Employee retention is one of the biggest challenges of businesses today. Attracting the best talent is an arduous task, but retaining these employees is even more difficult. Increasing globalization has made this even more difficult, as employees are ready to shift jobs and relocate to any part of the world.

Today, even the best companies are plagued by high employee turnover. One way to tackle this problem is to understand what employees want from an organization. There could be many reasons for employee turnover. There are two main aspects to employee turnover: what drives good employees away, and what is attracting these employees in other companies.

Surveys are an effective way of knowing about employees reasons for leaving a company. While exit interviews are generally used, they are a delayed way of knowing an employees reasons for leaving. Employee retention surveys are more effective in determining the exact reasons an employee remains with or leaves a company.

Employee retention surveys aim to determine the current employee satisfaction levels. When conducted over time, they can also track changes in the level of satisfaction, and also the reasons for the changes. By acting on these reasons, the company can not only improve employee loyalty, but also productivity and morale.

Employees who leave a company are generally dissatisfied with some aspect of the company, including corporate culture, training, supervisor relations, work environment, pay and benefits, communications, feedback, leadership, supervision, corporate vision, career growth, or for any other reason. Surveys help determine the exact problem. A typical employee retention survey questionnaire would contain questions relating to the employment characteristics; the roles, duties and responsibilities of the job, the employees attitude towards the job, satisfaction levels, loyalty, motivation, morale, commitment and other tangible as well as intangible indicators.

Employee retention surveys can be conducted by the HR department in-house. However, there are many companies these days that specialize in conducting employee retention surveys. These companies offer highly specialized survey services using web technologies, advanced statistical techniques, and software tools for faster and more accurate analysis. The surveys can be custom designed to suit the organizations preferences. They can also be filled online by employees, which would make the analysis much faster and easier. The companies also offer advice for effective employee retention based on the survey results.