What Best Practices Do Organizations in Fmcg/ Retail Sector Use to Retain Staff in Their Organization

What Best Practices Do Organizations in FMCG/ Retail sector Use to Retain Staff in their organization.

Contents

1.        Introduction:        3

2.        Why talent retention is important ?        3

3.        Why do employees leave?        4

4.        Employee retention strategy        4

5.        Case studies:        7

1) Walmart        7

2) Nike, Inc.        7

3) Costco Wholesale Corporation        8

6.        Employee retention policies in HUL        9

7.    References        10

1. Introduction:

Employee retention focuses on the various strategies which firms adopt so as to maintain a lower employee turnover ratio and make the employees work for the organisation over a longer period of time.

Every organization puts in a lot of monetary and non-monetary resources to groom a new recruit as per their requirement. If the employees leave the job after their training period is complete, it is a huge loss to the organisation. Thus, employee retention is all about minimising this loss and enhancing the productivity of the organisation as a whole.

1. Why talent retention is important ?

Employees are a major driver in the success of any business thereby making talent retention very important. It is important for number of reasons:

1. The process of replacing talent may be very time-consuming. A lot of time is wasted in identifying the perfect match for any position that is vacant.
2. Job-fit is not the only important consideration. Sometimes applicants with perfect job-fit are not culturally suited for the firm. Thus, talented people may not align with the organisation’s purpose and culture and hiring them can defeat the objective of talent replacement.
3. High performers can join hands with any competitor organisation which can be detrimental for the firm. Hence, core competencies might be lost if an organisation loses a lot of experienced employees to any aggressive competitor.
4. Newly hired personnel require time to adjust, and the intervening period until they become fully productive represents diminished performance to the company.
5. The loyalty of the new hire to the firm and his commitment to work is not certain and poses a risk to the firm.
6. When recognized talent leaves, others are likely to follow. That has been the experience of many organizations, including Wipro in India. Hence, companies should be very cautious of the work dynamics prevailing in the organisation and try and retain employees.
7. High attrition among the employees of a firm dilutes its organizational brand value. In the current environment, the entire labour force in the market can get to know about an organisation’s attrition issues and they might get sceptical about joining the organisation.

Regardless of their roles, experienced employees drive far greater value than those who are moving across businesses. The time invested in developing talent proves to be very expensive to the firm. For extended buddy-cum-mentoring programs, it can involve their senior management. At times the cost extends for years and is difficult to measure. Many studies show that the total cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5-2X annual salary. The costs of retention through proactive talent management programs are far less than that the cost of turnover. Therefore, organizations need to have effective employee retention strategies to avoid losing valued employees.