Answer

Staff Retention

Liberalization of the global job market has put pressure on organizations to retain their employees. This is because of the intensive competition from other organizations, offering better work conditions and incentives. It is therefore important that an organization retains its employees in order to gain the following advantages.

First, retention is necessary in managing turnover of employees. It is important that employers invest into attracting quality employees. The employees have to be trained and embedded into the organization culture (Bode et al 2015). Afterwards, it becomes the responsibility of the organization to ensure that the employees are motivated and well maintained. Failure to retain employees leads high turnover which is expensive for the firm since it loses all the investments it made in upraising the employee.

Second, retention is cost effective. As noted in the first point, retention has a negative impact on the bottom line. High turnover is not only expensive but also affects the moral of the other employees. As noted by the Society of Human Resources Management, organizations that fail to retain their employees end up reporting increased costs of up to 50% of the total costs spent on annual salaries (Bode et al, 2015). Retention helps organizations trade off the high costs of attracting, hiring and training new employees.

Third, retaining helps a firm maintain productivity and performance. Constant loss of employees could greatly disadvantage a firm through lost labor hours, lost clients and lost resources. Such factors demotivate the whole work team and could lead to underperformance.

In order to remedy this situation, a manager should first ensure that he or she hires the right staff. Most employees could leave an organization because of workplace frustration arising from mismatch. To avoid this, an organization has to attract able employees. Second, the management should create a culture where employees are well compensated and feel wanted (Bryant & Allen, 2013). Such a culture creates harmony and satisfaction among employees.

Efficient and Effective Project Management

The first approach to managing a project effectively and efficiently is by defining project milestones and lifecycle (Heizer 2016). The manager will have to map deliverables and key milestones against resources available. It is also important to define the concept, plan, implementation and closeout of the project in order to enhance planning.

Second, the manager will be required to develop a proper communication plan, system and channel. Communication is basic since it provides clear line information on what needs to be done. This will help reduce chances of mistakes and misunderstanding that would be costly to the project. The communication plan has to prioritize the primary stakeholders and involve them where necessary. Secondary stakeholders should not be assumed but rather communicated to when necessary and appropriate.

Third, the manager has to ensure clear definition of roles. This relates to the working of work teams, their leaders and other stakeholders. For instance, the sponsors have to ensure that funding is available on time, the suppliers have to adopt the just in time principle to maximize on the effectiveness of materials supplied. The workers have to ensure they use resources conservatively while the managers have to apply lean management (Heizer 2016). Applying these principles will ensure a balance between time of completing the project and quality completion. In addition, defining roles reduces team conflicts thus maximizing on the time to complete the project within stipulated timeframe.

Fourth, a project manager should conduct quality audits and quality assurance regularly to establish if the project is meeting required quality standards (Too & Weaver 2014). A project manager should not only concentrate on delivering the project on time, but also ensure quality project. The manager should not sacrifice quality to deliver a project on time. Instead, it is better to delay the project but deliver quality. However, it is noted that a delay in project will lead to increase in costs incurred.