Employee retention and development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Employee retention and development - Essay Example Employee retention is more difficult than employee recruitment process in western countries. â€Å"The expense of recruiting and re-training a new worker costing anywhere from half to 200% of the departing employee’s annual salary†(Hebenstreit, Ph.D. 2008, p.4). It is estimated that U.S. companies spent $134.1 billion on employee learning and development in 2008 (Kraimer et al, 2011, p.485). Normally an organization spends a substantial amount of money for the training and development purposes of its employees. When an employee decides to quit an organization, all the money spent for the training and development of that employee by the organization will be wasted. It is the duty of the human resource department of an organization to implement strategies to reduce employee dropouts or turnover. â€Å"The UK average employee turnover rate is approximately 15% a year, although this varies drastically between industries. The highest levels of turnover are found in private sector organisations in retailing, catering, call centres, construction and media†(Workforce Management, 2011). The above employee turnover rate is huge when we compare it with employee turnover rate in other parts of the world. The reasons for higher employee turnover rate could be different like; attractive offers from other organizations, dissatisfaction over the working conditions in the present organization, ill-health, personal problems etc. In any case, it is duty of the human resource department to reduce the employee turnover rate as much as possible. â€Å"Replacing employee is not only time consuming, but expensive, costing you between  50 to 100 per cent of that positions’ annual salary† (Employee Retention and Recruitment Tips, 2009). This paper analyses the possible employ ee retention and development strategies, HRM department can implement in an organization. Theories related to Recruitment Before analysing the employee retention and development policy in detail, it is necessary to evaluate the normal recruitment policies adopting by current organization. In fact retention starts at the time of recruitment itself and therefore HRM professionals should start their efforts to retain the employees at the time of recruitment itself. Recruitment methods can be classified into two broad categories; internal and external. Internal recruitment method is normally adopted by organization when it is in need of emergency requirement of employees at some places. For example, suppose the production manager of manufacturing industry, has resigned due to some reasons. It is difficult for the organization to wait till the HRM department identifies a suitable person using external recruitment method. External recruitment process usually consists of many time consumin g stages such as posting of recruitment ads in various medias, written tests, interviews, etc. The organization may not get a production manager at least for few months if it opts for external recruitment methods. It is difficult for a production oriented organization to manage its production works for longer periods without a production manager. So, when emergency occurs, such organizations will try to promote some of its existing supervisors to the production manager post. In other words, an organization may opt for internal recruitmen