An HR Glossary for HR Terms

Glossary of Human Resources Management and Employee Benefit Terms

Retention Strategy

What Is a Retention Strategy?

A retention strategy is a plan that organizations create and use to reduce employee turnover, prevent attrition, increase retention, and foster employee engagement. While some turnover is inevitable, building a retention strategy to prevent as much voluntary turnover as possible can save an organization a lot of time and money. After all, it’s much easier and much less expensive to train and develop your current employees than it is to continually hire new people.

Benefits of an Effective Retention Strategy

The focus of an employee retention strategy is just as it sounds: retaining employees. However, there are other positive outcomes of an effective retention strategy besides just getting people to stick around your organization longer:

This means that creating a retention strategy isn’t just a good idea if you’re experiencing higher-than-average turnover; it’s a good idea for any organization that wants to improve its culture, employee experience, business outcomes, and more.

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Elements of a Retention Strategy

When developing an employee retention strategy, it’s important to identify the areas of the employee experience you can actually influence so you know where to focus your efforts. These areas may include:

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A good start to improving the right kind of retention is to make sure you’re paying fairly and competitively to the market. In fact, research shows a link between fair and transparent pay practices, lower intent to leave, and overall greater job satisfaction.

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Retaining your best people creates true competitive advantages. This is especially true for small and medium-sized businesses. Learn seven powerful strategies to retain your best people.

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