1 Managing Employee Retention In Recession

Main Review: Introduction: In the todays world where every organization is faced with the conundrum of cutting cost, it is imperial and imperative to control costs concerned with human resource employed. Employers are required to solve the dilemma under which they are required to take care of perks and privileges granted to employee with an eye to getting fair as compared to the same companies in the industry. Employee retention, especially of your best and most desirable employees is a key challenge in the organization today. Employee retention strategies must be there to retain the employee. Selecting and retaining capable staff is a measure phenomenon for business success. A talented, capable and productive person, who consistently develop and utilizes their skills and contributes their efforts have increased their value to the organization. Similarly the core value is to understand the feelings of employee for the organization to retaining staff. Retaining employees is the game of both psychological and logical tactics. During this recession knowing what makes employee unhappy is the half of the battle when you idealize employee work satisfaction, morale, positive motivation and retention. In case employee feels safe tell you what is running in their minds. The organization foster trust and integrity for successful two ways communication that helps both the lower and upper levels of management work together. The firm needs to keep a balance between skilled and unskilled labor which is necessary to keep their

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production smooth all over the period. The study entails that retaining employees, needs focus on other indirect factors that affects the retention and the factors that are necessary to be there in order to retain employees effectively. The factors that affect retention are: Economic instability Effective utilization of resources Poor strategy formulation Communication gap Lack of positive motivation and satisfaction Team bonds association Lack of loyalty strategies

The factors that are necessary to retain employees are: Competitive salary benefits Employee recognition Effective-cost cutting Strategy formulation Healthy work life balance Career development strategy formulation Quality of supervision and mentorship Include employees in decision making

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The research question dwells around the current practices followed by esteemed organizations and the practices and tactics used for the hiring and firing of the employees. The organization plans itself for the preparation of upcoming downfalls in the economic environment by devising suitable strategies to combat and mitigate the effect of recession and depression. The term recession and depression has a thin line to differentiate each other and to keep it simple it can asserted that the latter term is more sever than the previous otherwise it is interchangeably used. The research helps in getting an understanding of the possible and nowadays mostly used strategies by top companies. For this purpose textile industries were evaluated to make this topic much more meaningful. Literature review: Recession can be defined as a general slowdown in the economic environment below average level that results in witnessing situations like high employee turnover, inflation, increase in interest rates, high unemployment etc. All in all these and other related features make the spending shrink and planners try to overcome these by coming up with a mutually devised plan.

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Firms across the world focus plan on retaining its key employees rather than on hiring new employees. It costs employers a hand and a leg to hire a new employee, make him aware of the norms of the organization, and spend vigorously on training and development. So to avoid this hassle, the simple solution most of the firms adhere to is to retain existing key employees. By this it doesnt mean that companies are interested in retaining all employees but only those that are of significance importance. For this purpose, the strategic levels put their best efforts to separate evens from the odds and come up with a portfolio of employees that are of utmost importance to the firm. The policies devised for retainer ship are then applied to that handful of employees. Compensation: For retaining key personnel at levels of the firm, it is of utmost importance that the compensation currently offered to them is adequate and a slice is added at least once a year to cope up with the rise in inflation. There may be also other techniques that are handy for the purpose like offering bonus on an annual basis etc. one more way whereby employee retention is guaranteed is to give ownership to an employee in the shares of the company which helps in developing ownership sense in the employees that in turn contributes for the effective and efficient accomplishment of the goals of the organization. Growth: To achieve growth, the employees are shuffled within and outside department. The possible forms of growth may be secondtment, hiring a mentor to counsel employees and
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eradicate the causes that hamper employee development like creating an environment in which employee grievances are settled. Environment: Same companies in the industries are seen by employees to check whether their compensation is adequate and their wage is fair. The company involves learning in its ecological settings. Now is the era where most of the firms offer learning environment to its employees. Such organization spends heavily in research and development and they affect environment and change the obsolete trends. Support: Employees may face ups and downs in their professional and personal life. If the employer who comes for the support here as well. Regular feed back on employee performance may serve as a basic ingredient to let employee know what is expected from them. It also helps in notching up self esteem of the employee concerned. Relationship: Culture should be mould in a way that encourages a savvy relationship among employees. This might also be a way to reduce the ill effects of employee resentment caused by the factors within as well as outside the organization. A supportive work culture helps employees to grow resourcefully and boosts employee satisfaction. To develop good professional dealings the management should go on with the following points in consideration:

6 Managing Employee Retention In Recession

Respect for the individual Relationship with immediate manager Affiliation with colleagues Recruit entire heartedly Encourage an employee based culture Individual development Induced loyalty

Retention During Recession This perplexed problem can be investigated thoroughly. The reasons must be identified and evaluated critically by all concerned. The main aim is to make the organization stand out from the rest. There are changes in the way employee work and both the firm and employee are under great pressure to meet demands of their shareholder. The key employees are expected to increase their productivity level beyond normally produced by them. This also encounters various other aspects like the capacity of organizations resources to produce the desired or budgeted output. The following should be the most recommended and the most sought after strategies and should be read in conjunction with what have been emphasized all through this document earlier:

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Over communicate with the employees: Employees should be told on day to day basis of what is expected of them rather being slashed with the information of monthly period on a single day.

Be good listeners: Arrange a town- hall meeting where employees face off with the senior executive hence make a keen situation with an employee and do provide a feed back not only for their job but also their development

Promote counseling resources: Employees are asked about what troubles they see in their dealing with other employees and they are advised of what their possible course of action would be.

Set up hospitality for employees: treat employees the way they would like to, make the working environment comfortable and worth living for employees to work with.

Keeping incoming resumes relevant: make sure that all the working of recruitment and selection must be done according to the requirements of the organization. If the resumes will be relevant then the pool of candidate generated will be more effective and worth living for the organization. It will be helpful for the future selection of the organization.

Reassure employees that mission comes first and the foremost: with health care employees, it is important to have mission, or family values. Achieving goals is the most important part of business activity. Adding that mission matters as such as reimbursement for many workers.

Modify employee benefits: in the countenance of the continually rising health care cost, reduce cost by focusing on defensive management and bug
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management. Employee benefits are the major source of retaining the talented employees. Hence cultivate the employee benefits in the proper manner to make the organization competent

Methodology: This topic contains all the contents regarding methodology regarding research approach have been discussed in this area. The research design of the material collected, sample that has been selected and the population size are the core focus area of this topic. Research approach may both be qualitative and/or qualitative. The former caters to the needs of information seekers that try to obtain knowledge bits directly from the person who are the knowledge depositories. These people have gained such knowledge over the period of their employment and this practical information is valid to help getting an overview in a short period of time. You just need to squeeze them dry and try bringing out their personal experiences. This form of research is subjective, having multiple realities, use communication and observations etc. The latter one is centered on having obtained statistical information that are more vivid but of less depth in terms of practical reality thus are avoided by the writer. Phenomenology tries to bring in a summary way the personal thinking of the concerned person by applying metaphors that are widely accepted in the field of psychology.

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Population and sampling:

It is often un-practicable to evaluate the whole population as it involves a large amount of resources both in terms of cost and time. To overcome this problem, an approach to drawing samples is used. This form of approach is a real helper to sort out the population trend by just examining a sample of items. But this method will bring effectiveness only if the sample drawn is representative of the population otherwise the negative points associated with drawing sample hovers the relevant research and creeps into information that is unrepresentative. A total of four executives were asked to help out by the writer and were asked a standard set of questions. The date was then analyzed by applying pre determined techniques. Ethical considerations should also be emphasized which may include not mentioning the name of the person inquired if it was specifically told by the persons involved. Managing retention also places significant spheres where employers are mostly concerned on how to make a real effort toward retaining the key employees and motivate them to bring out the best in them. Gone are the days when employees were taken as the assets of the company and this conservative approach is replaced by new and advance thinking of corporate pundits who consider employees as part of the family. This makes possible psychological contract to be entered into between the employee and the employer in which employee extends effort and in return expects to be compensated with commensurate perks and privileges.
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Motivation of employees is also considered to the basic thing employers should always be keeping in mind. Strict policies may come as the hindrance to increase motivation and sometimes bring dissatisfaction among employees.

Conclusion and findings: All the data in this approach is based on the research approach named qualitative approach. The data collection technique used in this research report is open-ended indepth interviews, from the three executive of manufacturing firm of textile industry. And the researcher has used purposive sampling approach. Researcher tends to identify the impact of recession on employee retention. This research identifies the processes, procedures policies and factors that should be adopted to retain employees in recession. Employee recognition, employee expectation, employee performance standards, organizational culture, exit interviews, employee benefits, motivation, career

development programs, training and effective usage of change and risk management has been practiced in the firms during recession. Recession has been affecting the various parts of the corporate world and many firms are on the way to shutdown point. It is the big challenge for the firms these days that how to retain talented workforce. Employee retention in recession not only based on the monetary terms but it could also be managed through he non-monetary benefits such as providing importance to employee satisfaction. Employee feedback, employee progress and employee loyalty to organization all these functions make employee realize his importance. Hence the employee tends to be with the organization for the long time in order of psychological contract. Employee retention
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is surely possible if new and innovative means are applied vociferously. This will need strategic planning. Finance department plays its role for the calculation of perks and emoluments. Production department is focused by policy makers. Change management must also be given adequate resources. Company should implement retention formulation process from top to bottom. Exit interviews should also be conducted that reveals the reasons why employees leave organization. This should be done with impartiality. Job enrichment may also be a possible way of employee development which also contributes to the motivation of the employee and helps achieving its goals and thereby achieving the overall goals of the organization. Employee retention strategies may be summarized as follows: (Abelson & Baysinger, 1984, Boudreaux & Berger 1985) have suggested that an effective human resource strategy should balance the cost of replacing who leave against the cost of retaining those who stays. The basic practices which should kept in the mind that employee retention strategies are: Hire the right people in the first place Empower the employee and give the employees authority to get the things done Make employees realized that they are the most valuable assets of the organization. Have faith in them trust them and respect them Provide them information and knowledge
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Keep providing them feed back on their performance Recognize and appreciate their achievement Keep their moral high

The findings are as follows:

Employee retention in recession is possible with factors of managing the cost of production, cost of raw material, reduced benefit systems, employee satisfaction and employee motivation

Employee retention in recession is possible only when the organization have relevant strategies regarding this issue

Role of finance department is very important to retain employee as they help in all kinds of compensation packages, employee benefits, annual bonuses, increments, and cost of production, working capital, and return on investment. These are the monetary factors and benefits that helps in employee retention in recession

Production department is the heart of every manufacturing organization and it requires aggressive attention to keep the flow of business up to the mark or to average in crucial time of recession

Change management is the most effective source to keep the business running under high inflation

Not the entire instant monetary benefits works. Non monetary rewards and benefits are also plays measure part in employee retention in recession. And in the economic downturn this tactic help in keeping employee motivated.
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Recommendations: Company should implement the retention formulation process. Company should conduct the exit interviews in order to gain information about the employee perspective at the time of quitting. Expectation-lowering training should be conducted to mould the employee behavior so that he/she could be with the organization for the long time. Job enrichment has consistent effect on employee retention. This factor will help in increasing the morale of employee and tends retention. Company instead of manually reducing the employee benefits, firm should formulates the cafeteria style benefit system. So that the firm will be having

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Bibliography
daniels, s. (2009). Retaning top employees is critical in recession. low moral leaves organizations ripe for a talent ride by your competition . pichardo, m. (2008). retention in a recession. smart business network Inc reprinted from the april issue of business Tampa bay . practical retention policy for the practical manager. (2002 ). academy of management executives vol. 16, no. 2 . ramlall, s. (2001). a review of employee motivation theories and their implication for employee retention within the organization. journal of american academy of business, cambrigde , 52. sheridan, j. E. (dec 1992). organizational culture and emoloyee retention . the academy of management journal, vol. 35, no. 5 , 1036-1056.

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