Investigating employee retention strategies in small and medium enterprises / Nihaara Abdulla Jamal

Abstract:

Small and Medium Enterprises are the real boosters of an economy, and successful development of small and medium enterprises is a vision that the government of Maldives strives to achieve. To realize this vision, SME's need to recognize employee retention as a significant human capital objective in order to grow and develop into a successful business. Employee retention is an important step that will help SME's to achieve efficient relevant Human Resource Management practices that are essential for increasing employee motivation and commitment. The aim of this study is to investigate the motivational factors that help employees to retain in Maldivian SME sector, and the retention strategies that are designed to retain employees by using a theoretical framework of motivational theories and study of related literature. A qualitative phenomenological approach was used as a research design and data was collected through unstructured interviews from three human resource managers and nine non-managerial employees selected from three different SMEs in Maldives. By using content analysis the main themes of each interview were identified in order to summarize qualitative data. The motivating factors and demotivating factors present in SMEs along with the retention strategies were described in the findings. Respondents identified the importance of employee retention to their businesses. The findings have vast implications for owners/managers of SMEs to understand employee needs and apply the motivational strategies that determine effective employee retention in SMEs.