Keeping employees who add value to the organization is one of the big three tasks in managing people. The other two are getting the right people to join and motivating them to do a good job. Research on employee turnover and retention dates back before the Second World War and has since grown astronomically. Professional managers, take heart. You don’t need a deep dive through piles of studies. David Allen and Phillip Bryant have done it for you. What’s more, they have organized the body of findings according to key decisions that managers face in managing both turnover and retention. Note that turnover and retention aren’t quite the same thing, as readers will see. The result of Allen and Bryant’s efforts turns science-based information into actionable knowledge to guide practice decisions.
A practitioner can get real benefit from reading this book in several different ways. First, you can read it with the lens of solving known problems—matters that might be keeping you up at night now. You will find you get a better handle on both why those problems exist and ways to resolve them. Second, read it with the lens of problem recognition—opportunities to make the current situation better by solving unknown problems. You will find yourself becoming more “decision aware,” recognizing the opportunity for gains to be had through more deliberate action where matters were once ignored or left to chance. Third, read it to further develop your own professional practice. This means becoming aware of assumptions and uncritical beliefs that might block your approach to managing people or organizational problems. Our beliefs about human nature and assumptions about organizations develop early and often go unexamined. A goal of science is to help understand the world better, and a big part of that understanding is what we know about ourselves. Science does not provide answers, only facts to inform your thinking. In becoming an evidence-based manager, the most important competence to develop is your own critical and reflective judgment.
Denise Rousseau, Ph.D.
H.J. Heinz II University Professor
Carnegie Mellon University