Investigating the Critical Factors of Employees’ Retention: A Medium Family Business in Egypt

Abstract

A model of 9 Employee Retention factors (6 dependent variables and 3 demographics as moderators) is developed in the context of Family business Medium Egyptian Company. A qualitative method is used via structured interviews with 4 managers working in the company and reveals that only 5 dependent and one moderator are impacting Employee Retention which are: Salary, Benefits, Supervisor Support, Working Environment and Career Opportunities plus experience. monetary and non-monetary factors are important for employees retention, however, considering medium company inside a developing country like Egypt, how is this applied? In most of studies; salary and benefits were mentioned combined in one factor such as “compensation” or “remuneration”, which known as strong retention factor, in this study it must be separated according to the problem, as provided benefits having different effect on employees’ retention than basic salary. Another question was; are the employees demographics having effect on employees deciding wither benefits are more important than salary that impacting their retention? Results approved the necessity of separation between salary and benefits, plus they showed only experience as a moderator matters, in addition, the effect of family business which mainly concerns with work environment factor was not critical as other factors.

The goal of this research is to investigate the critical factors between provided ones. The research also examines (gender, marital status, experience) if they have influence on the employees’ decision-choosing between benefits and salary. The importance of current study is to make a guide for similar contexts to find a way to consider important factors that will help to retain valuable employees. The value of this research is conducting the investigation on non-family members, with disregard of personal reasons or out of control reasons like force majeure.