HR functions Essay Example

to realize organization productivity.

Among the HR functions, what is most important in this changing workforce and economic arena is t be able to retain the best performing workers. Retention management refers to the strategies that employers use to induce the worker to stay with the company or hence making their desire to leave the company at a minimum.The factors often discussed in retention literature are compensation, career development and training, job characteristics, work environment and work-life balance. Although most of these factors have been gaining importance in the retention literature, compensation still remains to be the most widely researched, however in terms of its ability to retain high performing employees; even very high salaries have not been found to significantly influence turnover (Higginbotham, 1997), while profit sharing and permanent salary increases seem to reduce turnover (Kochanski & Ledford, 2001; Balkin & Gomez-Mejia, 1984).Most of the studies are also quantitative in nature 17 and employed the use of survey questionnaires or interview schedules.

Productivity was also measured in terms of turnover rates and only a handful identified financial performance as influenced by HR functions. The data gathered in this study also heavily leaned towards numerical statistical analysis ranging from descriptive statistics to inferential statistics.The most relevant input that the review of literature elucidated was how the different retention strategies are not all applicable to small businesses and that productivity as direct business outputs have not been studied extensively. Based on these observations, the present study would investigate the kind of employee retention measures of small businesses as it impacts direct business productivity.