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A motivated workforce is crucial for the success of an organization. Increasing employee performance is a key ingredient to a successful organization. Effective leaders should therefore be able to motivate their subordinates. How can leaders use vision, empowerment, culture, and ethics to increase employee performance main subject of this thesis. “Vision represents a leader's idealized goal that is shared with followers” (Johnson 2009). Strong visions are inspiring, and associated with higher organizational performance. Transformational leadership articulate an appealing vision of the future, challenge followers with high standards, and provide encouragement and meaning for their work (Johnson 2009). Empowerment is an important element that leaders can utilize to increase employee performance in organizations. Empowerment refers to individuals’ self-motivating mechanisms and consists of meaning, competency, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). Employees who are empowered reported high job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and decreased turnover rates (Sparrowe, 1994; Koberg et al., 1999). Ethical leaders are leaders with right values and strong character that set examples for others and withstand temptations (Freeman & Steward 2006). Ethical leadership behavior has been found promote employee attitudes and behaviors and increase task significance, resulting in improved employee performance (Piccolo et al., 2010). “Organizational culture is defined as patterns of shared values and beliefs over time which produces behavioral norms that are adopted in solving problems” (Owens 1987; Schein, 1990). A strong organizational culture inspires, motivate, and enable employees to perform at a high level and work towards a common objective.

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes of retail sales personnel toward shoplifting as well as toward procedures and devices designed to minimize shoplifting. The study also sought to examine employees' recall of training in regard to shoplifting and its prevention. It was concluded that most of the employees are aware of the high cost of shoplifting to retail stores. The majority of the employees do not define shoplifting in terms of the value of the merchandise taken. Uniformed guards, locked display cases and electronic article surveillance devices were ranked high in terms of effectiveness as shoplifting prevention devices. The majority of employees reported they had received training to prevent shoplifting but also indicated they desired more training in certain areas.

Retention of key productive employees is a major challenge for all organisations locally and internationally because the resulting churn created by replacing employees that voluntarily leave the organisation costs the business both directly and indirectly. The purpose of this study is to determine whether lack of talent management of employees is one of the causes of job dissatisfaction, to determine whether lack of talent management of employees contributes to employees’ intentions to leave an organisation and to determine whether talent management plays a positive part in retaining employees in an organisation. Three main themes are focused on in this report to identify and describe reasons for voluntary employee turnover in business organisations that have a profit objective, namely low job satisfaction and intent to leave an organisation, employee retention and talent management. One of the primary reasons that employees leave their current employer is better compensation from the new employer, however talent management in the form of personal development opportunities, opportunities for employees to use their skills and good career opportunities are important factors influencing an employee’s decision to stay. Factors contributing to a cumulative process of job dissatisfaction include perceptions of job inflexibility and control, employees feeling overworked, excessive workloads, concerns that existing management may not be able to effectively lead the organisation, lack of challenging work and not enough recognition for work performed and a poor work/life balance. Style of leadership plays an important role in affecting the level of job satisfaction and a more democratic style of leadership leads to better job satisfaction than a more autocratic leadership style. Job stress is also a major contributor to voluntary employee turnover as well as negative behaviour by employees feeling stressed at work. Effective talent management is essential to achieving organisational excellence and a driving force for business success. Recruiting the most talented employees may not be the best strategy for effective talent management as high fliers tend to leave organisations more quickly thereby generating significant employee turnover costs. Talent development is a more complex activity than many people responsible for HR in organisations realise. Coaching and mentoring are business tools of the 21st century and mentors enhance and can ensure the professional development and success of existing and new talented employees in organisations. HR personnel can have a positive impact on the value of an organisation through effective talent management by way of performance management, succession planning/decision analytics, targeted selection/talent reviews, development planning and support, career development, workforce planning and recruiting. Ignoring the problem of employee turnover is risky and reluctance by employers to invest resources in order to retain productive talent doesn’t help matters. Despite findings confirming that employees reach a decision to leave their current employer for something better, the leaving process remains a very complex process. The case study in this report found that job satisfaction of employees was a function of remuneration, performance appraisal and feedback, work context and working environment and the affect of leadership. Talent Management of employees in the case study was a function of motivation for superior performance, training and development, job enrichment (variety of jobs), performance reviews and attraction of talent (and opportunities for promotion). Employee Retention of employees in the case study was a function of leadership, employment equity and equal opportunity, and influence of manager (direct superior). All these factors are supported by existing academic findings both locally and aboard. Business leaders are increasingly acknowledging that talent does matter, but finding it difficult to measure precisely how valuable talent is. There are similarities between the reasons why employees in SA and the US leave organisations of their own accord. In SA there is a significant disconnect between what young, talented black employees want from their employer and what most corporate employers were offering leading to the damaging culture of ‘job hopping’. Money hardly played a role in the decisions of 65 percent of black employees that changed jobs at least once out of the three preceding years. Rather, ‘push’ or ‘pull’ factors influenced the employee’s decision such as culture clash and/or hostility at work and/or lack of recognition and the spirit of being an entrepreneur and personal growth/new challenge. Local research has found that the top five variables impacting on talent retention in SA are challenging and meaningful work, advancement opportunities, manager integrity and quality, empowerment and responsibility and new opportunities/challenges. Talent and knowledge management are linked and together form an important source of competitive advantage in the SA context and talent management should be a strategic business priority in order to retain employees for sustainable competitive advantage. The general conclusion of this report is that talent management in the role of employee retention cannot be seen in isolation. It needs to be considered along with factors influencing job satisfaction and employee retention. Results from the study indicate that organisations need to focus on all the above factors of job satisfaction, talent management and employee retention to address voluntary employee turnover in order to curtail the drain of talent from their organisations. These strategies should achieve outcomes such as preservation of sustainable competitive advantage, better motivated and effective employees generating better business results and an increase in value of the organisation as a whole. The research problem investigated in this study attempted to analyze whether lack of talent management of employees is a cause of job dissatisfaction and employee turnover in a specific case study of a regional office of a local South African bank. Existing literature on the subject of job satisfaction; employee retention and talent management does not describe the role talent management plays vis-à-vis other variables.The case study contained in this research could not reach any meaningful conclusions due to a very low response rate to the questionnaire on which the case study was based. Despite this limitation, general conclusions were drawn from existing academic literature and valuable findings extracted from a qualitative analysis of responses to the questionnaire. Recommendations are put forward in this report to guide organisations how to focus on factors that influence job satisfaction, talent management and employee retention which should assist in addressing employee turnover to curtail the drain of talent from local organisations.

M.B.A. / Throughout the world companies are restructuring there processes. Companies are trying to provide a better service to the customers with the same cost or alternatively at a lower cost. The service-profit chain is an equation that establishes the relationship between corporate policies, employee satisfaction, value creation, customer loyalty and profitability. This paper examines the direct relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. It concentrates on the elements that influence employee and customer satisfaction in line with “Heskett’s Service Profit Chain” model.

Abstract Employee engagement refers to what takes place when people are interested in a positive way and when they are excited about their jobs, exercise discretionary behaviour and are motivated to achieve high levels of performance. The present research therefore examined employee engagement of the academic staff in the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges in South Africa. A quantitative design was used. In total, 2 054 academic staff completed the questionnaire. A self-administered 4-point Likert-type scale questionnaire was developed. The data was gathered and then analysed by using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics were used to present the findings. An employee engagement framework, which incorporates the main ideas of the article, suggests a new perspective about how to foster and manage employee engagement in today’s workplace is presented.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Business Executive Coaching Johannesburg, 2017 / This research was conducted to explore the influence of managerial coaching behaviours on employee engagement. Organisations need to retain engaged people who are productive and energetic to achieve the organisational success within an ever-changing environment. This might be enabled through the coaching behaviours of managers. While extensive research has been conducted on managerial coaching as a tool to support people to achieve performance, attain goals of the organisation, manage organisational transitions, and, achieve learning, research is limited on how managers can create engagement through utilising managerial coaching behaviours. Organisations need sustainable interventions that will positively impact the overall engagement of people. The manager is a crucial point of contact with people, and is able to create or destroy people’s engagement. This research has a constructivist or interpretivist approach and uses a case study methodology where five cases were analysed and cross-case analysed by interpreting the experiences of managers and two of their team members selected by extreme or purposive sampling on their engagement levels; in other words, one engaged and one disengaged person was interviewed per case as well as the manager. The findings established that engaged employees have a higher perception of their manager’s coaching behaviours than disengaged colleagues, and that all the managers were highly engaged yet varied in how they perceived their own coaching behaviours, and in turn, how they influence engagement. The managers’ use of a more empowering coaching style enhances engagement and their coaching behaviours influence fluctuating engagement levels, while a reflective practice within managerial coaching enables deeper understanding of perspectives, and in turn, engagement, but is not a common practice amongst managers. Engagement levels were also influenced by; coaching conversations which occur on a continuum from informal to formal; the manager’s coaching ability to create a sense of accountability and ownership; an agile or flexible managerial coaching approach in response to learning or business needs; and, the relationships and presence of the manager. The expertise of managers was valued irrespective of the perception of coaching behaviours or levels of employee engagement. Positive feedback and praise from the manager makes people feel recognised and significant, while the predominant managerial coaching behaviours falls within the performance coaching paradigm. Organisations need to develop the coaching behaviours of their managers to impact on the organisation’s and the individual’s performance, longer term development, skills acquisition, and wellbeing. / MT2017