Motivating Staff Over the past decade, there has been tightening of Labor markets and the cost of replacement that comes with filling job vacancies have been rapidly shooting upward over the years. An effective response that can assist workforce managers to solve this problem would be developing a fully integrated retention policy. An integrated retention policy shapes the retention initiatives that are focused using information that is relevant to the problem. (Steel, Griffeth, & Hom, 2002). To determine the success of efforts made by tech companies to gain new and valuable capabilities connected to technology, retention of certain human capital types is very important. Status, commitment, and autonomy have proven to affect the retention of employees positively (Ranft & Lord, 2000).

High technology companies operate in unpredictable markets and undergo increasing rate of growth and change. High technology professionals are educated, prefer to stay independent and possess a big part of the intellectual capital of the organization (Murphy & Mateyaschuk, 2000). Employees do their best to maintain a relationship with high technology employees because experienced candidates are generally limited and to thwart competitor's aggressiveness in recruitment (Dockel, Basson, & Coetzee, 2006).

Best Practices for Employee Retention Within the Technology Industry

Compensation: Money has remained the primary incentive through which professionals in the high technology industry are lured. Although it is not necessary to have high salaries, salaries that are "good" and "fair" are directly related with employees' intention to stay. This shows that provided there is competitiveness in the compensation, the main factor in retention is not rewards. This statement is supported by Ledford and Kochanski (2001), indicating that what the employees are actually paid is not as important as their feelings about pay increases and how they are administered. Employees are concerned with how the system of payments works and what they can do to increase their pay.

Development opportunities and training: High technology professionals have become very scarce. Many companies have come to realize that to build and maintain the knowledge reservoir, proactive measures will be needed (Dockel et al., 2006). For any worker in the information technology industry to survive and stay employable, training is very important. It is important for organizations to make sure that their employees are trained and well equipped to keep up with the latest technologies. Employees remain in companies where career opportunities are promoted through learning as well as being able to put the skills that are learned into practice in a creative environment (Jiang & Klein, 1999). Increase in the level of self-worth and importance is the main process through which it is predicted that training will increase commitment to the organization (Dockel et al., 2006).

Job characteristics: Employees equipped with high technology skills prefer to work on interesting projects that utilize their talents and skills while challenging them. They are aversed by repetitiveness and limited work experience and lack of individual discretion (Kochanski & Ledford, 2001). According to research, the work content of high technology professionals has an influence on the technical workforce stability. If high technology professionals consider their work challenging and one that offers learning opportunities and exchange of information, they are more likely to stay. Engineers, for instance, have more satisfaction in their jobs and more commitment to their organizations than employees do in nontechnical fields (Dockel et al., 2006).

Career opportunities: Trends in the labor market in the information technology industry have continuously presented increased job opportunity openings for the high technology professionals as well as challenges in hiring and retention for organizations that employ them. Ledford and Kochanski's (2001) survey indicates that job opportunities provide more important retention predictors than all the other types of rewards, followed by opportunities for training and the relationship between the employee and the supervisor. Perceptions regarding the adherence of the organization to practices related to career such as internal promotions, opportunities for training and development as well as security of employment, affect commitment positively.

Supervisor support: Supervisor support in this case is in connection to supervisory behaviors such as recognition and reward, which encourage, and thereby sustain the innovative spirit of high technology employees. Most of the high technology employees are valuable staff who posses very important innovation skills and knowledge on the key products and services. Most of their work is felt and understood without being stated and measuring it is very difficult. According to Ledford and Kochanski (2001), feedback from supervisors and employees is valuable to high technology professionals. Providing employees with the necessary feedback on their...

High technology employees value the feedback from their coworkers and supervisors.
Methods of Assessing Compensation Amounts

Compensation is determined by financial performance. Milkovich and Gerhart (1990) state that firms with sales growth, high accounting profits and growth in shareholder wealth translates to higher pay for their chief executive officers (CEOs). However, the extent covered by such relations seems small sometimes. According to Jensen, Murphy and Baker (1988), the performance of technical jobs, most of the time, has a bigger impact on the success of a firm and replacing it is more expensive and difficult. The effects of salary growth on turnover were most significant for high performers, with low turnover being predicted from high salary growth and low salary growth predicting extremely high turnover in these employees. Once there was control on salary growth, turnover was positively predicted by promotions; the turnover of the poor performer was affected strongly.

After the level of pay is reached, intangible factors such as supervisor support, career, as well as the balance between work and family becomes more important. Additionally, DeYoung (2000) supports the idea that the benefits of retention are of a personal and environmental nature. Example of perks comprise of luxury vehicles for those who exceed targets, allowing high technology workers to have pets in their offices since they spend so much time away from home, gyms at the workplace for employees to exercise and reduce stress as well as playrooms and rooms without noise for improved teamwork.

The size of the organization, number of workers and the volume of sales have a positive impact on the pay (Gerhart & Milkovich, 1990). The explanation to this is that big firms need employees who produce high quality work and their ability to pay is higher compared to small firms. For example, wage theories note that shirking is a problem mostly experienced in big firms since it is hard to monitor the performance of every employee (Gerhart & Milkovich, 1990).

Successful Training and Career Development Plans

Expanding and increasing the efficiency of an individual, a group or an organization through organized learning is known as training. Development, on the other hand, includes the accomplishments through which new skills and abilities are gained for the personal growth of an employee (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013). A perfect program for the training and development of employees must include goal setting, career development, and knowledge. Through these approaches, the program will be more useful for individual employees as well as the organization. Currently, organizations are using Information Technology systems extensively for their learning programs. Information systems and knowledge are moving ahead rapidly and companies that cannot provide their employees with the latest IT information will not survive (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013).

If training is viewed as the provision of skills that are organization specific which make a contribution in economic or status advantage within that specific company but cannot be used in another job that is not within the organization, then a stronger commitment of continuance will develop (Dockel et al., 2006), although perforce. Unless the training includes skills that are organization-specific, there should be little impact on continuance commitment from extensive training. Employees who know the cost of training or feel very appreciative of the acquired skills may start to feel obligated (normative commitment). This will prevent them from leaving the organization until they can at least "reciprocate." They might feel morally obligated to provide service that is worth the organization's money (normative commitment), especially if the training was funded by the company (Dockel et al., 2006).

Procedure for the incorporation of These New Plans

For a start, the company should give the employees competitive remuneration. Dockel et al. (2006), points out that there is a strong and significant connection between affective commitment, normative commitment and organizational commitment. From Ledford and Kochanski's (2001) study analysis, retaining high technology employees relies heavily on pay satisfaction. These findings are evidence to the fact that high technology professionals prefer a competitive salary. There is a positive link between the perception of fair pay, and affective commitment as well as the intention to remain in the company. Since high technology professionals are committed to their teams, group-based pay could have a positive impact on organizational commitment (Kochanski & Ledford, 2001).

There is need to prioritize continuous training. The work of high technology professionals requires the use of several high level and complex skills. Due to this, they get an opportunity to be independent, proficient with their skills and have freedom on the manner in…