Employee Engagement & Retention

Here is SHRM’s definition: “Employee Engagement and Retention refers to
activities aimed at retaining high-performing talent, solidifying and improving the
relationship between employees and the organization, creating a thriving and energized
workforce, and developing effective strategies to address appropriate performance
expectations from employees at all levels.”

Key Concepts:
• Approaches to developing and maintaining a positive organizational culture
(e.g., learning strategies, communication strategies, building values)
• Approaches to recognition (e.g., performance or service awards)
• Creation, administration, analysis, and interpretation of employee attitude surveys
• Creation, planning, and management of employee engagement activities
• Employee lifecycle phases (e.g., recruitment, integration, development, departure)
• Employee retention concepts (e.g., causes of turnover) and best practices
(e.g., realistic job previews [RJP])
• Influence of culture on organizational outcomes (e.g., organizational performance,
organizational learning, innovation)
• Interventions for improving job attitudes
• Job attitude theories and basic principles (e.g., engagement, satisfaction, commitment)
• Job enrichment/enlargement principles and techniques
• Key components of, and best practices associated with, performance management systems
• Methods for assessing employee attitudes (e.g., focus groups, stay interviews, surveys)
• Principles of effective performance appraisal (e.g., goal setting, giving feedback)
• Retention and turnover metrics (e.g., voluntary turnover rate)
• Types of organizational cultures (e.g., authoritarian, mechanistic, participative,
learning, high performance)
• Workplace flexibility programs (e.g., telecommuting, alternative work schedules)

Maintaining an engaged and satisfied workforce and a culture that employees perceive
to be positive is an important function of HR. Employee turnover, along with poor
performance is costly and also disruptive.