Introduction
In any organization human resource has to be employed so as for the company to maximize the return on investment minimize the financial risk and increase the profits. Therefore to any company strategic staffing is of great importance since through effective investment in human capital will eventually lead to minimization of costs and increasing economies of scale. It is in every company’s will through the management to be endowed with experienced staff/ personnel and if possible to be able to keep the workers in their companies for long. Recently staff retention has been creating difficulties for many at the management level of a vast number of organizations (Griffin, p. 53 ).
It is of extreme importance for each organization to have an effective policy analysis as it regards strategic staffing and staff retention. The responsibility of human resource managers should be carried out in a manner that entails effectiveness, legality, fairness and consistency for a company to be secure as it concerns the issue of human capital. Strategic staffing in an organization will consequently determine staff retention capabilities and the return on investment in human capital. In this field strategic management is core to the realization of the goal of retaining employees at your company and avoiding the opposite. Management of a company should therefore be effective in implementing strategies, evaluating the performance and flexibility to conform to new circumstances, new competitors, new economic social, financial, political environment ( Teferra p. 18).
Staff retention is one of the most significant activities organizations should always upheld in that they bring about competitive advantage, they infact carry with them the experience and information that makes up your company’s lifeblood. Once these employees are gone then there is the loss of the company’s life and immediately one will have to incur additional costs. Retention of employees and strategic staffing is an activity which brings about comparative advantage to one company over the others in a competitive business environment. Therefore one should not analyze the activity as being costly since when the other company has to hire workers to replace those who have gone it will also incur costs such advertisements, announcements and more so the hiring fee (Taylor p.84).
Every organization needs to have a strategy in place that will help retain high performers with the company since this will give it a competitive edge. Although a moderate level of employee turnover can be good for a business, the cost of not retaining employees can be severe when a company experiences high employee turnover. Such a situation will be devastating for a given company operating in a highly competitive environment and subsequently can lead to lowering internal morale, harming it’s external reputation and completely losing business. This explains the reason as to why of late there have been concerns of people who are to retire because they are walking out of business organizations with critical business information.
There is an agreement that the talent, the human capital is an intellectual property and programs that support succession planning and transfer of knowledge are right being undertaken. It is evident that high staff turnover costs organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars but employee retention will imperatively bring about long-term success to any business. In an organization, there are a number of factors that can affect employee retention. There is the issue of work environment either negative or positive among many others. If the work environment is hostile for instance harassment and discrimination no staff will be motivated to put up with such hostilities hence staff retention will be difficult. However on the other hand if we have a positive work environment, staff retention will not be constrained and the company will be able to keep hold its pool of experienced workers..( Taylor p.84 ).
An organization can develop a core culture that best propels its success and upon which to assign a company’s staffing and retention. This type of setting is referred to as the alignment which has several benefits. First, alignment is strategic and by this it enables aligned companies to build focused, long-term staffing and retention practices that drive the core culture. Therefore staffing and retention are strong strategic partners that build success but for non-aligned companies they continually shift their focus and implementing tactical programs thereby at a risk of business failure. Alignment also makes the staffing and retention process simple because the decisions are created from the core culture and for the maintenance of culturally aligned workforce (Bevan, p. 43).
Another key component of maintaining superior employee retention rates is the creation of regular opportunities to allow employees to express their opinions and ideas freely without fear of intimidation. This perhaps entail the work environment issue whereby if there is no freedom of expression of opinions and ideas as in a case of dictatorship then staff retention will be difficult. People enjoy being free to express their opinions and ideas since it is their fundamental right and any one serious with business growth will be a good listener to his employees. Any organization that considers getting information feedback from workers as being costly worry on to it because it is on verge of collapse. Staff will not have any business to do with those who don’t care nor are not interested with the affairs affecting employees and will move in search of other places..(Bevan, p. 47).
Literature review
Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. (GCI) is an independent organization that does strategic consulting, fund raising and field organizing for causes and candidates. It is based in Boston and was founded in Dec 2003 by high level staff members of the Public Interest Research Group. By Oct.2004 it had employed 52,000 people to work on the behalf of Democratic National Committee in the run up to the 2004 presidential elections. Those employed people were supposed to canvass states to turn up additional voters since the organization was against policies supported by Republicans. After the elections they claimed credit for turning out thousands of additional voters.
In 2006 California, GCI was sued for overtime wage violations for allegedly working its staff 14 hours a day. The GCI was accused of overworking notably college students for long hours all week long gathering petition signatures and donations for Democratic candidates. The organization was also sued by 14 students for wages they claimed nationwide contractor for the Democratic National Committee owed them for their local work as canvassers in 2004 for the failed John Kerry campaign.
From the above research finding the GCI organization lost employees as a result of salary disputes. Workers who were employed for the activity would not again agree to work for them because of the work environment and injustices done upon them. Even those who were paid fairly had now lost faith in them and could soon be following their colleques to exit. Salary issues are critical concern of many workers and largely affect strategic staffing and retention. No one will be interested to work with a company which will not pay for your dues as agreed after you complete the work. Almost every one will be out to look for greener pastures even if the new pastures are not as green as the current ones (Maister, p. 125).
Another issue affecting strategic staffing and retention is of incentives and benefits offered to workers. Incentives and benefits can be used to increase a company’s ability to attract and retain employees such as paid vacation and medical plans. Under this notion salaries paid by different companies don’t affect but other work-life programs and deliberately compensation programs. In addition to these programs many do not like to stick to organizations do not promise opportunities of promotion and sometimes personal career development through the sponsorship of the company. Organizations that under take career development for their employees always have a higher cutting edge than others since such training will motivate and inspire many such that nobody will feel the need to go elsewhere. Also the issued of promotions and the benefits that come along with it such as a better pay, added status, better job titles can make an organization popular with employees hence staff retention may not be a problem for the management ( Larson p. 133).
Many skilled or unskilled employees are also moving from company to company because of the terminal gratuity which acts as a motivating factor. It is the payment of a tangible amount of money when somebody eventually retires and it keeps faithful employees at workplace since they are aware that they will walk home with lump some amount when time matures.It is worked at an agreeable percentage of the employee’s basic salary and ensures the staff does not suffer embarrassment after retirement such as having to stop a certain style of living because of financial inability (Cardin p.217).
Conclusion
As for many companies who have to remain competitive, they must incorporate strategies that will motivate employees’ retention hence being able to reap the benefits that come along with this strategic staffing. For efficient human resource employee retention is a must and it will ensure increased returns from the investment in human capital. Companies should therefore ensure that the necessary incentives are in place and the work environment is not hostile in order for employees to have trust in them, be loyal and conform to the company’s core culture alignment (Talyor, p. 218).
The example of GCI needs immediate attention and if something is not done to correct the mistakes then employee retention to them is a story and will have to face court battles with the employee all the time. Something has to be done to restore the confidence of employees but if something is not done then troubles will be more and more hence risking the competitive edge, market share and rising costs.
Work cited
- Bevan, Stephen. Staff retention: A management guide. Instituteof manpower studies. 1991.
- Larson, Sheryl. Staff recruitment and retention: study results and intervention straregies. AAMR. 1998.
- Maister, David. Managing the professional service firm. Gower publishing limited. 1977.
- Griffin, Jill. Customerwin back: How to recapture lost customers and keep them loyal. Wiley. 2001.
- Talyor, Stephen. The employee retention. CIPD. 2002.
- Cardin Suzette. Personal management in critical care nursing. Williams and Wilkins. 1989.
- Teferra Mengistu. Capacity building for a reforming african power sector. Zed books. 2003