Planning for staff retention

Unwritten terms in the new "psychological contract" have increased the expectations that employees have of their working conditions, which has had an impact on the ability of employers to retain staff. Organisations with well-developed people management policies are best placed to implement effective retention strategies. Yet there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to retention. Organisations have to devise their own strategy. For some, this is a case of specific interventions. Our feature runs through them - from monitoring turnover, effective recruitment and induction programmes, to improving career development opportunities, flexing benefits and improving rewards.

For others, though, nothing less than wholesale cultural change will suffice. We bring together four in-depth and thought-provoking examples. For King's College Hospital NHS Trust, cultural change has brought into play a set of initiatives aimed at "improving the employment experience". Equally important parts to the jigsaw include an employee attitude survey, a flexible working package called Kingsflex, and steps to ensure new recruits have a realistic assessment of the job they are moving into. King's managed to reduce its voluntary staff turnover from 17% in March 2002 to 12.1% a year later.

For some organisations, the issue may narrow down to the rewards and opportunities package. This has been the case at Oxfam as it sought to hold on to valued staff. But rather than just considering basic pay, the charity started from a perspective of the total reward package on offer.

High turnover is one of the major issues facing the call centre sector, as the annual study conducted jointly between IRS and the Call Centres Association reveals. In a successful attempt to reduce staff wastage, Fujitsu Services, which employs around 2,000 frontline staff, has completely re-engineered the call centre's customer relations management.

Managing retention effectively is central to the health and success of any organisation. Even in sectors that do not experience a high level of staff churn or suffer from acute skills shortage, managing the retention of key employees can make a huge difference to business performance.