Employee retention management in the context of situational leadership

Abstract

The way employees are managed is fundamental to modern organizations. Employees are the most valuable and productive resource of any organization. When they leave the organization, they take knowledge, experience, culture, and the system of values with them, which significantly limits the effectiveness and competitiveness of the organization. The phenomenon of employees leaving now affects most organizations. Employee retention, especially referring to those employees with high potential, is one of the biggest challenges for modern managers. The problem raised in the article concerns the impact of the situational approach to employee management on their attachment to the organization. The author’s goal was to determine the importance and role of situational leadership in building retention strategies. It was assumed that the flexible selection of management style, taking into account competences and professional experience, may contribute to a stronger identification with the organization and staying in it for longer. The article was prepared based on a critical analysis of the latest literature on the analyzed issue. The issue of employee retention and the factors taken by organizations into account to retain employees (in particular those most talented), were presented. The idea of the situational leadership model was discussed. Attention was paid to its poor dissemination and, at the same time, its usefulness in the era of growing dynamics, non-linearity, and uncertainty of the organization’s functioning conditions. It was shown that the situational leadership model creates the possibility of building more comprehensive retention strategies based on subjective mechanisms of flexible impact on employees. The situational leadership methodology allows one to deal with the variability of operating conditions by preparing different management styles and different scenarios. The answer to the challenge of key employee retention can be the strategy of managers taking into account the relevant retention factors using the situational leadership methodology and integrating them into a primary business strategy.