to leave the organisation, so effective employee retention strategies are quite important here:
- Redeploy Opportunities
- Effective communication
- Place or tag Effective motivator & innovator i.e. link people or career advisor to the employees
- Respectful Treatment
- Need for trust, hope, worth
- Need to feel competent etc.
Its worth to remember that employee retention is not just an event for a particular time or day but it is a process that can take longer until an employee decides to leave an organisation.
Attrition
Attrition is basically the evolution of losing employees. Often in HR this term refers to the gradual loss of employees over time. There are two types of attrition.
- First: Case where employees leave an organisation due to reason those are not voluntary: For example Employees were not performing well and he/she has been put in for performance improvement plans and still he/she is not doing well, again if somebody do a policy violations etc.
- Second: Case where employees leave an organisation due to reason those are voluntary i.e. retirement, resignation, not traceable etc.
Organisations recruitment, retention policy and all other internal policy goverance plays a significant role in controlling attrition.
