Employee Retention Paper

Identifying Importance of Retention
The key strategy is to select from the new hires those with the best qualifications and also highly exemplify what is to be modeled as a representative of the business by whom they are employed. During the hiring process the employee is thoroughly vetted and briefed on what their job specifications will be, benefits and what expectations will be after they are hired. Once hired, the manager should be sure to identify employee goals, needs, and expectations. The continued investment in employees is essential to prevent unnecessary or avoidable turnover of employees.
Success of Bubba Shrimp Company Retaining Employees
The success of Bubba Gump Shrimp Company’s ability to retain employees comes from early
identification during the hiring process and finding the “best fit” by extending or providing more time to find the most qualified. Once identified, a candidate is required to work observation shift.
Ever potential new hire candidate spends a day shadowing the manager. The mantra for the company is “better hires mean better management trainees”. Furthermore, Steve Moreau, the
director of training and development of Bubba Gump has said “They truly are the right people for Bubba Gump” (Crecca, 2003). The company continues to invest in the employee by meeting their employee’s needs, providing a good work environment, good benefits and incentives, “(the) eight to ten week manager training program emphasizing soft skills”, (Crecca, 2003), and competitive pay, bonus and benefits are the key to success for Bubba Shrimp Company. The most important thing is that the employees are fully developed and feel they are each part of the Bubba Gump family and the customers feel the “care and love.” It seems Bubba Gump has worked this out quite well.

Problematic Retention Issues
Companies which deal with problematic retention issues may need to look at the root causation of these problems.
Five typical reasons for retention issues, according to Michael G. Aamodt are: unavoidable reasons, advancement, unmet needs, escape and unmet expectations. The unavoidable reasons are just that; they are returning to school, death in the family, unexpected illness, taking care of elderly family member or child care. Some of these can be resolved if a business or organization have a successful work/life balance mindset by providing additional support or resources to support employees during these types of personal employee problems or conflicts. Secondly if an employee feels there is no opportunity for advancement they may leave in search of a place where this is available. The unmet needs can usually be identified as “employee’s personality, values, attitudes, philosophy, and skills match those of the organization” (Aamodt, 2015, Pg. 388). This goes along with Maslow’s theory, if the employee does not feel their needs are being met they will look elsewhere. The last two reasons for leaving employment are identified as “escape and unmet expectations”, companies need to be sure that early on the employee is given clear realistic job previews and that expectations are clearly defined. The business or organization’s employees “embeddedness” to their jobs includes the extent to “which the employees fit with the culture of the organization and community” (Pg.
389), the higher the embeddedness the lower the employee turnover. There are many variables which apply to employees which can affect motivation and employee retention. There are certainly outward signs given by employees who show their overall satisfaction or dis-satisfaction with their jobs or overall work/life balance. The success of an organization is factored by how well the manager resolves or identifies the underlying cause for the employee behavior, and creates solutions which address the problem.

Conclusion As a manager I would see that employees have support from the company to enhance this balance. Caring and support can go a long way toward making employees feel satisfied. In creating a well-functioning team and work environment managers must show honesty, respect, fairness, and exhibit the ability to lead while providing dignity to, and trust of, employees and their skills.
When an employee knows what is expected of them and sees that the company provides what they need to meet these expectations it helps create ownership. In addition, when an employee feels that both their intrinsic and extrinsic needs are met, that they are trusted and respected they will be motivated to be a valuable member of the team. Employees who do not receive these things will feel let down, confused, hurt, angry or even act out against their jobs and employer. Once this happens, it takes much, much longer, to re-build morale and get back to being a functioning team with realistic productivity, than it took for the issues to cause this failure. This scenario of downward spiral may even require bringing in a new management team and many new employees to set things right. This will be very costly to the company.
In business as well as most of life, The Golden Rule goes along way. My husband recently was promoted to superintendent over a municipal department. One of the first things he did was to write a department mission statement, goals and values. The values for the department spell out the acronym FIRST CHOICE and highlight what is important to the department. This acronym is;

• F airness
• I ntegrity
• R espect
• S afety
• T eamwork
• C ollaboration
• H onesty
• O wnership
• I nnovation
• C ustomer service
• E fficiency.
Any company would do well to make these values their FIRSTCHOICE.