Improving Employee Retention

Human resources are one of the important resources necessary for the attainment of entities goals and objectives (Trevitt and Lewis, 2000).  Human personnel are crucial in meeting the target of business organization and this call for the retention and motivation in order for them to unleash their potential for their personal growth as well as benefit of the entity. As a result, organizations that are focused to achieve their targets must understand the dynamics of employee retention by carrying out assessment as well as corrective measures where necessary.

Need of employee retention

There are numerous reasons as to why a business entity should retain its staff by reducing the employee turnover rate. When an employee leaves a company, the cost incurred in replacing the employee has been found to be a third of the employee's salary. These costs are distributed in the hiring process as well as training of the new employees (Douglas & John, 2010). Furthermore, retaining employees within a business organization has a positive impact on quality since employees get versed with company's processes and operation with time. Additionally, through retention of employees, the business organization is likely to benefit from employee commitment to its goals (Adams, 2010). This is a recipe of success for the business entity.

Despite the need of retaining employees, there rate of employee turnover is high in some organization as exemplified by the JC's casino challenge of having few employees. The reasons that may lead to employee turnover include failure to address the complaints from employees, inefficiency at work, workplace violence and other related risks (Romano, 2010). It therefore behooves business organization to find out the specific reasons that prompt employee turnover and address through the use of known motivation techniques (Branham, 2005).       

Motivation theories

With JC's casino been affected by high number of employee turnover, it is imperative that several motivation theories be explored in order to offer intervention to the understaffing being experienced in the company. Chelladurai (2006) defines motivation as performance that is propelled by either by interest to do some particular task or through the use of some rewards systems.  It is believed that through the use of appropriate motivation scheme, employees are more likely to be retained as there is a strong correlation between motivation of employees and job retention (Nagendra & Manjunath, 2008). There are several theories of motivation that can be used to address the challenges facing JC's casino.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory

This theory of motivation was developed by Abraham Maslow and it asserts that any given behavior could fulfill various functions simultaneously (Nagendra & Manjunath, 2008.) Maslow's further presented this Hierarchy of Needs in a form of pyramid with five stages. The pyramids four lower levels are conceived physiological needs, while the pyramids top stages are regarded as growth needs. However, to satisfy the higher order level needs, one has to first satisfy the needs at the lower level of the pyramid and this will influence behavior of workers as well as their attitude towards work.

Maslow's hierarchy entails that needs should be satisfied from the level of Physiological, Safety, Belongingness, and Esteem to the last being self-actualization. Recalling the case of JC's casino, many dealers who went away regarded Joe as overbearing and this represent employees who could not attain Belongingness to the casino. As a result of this, the employees esteem could not be addressed and this may have prompted turnover. Furthermore, Sneed failure to confront the Joe is a manifest of fear and this hampers any interventions process in the casino.

When employee realize that they are loved and appreciated by the boss at the casino, many of them will grow by exuding confidence in their work and achieving their goals and aspiration as their social needs are taken care of. This can be achieved through proper allocation of work as well as appreciating the role played by each and every worker.  Additionally, each employee must not be discriminated or looked upon as this demoralizes them and thus increasing chances of losing them.  The employee's self-esteem can be improved through promotions of employees who have served well from one level to another or recognizing them for achieving. As a result, JC's casino should create motivation schemes necessary to address the issue of motivation of its employees apart from offering a better pay.

Herzberg's Hygiene Theory

Herzberg put forward this theory as a result of conducting research in workers where he found a set of factors that promoted performance and moral of the employee's. These factors are termed as motivators. On the other hand, there exist a number of factors that tend to prevent the decrease of effectiveness but may not necessarily motivate by themselves (Ferreira, Erasmus & Groenewald, 2010).

The prevalence of hygiene factors within an organization help in the elimination of job dissatisfaction and thus key to the attainment of job satisfaction. For JC's, the large employee turnover can be curbed by establishment of hygiene factors such as job policies and relation with supervisors or colleagues. However, it is the actual motivators that promote job satisfaction and promote productivity of workers. For JC's casino, there is need to address the working condition of the workers as well as the relations with the supervisors. By doing so, these factors will motivate the workers to work hard and thus in the end love their job. This will reduce the cases of employee turnover and thus JC's casino can get employees to recruit. 

Occupational stressors and job satisfaction

Based on the working conditions of JC's casino, it is evident that there are a number of stress factors that negatively influence the performance of employees in their work.  To begin, communication is critical in the establishment of smooth business operation and it entails the mutual between the staff and employees. In the absence of good communication system as in the case of JC's casino, fear takes over and this compromises with the job delivery. The lack of proper communication channel between Joe and Sneed promotes buildup of stress as Sneed is not in a position to address Joe's attitude towards the employees. Sneed need to approach Joe regarding his actions in order to fix these challenges and thereby making employees feel appreciated. With employees doing more work than expected, it is likely that this will lead to employees experiencing stress and fatigue. Tom address this anomaly, JC's casino should employ more worker to correspond to the number of rooms for cleaning. 

Recommendation for improvement of Job satisfaction in JC's casino

JC'casino should strive to improve the employee's job satisfaction and thereby promote job retention in the entity. JC casino should implement good working condition of workers, promote good communication between the management and the staff, initiate recognition and reward systems as well as promote good relation between the employees. These strategies will help provide a suitable working environment that will heighten job satisfaction and reduce negative counterproductive employee behavior such as absenteeism.

Human personnel play a crucial role in the attainment of organizational goals. However, business entities like JC casino face high employee turnover rate due to prevalence of stress factors. Nevertheless, use of motivation strategies can promote job satisfaction and commitment.