Strategies for Enhancing Employee Retention and Boosting Team Morale

The assignment highlights the importance of implementing effective HRM practices to ensure employee retention. This includes providing a fair treatment, rewards systems, recognition, training and development, balanced working environment, and boosting team diversity. The HRM team must also create resources for employee retention strategies. Furthermore, employers are encouraged to hold themselves accountable for solving problems faced by employees to build strong teamwork and meet business goals. A strong employment brand is also recommended to HR members, which can increase employee retention by creating a sense of excitement among employees, providing compelling reasons to work with the company, and sharing employer beliefs about employee performance. These strategies are helpful in preventing frequent employee entry and exit from the organization.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Resurfing from the Crisis
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Table of Content

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RESURFING FROM THE CRISIS.................................................................................................1
Introduction..................................................................................................................................1
Literature Review.........................................................................................................................2
Analysis of the Issues and Arguments.........................................................................................4
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................5
Recommendations........................................................................................................................5
References...................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
In this current paper, a discussion is represented in the ways in which company facing challenges
with employee retention can be helped, with the impactful strategic retention management plan.
Here in this paper, we are addressing the employee retention problem and the problem with
employer branding of VIR’s Multinational Company. A literature review is also later presented
in this paper to refer to the concepts revolving around strategic management that guide best HR
practice to achieve employer branding and employee retention (Anitha and Begum, 2016).
As a senior HR executive of the talent acquisition department of the company, my prime role and
responsibility is to understand the manpower acquisition of the concerned department. Recently,
our company is dealing with challenges in employee retention, and as every management knows
that in the current scenario, a major challenge for any organization now a day is to retain its
valuable and talented employees. To solve the employees’ migration issue, an efficient
employment branding and marketing team has been identified and selected from my end to help
in discerning the reason behind employees leaving the organization, and based on the findings
the role of staffing operation of the company comes into foreplay. A successful staffing
operation aids in hiring, positioning and overseeing employees in an organization. Overall, my
primary role is to build a recruiting team to conduct a sourcing operation in order to make the
company stand in a position to become an Employer of choice (Heilmann et al., 2013).
Link between HRM practices with business strategy
Since human resource management is an integral part of a successful business strategy, an
organized HR department very well knows and understands the importance of keeping
employees' focus on the company's financial goals while providing opportunities for employee
growth and advancement. Successful business managers thrive upon the facts that outstanding
HR departments offers an organization potential prospects to do good business by delivering
well-trained and motivated employees to achieve the company's financial goals (Armstrong and
Taylor, 2014). The implementation of strategic human resource management is highly important
in today’s world as the extent up to which degree of integration exists between human resource
management, and business strategy characterizes firm’s competitive advantage.

Literature Review
In this current paper, a review is represented in the discussion based on the synergy between
HRM theory and organizational performance. Since much of the research work has been
previously carried out on HRM for the very basic reason of its potentiality in managing the firm
or any organization and the amount of impact it makes on performance of the firm, therefore the
current literature review emphasizes particularly on those research studies which have been
undertaken in the field of HRM being more specific about HRM practices and organizational
performance in various sectors. The term HRM theory was first coined in the year 1980 and is
considered to be employee-friendly one, as the theory came to counterbalance the trend which
considers man as a machine through past several decades (Gittell and Logan, 2015). The current
literature deals with the establishment of co-relation between HRM theory and organizational
performance, as this relationship would help the firm in understanding the cause of employee
retention problem (Kurian and Naik, 2014). Milgrom and Roberts (1992) defined this synergy as
a condition when putting one’s interest into more of an organizational activity increases the
returns to doing more of other related activities. Huselid et al. (1997) bifurcated the HRM
activities into two parts, where the first part deals with technical HRM activities and the second
one with strategic HRM activities. Strategic HRM activity addresses the concept associated with
vertical fit whereas, the technical HRM connects or integrates a series of HR practices that not
only support each other, but also enhance and proliferate the effectiveness of one another (Alam
et al., 2010). These two activities included over here attract skillful employees into the firm,
keeping in view the organizational performance, and then placing them in suitable positions. The
activities also include training these employees to work in a specific way in which organization
works, and also motivating them to provide some fruitful schemes that would benefit
organizational objectives (Wei, 2006). A systematic design is thus addressed here in this
literature to coordinate these separate HRM practices for achieving the horizontal fit. This idea
of horizontal fit has nowadays changed the SHRM researcher’s focus from individual HRM
practices to the entire HRM system.
The theory illustrated by Becker and Huselid (1998) in this current literature strongly debates
that although there are many stakeholders in an organization, but the prime goal of any business
has always been concerned towards higher financial performance or maximization of wealth or

capital for the shareholders. Curtis and Miller (1995) heavily emphasized upon the operational
performance of an organization which is found to solely govern the function of people, process
and technology, and hence its performance totally depends upon the effective operational
performance in reality. The theories supported by Huselid in 1995 and Barney in 1997 are more
or less a reflection of the human resources in an organization, which ultimately have to be
competent enough, with the required knowledge, skill and abilities needed for the effectual
interaction of people with ongoing or current technology and process. As a result competence of
the individual in today’s date is a prime factor which decides operational effectiveness in terms
of providing quality products and services within a short time span.
The current literature further discusses how the application of HRM theory and its practice are
useful to achieve employer branding and employee retention. A theoretical frame behind the core
concepts of employer branding provides an insight into the application of best fit; best practice
and Universalist models & concepts. Employer branding is a relatively new area in research and
management. The term employer branding deals with the market perception of what it's like to
work for an organization. In a broader term, employment brand is something that talks about the
image of the company as per our developed perspective (cf. Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; Edwards,
2010; Sutherland et al., 2002). Sponheuer in 2009 addressed that employer branding and its
related concepts are a result of some confusion regarding employer attractiveness and a lack of
management structure (Lievens and Slaughter, 2016). It has been confirmed from an
organizational architecture point of view that employer branding is generally situated between
marketing and HR management, and both functions are essential to aid in the development and
implementation of an effective and efficient employer branding strategy (Edwards, 2010).
Employer branding also addresses to the attractiveness and related concepts. Berthon et al.
(2005, p. 156) have defined employer attractiveness as “the perceived visualized benefits that a
potential employee sees in working for a specific organization.” While talking about employer
branding, the term employer image also needs to be mentioned here as it sounds very much
familiar to the term employer attractiveness (French and Smith, 2013).
Collins and Stevens (2002) confirmed in their research that by taking the help of brand equity
approach in performing a study conducted on early recruitment-related activities, the customer-
based brand equity concept can be transformed to the recruitment context in order to create a

platform to better avail oneself about understanding application decisions of highly skilled but
inexperienced job seekers in a competitive labor market. A central question is guiding the
employer branding addresses which framework has to be used in order to find out employer
attractiveness attributes and brand associations to tackle the challenges faced in employee
retention (Leekha and Sharma, 2014). All decisions concerning the current employer branding
research relies on the instrumental-symbolic7 framework, which is taken from brand
management literature (e.g., Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; Lievens & Highhouse, 2003.
The literature discussion is also done on the best practice and best-fit approach in HRM,
particularly a Universalist HRM approach within an organization, firm or company (Kaufman,
(2014). The universalist HRM approach guides the best practices which need to be adopted so
that the possibility of obtaining an optimal outcome for the entire organization is maximum, and
to some extent, the challenges faced in employee retention is resolved (Sims 2007).
Analysis of the Issues and Arguments
An argument is drawn based on the problems associated with ineffective employer branding that
leads to poor employee retention potential of an organization. Since dealing with employee
retention challenge is not an easy way, various aspects need to be considered here to solve the
issue.
A comprehensive discussion is done here relevant to employer branding and retention programs
plans that are applicable to the current situation. Employee retention programs plans involve
firstly the need to figure out the reason why employees are quitting the organization within no
time. Monetary dissatisfaction, no dearth of opportunities, entry of employees into wrong profile,
tendency to get bored in a short span of time, work/life imbalance, loss of trust and confidence in
senior leaders, and unrealistic expectation from the job are considered to be the reasons behind
employee non-retention problem (Sri et al., 2016). The other reasons behind problems associated
with employee retention might be acute shortage of skilled and professional employees that
company needs and wants to recruit and retain, predicted labor shortage because of demographic
shifts, rising expectations of the new workforce, workforce diversity, entrepreneurial practices,
inadequate educational programs and increased competition.

Secondly it involves providing remedial ways to deal with the issue. Six Principles for Becoming
an Employer of Choice through effectual employer branding and retention programs plans has
been proposed by Lynda A. Rizzo, J.D. in 2007 to help the organization in being a position
where they can plan effective business strategy, keeping in mind several aspects such as the role
of HRM in the organizational behavior. The practice involving effective employer branding
involves identifying a number of questions affecting organization’s strategy, such as are the
employees willingness to work; are they planning on staying with the company; do they feel that
there are opportunities for their and development; is there an existence of healthy work-life
balance; are the employees' potential being realized overboard; and the communications between
employer to employee are open, honest, positive and future-focused. The other practices involves
engagement of an employer with an understanding that since the world has changed and
employees attitudes relevant for service branding has taken a front-seat, HR systems, policies,
and processes must be impactful across all lines of the business and influence company culture
focused on optimizing the customer experience to build a strong employer brand.
As illustrated in context to the above statements, we have come to the point that a potential
employer branding for our company will pave a way to mark success in preventing the frequent
exit and entry of employees. While coming in-depth of the issue, I realized that fact that the
importance of employee retention is felt by many organizations, and to stand in a position of
becoming an employer of choice there are many factors which needs to be considered by
employers such as usage of words in a wise manner, holding accountability, goal oriented,
strengthening business network, striving for professional/personal lives, and bringing charm to
the workplace. Some of the scholar people consider employer branding as more than just a
fashion statement. The reason behind such apprehension is that up till the present permanent
solution to the employee retention problem has not been proven. In order to solve the issue,
industries are still finding out that who should be appointed as a champion to address and solve
the cause, construct the business case, and keep hold of it time to time.
Conclusion
The conclusion is drawn from the fact that since employee turnover is at top workforce challenge
faced by HR Leaders, there is a dire need to address how significant is the relationship between
employer branding with organization retention programs is in today’s world. Since global talent

pool hunt has become an international crusade, HR people are practicing some policies that will
definitely prove to be impactful for addressing the solution to the current scenario (Kehoe and
Wright, 2013). In order to deal with the challenges concerning employee retention, every
possible quest is done from the management side to save the immigration of company’s best
employees to the other competitive firms of the same industry.
Employer branding is rapidly expanding its forefront in the management areas and nowadays
have gained popularity owing to the fact that it has not proven its existence in communicating to
the potential employees, but has all played a major role in retaining the existing employees
(Devine and Syrett, 2014). Since the value proposition of current employer supersedes their
competitors, necessary steps are taken from the HRM under my supervision to hold
accountability of existing employees in every possible way.
In today’s market competitive world, employees have become more selective while choosing the
company they would opt to associate with, since most of them prefer to work for reputable
organizations. Employees prefer to work with such employers who value them and consider
them as valuable assets, and treat them fairly (Mayo, 2016). Since each employee is sensible and
more prudent nowadays about the company's employee experience policies and other factors
related to the reality of this experience, these facts are kept in mind by us while drafting for the
strategic employee retention plans and programs.
Recommendations
The best practices which I am looking forward to adopting are numerous. Since the organization
is facing challenges with employee retention, HRM must conduct a training session for its
employers to help them in finding the problem behind frequent exit and entry of employees.
Most of the time organization retention programs are addressed either by developing strategic
HRM or by skilled professionals. In order to succeed in the area of developing employee
retention strategies, plans and programs which are suitable for the company are formulated
hereby. It is highly recommended to the employer to think about things from employees’ point of
view. Since each employee have their own unique way of thinking, it in can safely presumed by
the employees that virtually all of them want to know the strategic move of the company towards
betterment of their people in terms of monetary gain and approach towards fair treatment, that

includes provision of employee rewards systems, employee recognition, proper training and
development, balanced working environment, bolstering team morale, and boosting team
diversity (Olafsen et al., 2015). HRM team must also look forward to creating resources for
creating employee retention strategies (Özçelik, 2015). Employers must hold themselves
accountable for solving the problems faced by employees in order to build a good team work and
also to ensure that the efforts of people are successfully meeting the goals and objectives of the
business. Making a strong employment brand is also recommended to the HR members because
when the company holds a strong and strategic employment brand, it accomplishes the following
facts such as, the management creates a sense of excitement among employees about what it is
working with the company, providing a compelling and transparent justifiable reasons to be part
of the organization, and also sharing the facts to the employees that what their employers think
and believe about him/her good performance (Mowday et al., 2013). Implementation of branding
efforts used in personnel management can definitely increase employee retention. These
following strategies mentioned here are definitely helpful in providing solution for preventing
the frequent entry and exit of employees from the organization, in a shorter duration of time.

References
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