Leadership Behavioural Strategies for Employee Retention

Abstract

All organisations or business enterprises of all sizes under all names are only to serve the needs of the people. All organisations are not only run by people, but also it is the people in it, i.e. more specifically employees, at various levels who determine the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization and thus their very survival especially in these modern times. This means that if organisations are to maintain their efficiency and effectiveness, it is the maintenance, i.e. retention, of the employees within the system. Thus efficiency, effectiveness and survival of any organization anywhere, whether big or small, depend on the recently rediscovered human capital. Thus acquisition of qualified human resources, developing them and maintaining them becomes all the more important. Employee turnover not only reduces the human capital in an organization but also organizational productivity besides incurring the costs of acquiring human resources for replacement and developing them. Hence increased emphasis is being laid on retention of human resources now a days especially with the onset of recent Revolutions such as Information Technology, which is labor intensive in nature, supported by increased globalization. The modern management literature advocates many strategies for employee retention from various dimensions such as organizational factors, compensation, rewards, job design and characteristics, work environment, employee relationship, etc. Human history shows that people remain in the fold of leader’s influence by their sheer behavior not only during their lifetime but also after their death! Legendary examples are Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohamed, Guru Nanak, Mahavir, Swamy Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Mother Teresa, etc. Hence this paper attempts to present a few of the important employee retention strategies from the point of view of the hitherto ignored ‘leadership behavior’ from a more than 2000 year old Indian work, Thirukkural, a classical work on management, yet very relevant even to this day!