The Global Business Environment

The global business environment has become more complex, innovative and competitive, driving the demand for the finest talent. Moreover, imminent labour storage, due to among other things demographical concerns and the increasing mobility of people on the labour market will affect the possibilities to attract and retain employees with valuable key competencies (Judge and Church, 2000). As a result, Saari and Judge (2004) observed that many organisations and their management invest heavily in talent and competency management and development because it is known to be one of the most effective ways of attracting talent and keeping already existing employees. Additionally, there are various attractive compensation, training and development, and growth opportunity packages on the job market meant to retain employees (Ramlall, 2004). In spite of this effort, there are cases where employees are lured by rival organisations. When this happens, the investment made is lost to the rival company who benefits from the experience and development of the new employee. The Nigerian banking industry after the 2008 financial sector consolidation has particularly experienced very low employee retention rate. As Uneke et al (2008) puts it ''it appears employees are cultivating the habit of just spending a few years in one job at a time''. This situation has become a major concern to industry players, who have resorted to high salary packages with the aim of retaining employees. In order to examine the situation with the view of proposing a permanent solution, this dissertation proposes to evaluate the drivers of employee retention in the Nigerian Banking industry