Strategies to Reduce Voluntary Employee Turnover in Small Business

Increasing turnover rates are costly to businesses, causing problems with workloads and workflow. The annual resignation rate in the United States has approached 25%, which small business owners cannot afford. Guided by the Herzberg 2-factor theory, the purpose of this descriptive case study was to explore what strategies some small business owners have used to reduce voluntary employee turnover in the United States. Data saturation was achieved after conducting semistructured interviews and document reviews with 4 small business owners in southeast North Carolina who have been in business for at least 5 years and have not experienced any voluntary employee resignations within the past year. Data interpretations from the interview data were derived via an inductive analytic coding process; these interpretations were then triangulated with emergent themes derived from small business owners\u27 policies, procedures, and personnel manuals. Participants noted the need for training, equitable employee compensation, a professional work environment, and open effective communication as the top contributing factors to reducing voluntary employee turnover. The small business owners indicated the use of professionalism contributes to a positive work environment and recognized education as a factor of voluntary employee turnover. Social implications include the potential to decrease voluntary employee turnover in small businesses, thus contributing to the retention of skilled employees, reducing unemployment, and decreasing revenue losses