Perceived success of staff retention strategies in South African businesses

To remain competitive, organisations must continuously adapt to their global environment. Hill, Schilling and Jones (2018:81) identifies various key factors with human capital being a key contributor to attaining a competitive advantage. Against this background, the focus of this study was to investigate the organisational factors that impact on the success of employee retention strategies. The drivers in the model adopted for this study included: staff compensation, organisational culture, leadership, career development, staff empowerment and value-based staff recognition. The purpose of the study was to understand the perceived effectiveness of retention strategies in South African businesses. An overview of the literature was provided whereby the importance of retention as a source of competitive advantage was highlighted. The literature identified six strategies that would reduce turnover, and thus have a positive effect on the perceived success of staff retention. The six independent variables, namely organisational culture, staff empowerment, value-based staff recognition, staff compensation, leadership and career development formed the foundation of the theoretical framework.The research paradigm adopted for this research was positivistic and the methodology was quantitative research. The primary data was collected via a survey in a self-administered questionnaire format. Non-probability convenienceand snowball samplingwas used,and the questions were formulated from existing measuring instruments in the literature. A sample size of 237 respondents was surveyed.The statistical data analysis methods included frequency distribution, correlation and multiple linear regression to evaluate the relational aspects of the model to measure the determinants of the success of staff retention.The findings of the study revealed that five variables, namely strategies related to value-based staff recognition, staff compensation, organisational culture, leadership and career development, were significantly related to employee retention. A positive relationship between all the variables and retention was proved in this study