THE IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT

Keeping employee turnover below target remains one of themost challenging issues facing modern day organisations.Whilst organisations look at various strategies to address theturnover challenge, the role of the manager/supervisor onemployee turnover and retention remains one of the mostunderestimated and under-valued factors considered in attemptsto address the challenge. It is often in the operatingdepartments that problems that results in turnover firstemerged, therefore manager/supervisors are best positioned forearly detection and to proactively address these problems.The researcher is further of the opinion that managementpractices contributes greatly to people’s decisions to stay with orresign from the institution and that if these practices can beaddressed greater retention will result. Therefore, even thoughthere is no guaranteed way of making everyone happy,numerous studies proved that in general, there are certainfactors that contribute to successful recruitment and retention ofemployees. These include pay, benefits communication, trustand ethics, support, role clarity, job satisfaction, quality ofleadership; empowerment; teamwork; trust and ethics;professional growth and career development; rewards andrecognition; job performance; life balance; diversity ;commitment; internal and external equity and good co-workerrelations.All the above are factors that either forms of themanagers/supervisors direct responsibilities or they are inpositions to greatly influence these factors. The researcherivtotally agrees with authors that argue that the manager’s jobgoes beyond passive reaction and adaptation and it is amanager’s responsibility to make what is desirable first possible,than actual.Except for the obvious financial costs resulting from turnoverthere are also hidden costs for the organisation which are knownas the consequences of turnover and will include amongst other,productivity losses for the organisation, negative impact on thequality of customer service, the negative impact on the moraleof the remaining employees and the disruption of the social andcommunication network within the organisation.Through this study the researcher wants to examine and gainmore knowledge on the impact of management practices onstaff retention in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature and to comeup with suggestions as to how managers can change or bettertheir conduct to contribute to staff retention in the institution