Employee Retention and Motivation Strategies in Difficult Workplaces

This report examines strategies for motivating and retaining employees in challenging workplaces. It emphasizes that employees are a company's greatest asset, and their job satisfaction is crucial for productivity. The report covers various reasons for employee discouragement and turnover, including downsizing, negative attitudes, and insufficient growth opportunities. It then delves into specific strategies such as retention-focused recruitment, including realistic job previews, person-culture fit, and using referrals. The report also highlights the importance of effective orientation programs, job sculpting to match employee talents, and nurturing intrinsic motivation through autonomy and feedback. Furthermore, it underlines the significance of building a culture that promotes learning and implementing work-life balance measures. The report concludes by emphasizing the critical link between employee retention, business success, and organizational reputation.

Running head: RETAINING AND MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES 1
MOTIVATING AND OR RETAINING EMPLOYEES IN CHALLENGING WORKPLACES
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Introduction
According to Carraher (2011) employees are the greatest asset for any organization. The
satisfaction of employees with their job is, therefore, an important aspect which should be prioritized by
employers since happy employees are more productive thus being an advantage to the company. To
motivate and retain employees in challenging workplaces, employers have to deal with different reasons
which make employees feel discouraged or even decide to quit their job. As suggested by Lowe, Levitt &
Wilson (2008) the reasons include downsizing, firings, closures, negative attitudes, unfair promotions,
depression/discouragement, employee expectations not being met, mismatch between employees and
their roles, mismatch between employees and the company culture, insufficient opportunity for
development and growth, insufficient recognition or appreciation, problems with the immediate manager,
loss of confidence in the firm, particularly leadership, stress, Lack of work-life balance and
dissatisfaction with pay.
Motivating And Or Retaining Employees in Challenging Workplaces
Research by Cho and Lewis (2012) shows that strategies for the retention of employees assist
companies in the provision of employee communication which is effective for the improvement of
commitment and enhancement of support for the workforce for key initiatives of the company.
Retention Focused Recruitment
Retention and recruitment are interlinked, with some departures of employees almost being
unavoidable from the first day. To ensure that the right employee is selected, companies should maintain
a realistic job preview to ensure that potential employees do not quit their jobs after discovering that their
jobs are different from their expectations (Samuel & Chipunza, 2009). In addition, sharing expectations

RETAINING AND MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES 3
during interviews in important. Information to be shared include expectations regarding the preferred
style of management, the rate of salary increment, career advancement, willingness to travel, the firm’s
culture, working in teams and pay policy. In addition, organizations should ensure that they uphold a
person-culture fit since it is of great importance for workers to share values which are similar and that
they have the ability to function within the organization’s cultural environment. Furthermore,
organizations should ensure that there is a fit between the job and the skills of the employee by
identifying employee talents, motivations, self-management traits and knowledge.
Moreover, organizations should use referrals when recruiting employees since an employee who
was referred by another employer tend to stay longer (Herzberg, 2008). The referred employees have
knowledge of inside information and therefore are less likely to realize that their job has surprises which
are unpleasant. Current employees are also unlikely to jeopardize their own standing by referring to
inappropriate friends. Organizations should also include team members in their process of recruitment
especially for roles that are based on teams or the management by considering the opinions of the
personnel who will have daily contact with the new recruit. Since personality is an important aspect of
recruitment, organizations should consider the upward feedback notion.
Promoting rather than hiring new employees will also motivate employees since internal
promotions motivate employees that they also have a chance of career growth and advancement if they
continue working for the organization. On another perspective, if strong internal candidates are not
promoted, employees may lose hope of ever advancing in their careers and may opt to quit their jobs.
Promotion is also a way of saving time and money incurred during the recruitment process.
Retention Focused Orientation

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Orienting new hires effectively is important to retaining employees in the long term (Guthridge,
Komm & Lawson, 2008). However, many organizations have shallow retention programs which do not
go past the induction stage thus resulting in the incomplete orientation of employees into the company
culture, their roles and responsibilities. Effective orientation strategies assist the organization in ensuring
that the new employee settles into their new position within the shortest time possible. Organizations
may not effectively orient new employees when the time window is very small.
Other issues leading to poor orientation of employees include monologue rather than dialogue,
not involving the department or manager of the new recruit, endless form filling, too much information,
long lectures, ignoring employees or issuing them with manuals to read and not having the equipment of
the new employee in place (Müller, Alliata & Benninghoff, 2009). Organizations should instead assist
employees to feel at home, explain how to be a team player, how to add value, what is expected of them,
show them how they can achieve and ensure that required equipment for the new employee is in place.
Employees should also be introduced to team members and briefed about the company culture and
processes through the implementation of a detailed employee orientation.
Job Sculpting
Many employees quit their jobs due to frustrations caused by the daily experiences in their role
rather than the issues relating to individuals or to the firm. Therefore, organizations should first move
employees internally and if employees are still not happy with their roles, new positions should be found
internally instead of letting the employee leave. In addition, organizations should match talents of
employees to the role requirements. Further research by Coff and Kryscynski (2011) shows that by

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letting employees use their intrinsic talents and natural strengths, employees will always feel motivated
to continue working.
Furthermore, organizations should increase the variety of their jobs since the lack of variety in the
roles of employees can lead to their frustration to an extent that they make a decision to quit. Moreover,
roles should be tailored to suit specific employees since employees will experience increased value in
their work which will make it hard for other companies to attract them. Making a minor adjustment may
be the difference to either losing or retaining an employee (Sadri & Bowen, 2011). Organizations can
also enrich jobs through task significance, task completion and skill variety as it will offer additional
value to the employee.
Autonomy and Feedback
Organizations should nurture intrinsic motivation through understanding why employees want to
work. In addition, employee passion should be upheld since employees who are focused on their passion
are hard to tempt away. It is therefore important to ensure that employee passion has been considered.
According to Islam & Zaki (2008) other ways in which organizations can motivate and retain employees
include retention focused management, building a culture that promotes learning, retention focused
career support, implementing work/life balance measures, communication and retention focused reward.
Conclusion
Organizations should realize the benefit of retaining the best talent as it is critical to business
success. Retaining employees and treating troubles of attrition is a major requirement which also affects
the reputation of an organization in regards to how employees are treated. Therefore, the success and
health of any organization are depended on the motivation and retention of the best employees.

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