pratikkk

MP Guru
Employee Retention of Chevron : Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX Euronext: CHTEX) is an American multinational energy corporation. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries, it is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the world's six "supermajor" oil companies. For the past five years, Chevron has been continuously ranked as one of America's 5 largest corporations by Fortune 500.

Today's complex global environment requires a world-class workforce that reflects the cultures and businesses of countries where we do business. Chevron currently has 40 major capital projects in which Chevron's share is more than $1 billion, requiring additional skilled people across our operations.

Higher energy prices and growth in energy demand have increased investment in our industry, driving greater competition for talented people. In 2007, more than 7,000 new employees were hired. Since 1999, our workforce has grown more than 76 percent to approximately 59,000. Also, our workforce is shifting geographically. In 2007, more than half of our new employees were hired and located outside the United States, up from about 30 percent in 1999.

During 2007, we continued to develop our workforce capabilities through our Invest in People strategies. These strategies are designed to:

Create a world-class, high-performing global workforce.
Develop and manage our employees to help us create the organizational capability to execute our strategies.
Develop leaders who deliver superior results in a diverse, culturally complex global energy company.

Infosys is offering room to experiment and career soul searching to keep employees interested. This route is also working well for multinationals, including Google, who find that offering flexibility and freedom of movement across projects have kept employees glued. While for Wipro, offering restricted stock units and restructuring its hierarchical structure have been the retention strategy over the past two quarters. Google, regarded as the world’s most preferred employer, has been trying to give employees opportunities to participate and ideate for projects on a global level and across specialisations. “We try to get employees to spend 20% of their time on projects other than their primary ones.
E Balaji, director and president of HR firm Ma Foi Randstad said, “Organisations are trying to be innovative in crafting their retention strategies. In addition to traditional perks and benefits like bonuses and financial incentives, they want to offer compelling employee value proposition. Companies are offering attractive perks like holiday travels, and even sabbaticals and higher studies subsidy more widely.

Balaji said, “IT companies are beginning to link retention with generation characteristics. If, for instance, employee average age is under 30, flexi-work arrangements, job advancements, travel abroad and jobs for spouses when relevant are also being added.”

Infosys senior vice-president & global head HR Nandita Gurjar said, “Employee aspirations are now sky rocketing. The challenge in such a market is definitely retention. We are trying to provide an option for hierarchical movement and lateral growth.”

In truth, a solid retention strategy begins long before individual members of staff join an organisation. The image an organisation portrays and how attractive it is to potential employees is crucial. Understanding why employees leave and asking why some people do not want to work for your business or reject your job offers is a useful starting point in trying to determine whether your organisation has a staff retention problem.

After that comes the identification of the reasons behind the retention issues. You can do this by a number of assessments and measurements, including surveys, discussion groups, exit interviews and questionnaires, and one-to-one interviews. Examining staff turnover, stability and retention rates can also help demonstrate the difficulties.

Until the problem can be identified and understood, effective solutions cannot be implemented. However, care should be exercised in using any assessment or measurement as employees may not be totally honest. While staff turnover rates provide an overview of problems without focusing on specific issues, for instance, stability and retention rates are often more helpful – providing an indication of how many staff remain in an organisation as a percentage of those leaving or joining.

So, just why do some staff leave and some stay? The reasons are complex and inter-related and, to a certain extent, are dependant upon individual needs and preferences. The very motives for some staff staying can be the cause of others leaving. It is therefore important to understand staff and to address their needs where feasible and practical.

In order to retain your people, strategies need to be put in place both in the short and long-term. Strategies should in general be applied equally and fairly. For example, flexibility of employment and practices to address work-life balance issues should not be exclusively for staff with family responsibilities. Indeed, many young people and other staff, too, enjoy flexible working practices as they enable them to pursue hobbies and other interests. Nevertheless, some strategies may need to be put in place to address specific groups, including talent.

in most organisations, line managers influence most of the ‘push’ factors that can lead to resignation or retention. These include induction, training, job content, promotion and progression, rewards, feedback, job satisfaction and so on. Good managers usually deliver high retention as a by-product.
Expecting blanket solutions to retention problems at work is unrealistic. A good retention strategy should therefore seek to address both the retention climate of an organisation and the specific measures that address the needs of ‘high risk’ groups. After all, the decision of a valued employee to leave is often a symptom of deeper organisational problems. Retention measures that simply treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause will be expensive and ineffective. Conversely, apparently insignificant things like saying ‘thank you’ and recognising performance can be vital and yet cost nothing.


Traditional views of staff retention are no longer appropriate. It is neither sensible nor possible to offer long-term employment for all, and long service does not equal commitment and loyalty. It is not appropriate to retain all staff and it is the quality, not the quantity, of staff that are retained that is important. Rather than recruit and retain, instead attract, recruit, induct, develop, reward, retain and then separate. There are no quick fix solutions to staff retention, but the problem can be resolved. It requires effort, hard work, commitment, planning, awareness, analysis and a variety of policies. Keeping staff is a challenge.
 
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