Employee Turnover and Retention Strategies Essay

Employee Turnover and Retention Strategies - Essay Example Every department, be it operations, finance, human resources, or sales and marketing, must invest in motivating, training, and retaining their best human resources to make a difference through their core competencies. As Susan Heathfield said: "Managers readily agree that retaining your best employees ensures customer satisfaction, product sales, satisfied co-workers and reporting staff, effective succession planning and deeply imbedded organizational knowledge and learning." Today organisations are willing to look upon their staff not so much as employees or workers but as 'knowledge workers'. As Peter Drucker observed, "while the more than fifty-fold increase in productivity of the manual worker was the greatest achievement of the 20th century manager, the most important work of the 21st century is to increase the productivity of the knowledge worker." (Pottruck and Pearce, 131). The more competent workers your company or organisation loses, the more will it set your clock back in finding and training suitable replacements at much greater costs. In the meantime your loss becomes your competitor's gain, which again has adverse implications on the success of your operations. Among the major causes that propelled employees to quit an organisation, the following conditions mostly relating to work culture have been identified as contributing to employee dissatisfaction and consequent exit: Lack of clarity in company policies, practices, and procedures Excessive controls and autocratic leadership Bureaucratic work environment with lack of trust Inadequate remuneration and unjustified cost cuts Poor quality of supervision Lack of opportunities for growth Absence of facilities for training and development Lack of scope for utilization of skills and talents Poor communication (with the employee not knowing what is expected of him daily) Lack of rewards, recognition and encouragement Unfair and inequitable treatment of employees Overbearing attitude and threatening by supervisors The Case of Solution's Solution's began operations on a small scale in 1967 as a recruitment agency for social care specialists. Headquartered in London, Solution's expanded in a big way in four decades to establish itself as the largest social care agency in the UK, with 160 employees spread over18 branches. The year 2004 proved to be a disappointment for the company in terms of financial performance, compelling it to slash commissions given to consultants for recruitment mostly in branches located in London. The weak performance also resulted in the retrenchment of up to 15 branch administers, apart from the voluntary exit of many employees who signed up with rival agencies. An analysis showed that the major cause for high employee turnover (91%) in 2004 was the cost reduction strategy adopted by the company. With a view to putting the operations back on rail, the company opted for a change of leadership at the top. A new managing director joined the board in January 2005 with a mission to improve the health of the company in general and the turnover situation in particular. He believed that the key to success through increased sales lay in ensuring employee satisfaction. Accordingly he straightway set about implementing certain remedial and innovative measures for a

Pluralism and Urban Regime Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Pluralism and Urban Regime - Research Paper Example Pluralists believe that direct democracy is unworkable and undesired. They operate under logistical manner where every citizen comes in a meeting to decide on political issues that require continuous and expert attention, which is common among the common citizens. Robert Dahl, a known pluralist, suggested in one of his writing that, the societies that we live in politics are like sideshows in the great circus of life. The common worry in the pluralism is that, common persons lack intelligence and direct democracy that is required in leadership. Urban regime on the other hand is the development of cities in order to provide a range of profound changes in the view of globalization. The urban governance in the modern world is catalyzed by technological and communication development, economic restructuring and the postmodernism reconstruction tendencies (Parker 247). The urban governance theory came to prominence in the publication of the Clarence stone’s study in Atlanta. Since t hen, the urban regime method has had an extensive use to determine the politics of a country both in North America and across the world. The urban regime recognizes the values and insights of the subjects. The urban regime has recognition from most of the countries, including North America, as totally involving the subjects. The system brings together the coalition partners through the available resources in either governmental or non-governmental limits (Davies 98). The system recognizes the political leaders as the channels through which resources can be mobilized to accomplish duties in the society. Robert Dahl is a sterling professor of political science and earned a degree in political science and a subsequent honorary doctorate in law. He contributed a lot in explaining the varieties of governance. He says that urban governance is a multidisciplinary natural phenomenon that describes both innovation and confusion among the majority who are governed. Dahl emphasized on the urba n politics as primarily concerned with urban political power many scholars thereof have also tried to explain what an urban regime is and who actually owns the town (485). The most important factor to put into consideration is whether the power has any relation to the ideal reasoning of the American democracy. Dahl developed the earliest theory about the urban politics. He held the same as an intellectual movement that is philosophical in nature. Dahl raised the main criticism as to why he held urban politics as the appropriate means of governance. He held that the elites at the top levels less remember the desires of the majority they have left behind. Thus, he emphasized the urban regime as the best forms of governance. On the issue of pluralism, Robert Dahl rejected the idea of democracy as an open form of governorship. He said that a dominant paradigm of a majority rule would endorse diverse cultural, economic, racial, and ethnic interest. All these would translate into lack of unity in the country and resulting into a division among the different groups. In addition, policies made by a group of people may conflict at the implementation stage (Smith 257). Generally, Dahl did not back the ideas of pluralist but instead emphasized on urban governorship as the most appropriate form of governorship. Clarence stone also had a say on the urban regimes and pluralism. He once wrote that,