It is widely recognized by managers that a highly-skilled and motivated workforce is central to the longevity and survival of organizations. According to Mayo’s human relations approach to management, developing and understanding the workforce is arguably the most critical aspect of organizational transformation (Őnday, 2016). As such, it is in the best interest of organizations to ensure workforce retention by keeping employee turnover rates at a minimum. A stable workforce cushions a company from the labor force-related operational constraints and thus guarantees steady productivity and the optimization of quality. Despite the recognition of the critical role of a stable workforce to the operations of an organization, many managers today grapple with the issue of employee retention. Further, managers are faced with the need to meet the primary organizational objectives while maintaining the requisite agility to meet their future goals sustainably. As such, there is a need for strategies for enhancing employee retention.
Employee retention is significantly determined by the recruitment process of personnel. Most organizations have stuck to using traditional interviewing methods when hiring their employees. The classic interviewing method typically focuses on understanding the candidate and thus incorporates hypothetical questions. Human resource experts have found this method to be somewhat objective and as such, it fails to identify candidates with the appropriate attitude and tenacity required to endure the challenges that come with working in this increasingly competitive business environment. A more recent approach, developed in the 1970s, behavioral interviewing promises to improve retention by facilitating the hiring of adept employees with the right attitude for attaining perfect organizational fit. The technique is used by potential employers to evaluate candidates based on the latter’s past experiences to get a picture of their reaction to potential work-related situations. It is founded on the notion that a true reflection of how a potential employee’s future performance is hinged on the employee’s past performance in similar situations. As such, questions in behavioral interviewing are developed around the traits, abilities, and skills required for organizational fit.
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Significance
I chose this topic having realized the challenges that various human resource managers endure trying to retain a skillful workforce. This new method of interviewing potential employees has also been lauded by experts as a plausible solution to the problems stemming from high employee turnover rates. For this reason, I saw the need to explore it further to elucidate its advantages over the traditional and antiquated interviewing approaches. Behavioral interviewing is a form of a structured interview that enables human resource managers to match candidates objectively to their positions and to compare potential employees by asking a specific set of work-related questions and using a similar set of pre-determined scoring scales for the evaluation of all candidates. The technique is straightforward and thus limits the extent of discretion for each interviewer. It thus enables the fare comparison of applicants as they are all evaluated using a similar criterion. Therefore, behavioral interviewing not only promises to improve employee retention but also defend human resource managers against claims of discrimination in selection and hiring (Alonso, Moscoso, & Salgado, 2017) .
Literature Review and Background
Turnea (2018) reiterates the fact that maintaining valuable human resources in organizations presents a daunting challenge to organizations. On the other hand, the willingness of employers to provide lucrative working conditions for their employees compels their competitors to regularly review their hiring and retention strategies (Turnea, 2018) . In a study to determine the differences between structured behavioral and conventional interviews, as well as biases in the ratings of candidates by interviewers, it was shown that behavioral interviewing enhanced the confidence of candidates who also considered their appraisals to be more accurate. Contrarily, conventional interviewing using the traditional techniques was found to have negative effects on the outcomes of the interview (Alonso & Moscoso, 2017) . In a similar study focused on determining the relevance of behavioral interviewing in the hiring process by evaluating its validity as a tool for assessing the abilities of candidates in a selection process, various professionals integrated experimental research centered on the method as the research topic (Kurian, Ribeiro, & Gomes, 2016) . The results of the study also seemed to support the effectiveness of behavioral interviewing in projecting the future job performance of potential employees (Kurian, Ribeiro, & Gomes, 2016). Accordingly, it was concluded that the method is a relevant tool of selection.
Fried and Fotler (2015) reckon that organizations should desist from the habitual application of traditional and potentially outdated hiring techniques. They further espouse the impropriety of using recruitment techniques whose capacity to predict performance have not been assessed beforehand. In some cases, certain hiring and recruitment techniques may favor the absorption of less qualified candidates (Fried & Fotler, 2015). It is generally acknowledged that jobs and organizational environments are dynamic given the inevitability of change. In the same measure, job requirements change from time to time. For this reason, recruitment strategies should be able to take into account these changes to ensure that they are consistent with the requirements of the various jobs that candidates are looking to take up. Hiring processes such as behavioral interviewing has been lauded to have the potential to result in the recruitment of candidates based on their projected fit into an organization. Fried and Fodler (2015) have also linked behavioral interviewing with increased productivity, fewer labor disputes, and reduced employee turnover. Moreover, results from a University of Delaware (2017) study indicate that behavioral interviewing is an excellent predictor of future job performance unlike conventional interviewing. Besides, behavioral interviewing helps to make a vivid distinction between candidates with the right academic qualifications from those with the requisite behavioral tendencies.
It is thus evident from various studies that behavioral interviewing is an effective hiring method associated with the recruitment of highly-skilled candidates with the appropriate mindset and organization fit for the job. The method has also been associated with increased employee performance, fewer labor disputes, and reduced turnover rates in the workforce. Importantly, behavioral interviewing is a fair way of appraising potential employees and thus limits complaints about discrimination in the hiring process. Despite the compelling body of evidence on the benefits of behavioral interviewing over the traditional technique, there is a paucity of studies on the effects of this relatively newer hiring technique on workforce retention. Its effectiveness as potential employee recruitment and retention strategy has thus not yet been elucidated clearly. This creates an impetus for the present study.
Problem Statement
Companies and their human resource departments face considerable challenges with their recruitment and retention strategies. Most of them still embrace the antiquated modus operandi for recruitment which includes the use of traditional interviewing. This method has been shown to emphasize professionalism, competence, academic qualification and the alignment of the applicant’s career goals to company goals. This recruitment strategy, however, seems not to be effective for organizations, especially those whose work environments are highly stressful. Resultantly, human resource managers have to endure high employee turnover rates. The insistence on traditional hiring methods has prevented organizations from bringing on board persons whose emotional, leadership communication, teamwork, creative, and analytical skills are crucial to the longevity of organizations. The use of behavioral interviewing as a recruitment and retention strategy promises to improve employee retention in companies.
Research Hypothesis
This study hypothesizes that “Compared to traditional interviewing, behavioral interviewing has a greater potential to improve employee retention.” Accordingly, the research question is, “Compared to traditional interviewing, does behavioral interviewing improve employee retention?” This research question is interesting and worth studying because answering it could potentially revolutionize human resource management practices. Its answer could offer a substantive solution to companies with typically high-stress work environments such as hospitals that constantly face high employee turnover rates.
Significance of the Research to Readers and Other Studies
The completion of this research project will inspire other studies on behavioral interviewing techniques towards human resource management practice improvement. Readers will gain invaluable insights on behavioral interviewing as a contemporary recruitment and retention strategy. The project will thus serve as a reference from which evidence-based practices may be adopted by companies in their efforts to retain their workforces.
Methodology
Data Collection Methods and Subjects
Interviews and questionnaires will be used to collect the data. The interviews will be reserved for human resource (HR) managers while questionnaires will be issued to employees. The human resource managers and employees included from this research will be obtained from companies known to employ behavioral interviewing as well as those known to use the traditional interviewing method. Being a qualitative study, interviews would be beneficial for data collection especially from a human resource manager as they allow greater chances for candid engagement with the respondent. On the other hand, questionnaires will be issued to employees since a considerably larger number will be included in the study as compared to the HR managers. HR managers will be included in this study owing to their insights on the various challenges and strengths that they have observed with various recruitment and retention strategies. It would also be important to incorporate employees as they are the ones directly affected by the different interviewing techniques.
Sample size
Personnel from ten organizations will be included in the study. Half of these organizations will be those that use behavioral interviewing and the remaining half will be those that use traditional interviewing. From every organization, the HR manager and twenty randomly selected employees will be included in the study. Accordingly, a total of ten HR managers and 200 employees will participate in the study. This number would make up a sufficiently representative sample.
Exclusion Criteria
The study will be limited to organizations with at least 100 employees and with dedicated HR management departments.
The similarity of the Method to Other Studies
Most of the other studies on behavioral interviewing also employ the use of questionnaires and interviews. As such, these methods promise to give reliable results given their extensive use in qualitative research.
Limitations
Interviews and questionnaires are administered to human subjects. As such, there could be a breach of confidentiality. This will be eliminated by seeking ethical approval from the relevant ethics review committee and ensuring that the participant’s responses are anonymized.
References
Alonso, P., & Moscoso, S. (2017). Structured behavioral and conventional interviews: Differences and biases in interviewer ratings. Revista de Psicología Del Trabajo y de Las Organizaciones , 33 (3), 183–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rpto.2017.07.003
Alonso, P., Moscoso, S., & Salgado, J. F. (2017). Structured behavioral interview as a legal guarantee for ensuring equal employment opportunities for women: A meta-analysis. The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context , 9 (1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpal.2016.03.002
Fried, B., & Fottler, M. D. (2015). Human resources in healthcare: managing for success . Chicago, Illinois: Health Administration Press; Arlington, Virginia.
Kurian, S., Ribeiro, N., & Gomes, D. R. (2016). The Relevance of Behavioral Event Interview (BEI) in Selection Processes: A Corporate Sector Study. IUP Journal of Organizational Behavior , 15 (1), 37–48. Retrieved from EBSCO Information Services.
Őnday, Ő. (2016). Human resource theory: From Hawthorne experiments of Mayo to groupthink of Janis. Global Journal of Human Resource Management , 4 (1), 95-110.
Turnea, E.-S. (2018). Attraction and Retention of the Employees. A Study based on Multinationals from Romania. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences , 238 , 73–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2018.03.009
University of Delaware. (2017). Behavioral Interviewing. Retrieved November 5, 2019, from Manyebooks.org website: https://manyebooks.org/download/behavioral_interviewing_university_of_delaware.pdf
