Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Technical Employee Turnover Reduction Strategy Development

Generally speaking, high employee turnover can be a significant expense for large corporations and can be crippling to smaller firms. Costs of turnover include lost productivity, on-boarding costs, and training expenses. It is reasonable to assume that turnover can be especially expensive for technical employees such as engineers and scientists because of the critical and complex nature of these positions. Consequently, improving technical employee retention would be very beneficial to any company.

The goal of this project is to identify a strategy that has the potential to significantly reduce turnover in technical positions. In order to complete this task, this report will focus on three distinct aspects that contribute significantly to job satisfaction: financial (e.g. salary), technical (e.g. challenge), and management (e.g. autonomy). If a single, ideal blend of these aspects does not exist for technical employees, it may be possible to make generalizations or to break recommendations down by population segment (e.g. gender, age, industry). In order to keep any conclusions relevant, every attempt will be made to quantify savings (or losses) associated with particular retention strategies, or the lack thereof. The target audience (i.e. key stakeholders) for this project will be technical managers, especially those defining employment strategies or directly supervising technical employees.