Employee Retention

PREFACE

The submission of this project is a part of the requirement for the final year

degree of HRM from St. Xavier’s – Kolkata. The project is the result of a research conducted at a very old utility company in Kolkata.

The topic “EMPLOYEE RETENTION IN A UTILITY COMPANY” was specifically conceived in order to understand the employee retention strategies in place and possible motivators and de-motivators pertaining to employee retention. This intention called for an extensive research to understand the sector as well as the existing processes in place in the company.

The ultimate goal of the project is to ascertain the loopholes in the current system, recommend changes and try to ascertain whether there was any impact of the retention strategies on the performance of the employees.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It would have been an impossible task to conduct this research, without the support of my mentor, teachers, employees in the utility company and undying support of my classmates and parents. Hence I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone.

I would like to thank St. Xavier’s College first and foremost for providing me with an opportunity to conduct this study.

I would like to express my gratitude towards Prof. B.N. Ghosh my mentor without whose direction and support this project would not have seen the light of the day.

I would also like to thank Prof. Ajay Bhar and Nilanjana Ma’am who helped me with their valuable insights.

I would also like to thank the employees of the utility company, for taking out their valuable time to help me gather information for my research.

Lastly, I would like to thank my parents as well as my classmates both of whom have been extremely supportive over the past few weeks.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE

Pg No.

Preface

2

Acknowledgement

3

Declaration

6

Executive Summary

7

INTRODUCTION

8-13

1.1 PROJECT

8-10

1.2 ABOUT THE SECTOR

11

1.3 ABOUT THE COMPANY

12-13

LITERATURE REVIEW

14-21

2.1 Introduction

14-15

2.2 Why do employees leave

15-16

2.3 Factors affecting employee retention

16-21

RESEARCH

22-23

LIMITATIONS

23

FINDINGS

24-46

3.1 Overview

24

3.2 Brief on Important Organizational Processes

25-32

3.3 Current Initiatives for Employee Retention

32-41

3.4 Impact of Retention Strategies on Job performance

41-42

3.5 Philosophy of GM of HR

42-43

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3.6 Comparitive Analysis ( GM vs HRD dept personnel)

43-46

ANALYSIS

46-50

RECCOMENDATION

50-51

CONCLUSION

51-52

APPENDICES

53-56

BIBLIOGRAPHY

57

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DECLARATION

I, Miss Akriti Shah hereby declare that the project work titled “Employee Retention in a utility sector company" is an original work done by me in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the final project of HRM degree. The work was carried out under the tutelage of Prof. B.N. Ghosh Sir (Project Mentor)

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Date: 29 /05/2017 Akriti Shah

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EMPLOYEE RETENTION IN A UTILITY COMPANY

I had personally always been intrigued with the concepts of motivation and had wanted to explore more about the factors that lead to the decision of an employee of staying in a particular organisation or leaving one opportunity for some other better opportunity.

This topic of “EMPLOYEE RETENTION IN A UTILITY COMPANY” was born out of a heated discussion with one of my classmates, who was adamant that it was the difference in salaries which was the driving force for shifting, as a novice to this corporate world I was unaware that while poaching of talents takes place the remuneration offered is about 20-30 percent more than in your existing job. I, on the

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other hand, thought that it was rather a combination of other factors and not just pay-hike that motivated an employee to switch jobs.

Hence I set out to explore all about the factors in depth.

The objective of this project is to find out possible loopholes in the current policies and retention strategies, moreover, an attempt is made to establish whether the retention strategies have impacted job performance or not.

INTRODUCTION

1.1 PROJECT

According to LBW Consulting (Leadership in Business,