Advancing Strategies for Developing Employee Retention: A Two-Factor Model Approach

Abstract

In this study, we reviewed 20 years of literature on factors for employee retention. We wanted to know if Edward Lee Thorndike’s law of effect was related to employee retention. We also wanted to know if Ivan Pavlov’s discovery of the classical condition was related to employee retention. No studies were found with either “Edward Thorndike” or “Ivan Pavlov” AND “employee retention” in the title of the article. However, we found that their discoveries are fundamental to advancing strategies for developing employee retention in a two-factor model approach. We argue that organizational policies constitute the component loadings of two dimensions of employee retention. Our two-factor employee retention model represents the cumulative satisfying effect of organizational policies that lead an employee to “stay” or the cumulative discomforting effect of organizational policies that lead an employee to “leave” the organization. We proffer recommendations on how our two-factor model can be empirically tested; in the APPENDIX, we provide a 7-Point Likert-type scale with 72 items that can be used by any scholar interested in this line of research.