International Research Journal of Education and Technology

The study focused on perceived retention strategies and intentions to leave among employees in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. The study focused on private telecom organizations (Airtel, Globacom, MTN, and 9Mobile) and how they affect employees’ intention to leave. The study became necessary as the organizations are perceived to have been experiencing outbound employee turnover which sometimes jeopardizes management’s efforts at retaining competent and productive workers. The proxies associated with this study were performance-based promotion and performance-based compensation. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and a structured questionnaire was administered to 496 respondents. The hypotheses were tested with the multiple regression analysis using SPSS. The result of the analysis indicates that performance-based promotion and performance-based compensation hurt employees’ intention to leave. It recommended among others that, the management of telecommunication organizations in Nigeria should adopt promotion practices that would be based on relative staff performance and not on a random basis where a lower-level staff is promoted to a higher level regardless of performance or seniority. Employees should be adequately compensated not just with bonuses and commissions, but other fringe benefits that would adequately support and supplement their salaries for any injury suffered in the course of performing their duties because a poorly compensated worker will not be motivated or committed to remaining in the employment of an organization. To reduce staff intentions to leave, telecommunication organizations should improve their working conditions by creating flexible working hour schedules that allow employees to work effectively and still attend to their families and other social responsibilities.

Keywords: Retention strategies, performance-based promotion, compensation, organizational culture