By implementing a core of human resource practices, small businesses can increase their employees' commitment to the job and dramatically decrease turnover, according to research sponsored by Gevity HR, Inc., and conducted by Cornell University. These best practices, dubbed by the report's authors as “workforce alignment,” consist of having the right people, having them in the right places at the right time, and having them doing the right things. Workforce alignment also satisfies customers and clients and leads to sales growth and improvements in operational profitability, according to the findings,

At a nearly 75% decrease, retailers experience the most dramatic improvement in the employee turnover rate among industries analyzed by the researchers. Businesses involved in low-skilled services, such as food service and hospitality, see the next largest decrease in their employee turnover rate – close to 60%. Professional services and manufacturing that practice the principles of “workforce alignment” both see decreases hovering around 20%.

While techniques designed to decrease turnover may make for good business, sometimes employees leave even when they are happy. Other factors, such as a shrinking baby boomer workforce, promise in the coming years to bring inevitable loss of valuable talent and knowledge. Fortunately, additional research has identified best practices that improve knowledge retention when retention of the actual employee is not an option.

Retaining Today’s Knowledge for Tomorrow’s Workforce, a report available from nonprofit research organization APQC, identifies 26 key best practices, embraced by top organizations, that help in the retention of knowledge.

• Best-practice organizations assign high-level managers to act as stewards of core competencies.
• Best-practice organizations identify Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and feature them in formal training courses.
• Best-practices organizations develop and maintain a suite of powerful and effective knowledge retention and transfer approaches for the purposes of capturing, retaining and sharing tacit and explicit knowledge.
• Mentoring and apprenticeship programs play a key role in implied, or tacit, knowledge transfer.
• Best-practice organizations engage with SMEs in a more formal, structured manner for the purposes of knowledge retention and transfer.
• Knowledge retention and transfer approaches span the employment lifecycle.