EMPLOYEE RETENTION IS THE FOREMOST PROBLEM; which all organizations are now facing in the global competitive environment. Especially the GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariff) underlines subject matter's importance for developing IT sector of Pakistan market. From the dynamic roles of Manager till the inventions taking place in the industry…the one single strategy that can insure the competitiveness of any business is Retention Strategy .i.e how well you are equipped to keep your key employees on board. Bearing in mind the various dynamics and future trends of IT sector in Pakistan below I am suggesting a recipe which should be followed as a Core Strategy for business development.

(1) Paternalistic 'Status quo':

Employer-employee relationship to reduce rate of employee turnover. This was dominant up to 1980's.

(2) Focus on providing hygiene factors:

However job mobility and turnover of employee increased due to changes in job market and opportunities outside the organization. People did not remain with one employer for long or for career in working life, so employees started voluntarily leaving the organizations. Thus to retain employees, organizations laid emphasis on providing. Hygiene factors (Herzberg two factor theory of motivation) i.e. compensation, benefits and physical aspects of working environment (health, safety and comfort) at workplace. The focus was to reduce employee turnover and also to workout data i.e. to maintain turnover rates on regular basis in the organization.

(3) Thrust on motivating factors:

Then came another change when emphasis of employers became dominant on motivating factors (Herzberg) such as:

Feeling of achievement.
Recognition.
Challenging work itself.
Career advancement.
Increased responsibility.
Opportunity for growth as a person.
The emphasis was equally on growth or higher order needs of A. Maslow social needs (affection, friendship, acceptance, belongingness in work group), esteem or ego needs (status, recognition, self-respect, etc.) and self--actualization needs (growth, achieving one's potential, self--fulfillment etc.)

(4) Improvement in quality of work life:

Later organizations started providing various job--redesign and improvement in quality of work life (QWL) measures to enable individuals to satisfy variety of needs. These measures are meaningful work, challenge in learning and problem solving, control over one's job, a chance to collaborate with one's colleagues. Nature of work one' is involved has a profound impact on shaping individual's personality, determining performance, commitment and job satisfaction.

(5) Building organization culture:

Other areas of focus have been j such as making compensation rewards and benefits more competitive so as to have a difference with other organizations and also building organization culture.

(6) Retention factors for knowledge workforce:

According to J. Leslie Mckeown, the current approach in employee retention is to lay emphasis on following factors in know ledge era.

(a) Core competencies and out sourcing stratategies:

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel emphasized that organizations have to adopt core competency model (i.e. skills and activities that are essential to an organization's success) and must do well to formulate a competitive strategy. Organizations will focus on hiring employees only for their core activities and will be purchasing non-core products and services externally. This trend is continuing.

(b) Concentrating on perfor-mance related rewards:

Concentrating on performance related reward systems to meet expectations of employees who have their own core competencies (knowledge workforce) and provide them work-life balance programs. Employer has to attract high caliber individuals and keep such individuals who can perform the organization' s 'mission-critical' (core-competencies) tasks. Employer has to offer different 'retention stimuli' in winning potential employee and not allowing him to go elsewhere. This is also referred as 'employee value proposition' approach, which emphasizes the benchmarking activities and involving organizations in adopting the employee retention best practices of similar organizations.

(c) Employee retention strategy, an 'employer of choice':

Employee retention concept of becoming an' employer of choice' or 'building company image.' It lays emphasis as under:
Process of becoming an employer of choice begins before hiring highlighting in recruitment literature i.e. advertisement, product branding, company image, management reputation and other releases for public. The object is, to attract right employees.
It is important what management says and does after hiring, Process continues aspect for retention (beyond the hire stage) to include, treatment with employees, their development efforts and they feel a t home etc.

Another aspect is to develop retention mindset in the leadership for building a welcome environment when people want to stay. It is developing a retention culture -a retention way of life. It is about creating a genuinely welcoming place, where employee's love to work based on credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. It is good performance management process, which can help improve retention such as-
Use of role clarity and annual review of goal achievement,
Use of performance appraisal mechanism to measure those goals.
Employer's mentor / coach role to encourage and advise to produce enduring, productive employee-employer relationship.
Jim Collins - author of 'Built to Last and Good to Great' - explains the first key to success is indeed people. You have to find the right people first, the vision and strategy can follow.

The writer is an HRM - Research Associate at Muhammad Ali Jinnah University (MAJU), Islamabad. Besides specialized in MBA Finance (Peshawar University) and MBA IT (MAJU), he is serving in an Islamabad based IT solution company and can be reached at iamanwaar@gmail.com.