Sustainable Retention Management in Captive Shared Service Centers of Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies

The research paper aims to study offshore employees’ reasons for resigning and the implications for shared service centers (SSC) on the implementation of a long-term employee retention strategy. It sets out to find similarities and differences in employees’ turnover and retention reasons between geographically separate SSCs of the same parent enterprise to ultimately evaluate the SSCs’ retention methods and give a recommendation for further improvement. Recent studies dealt with the expected changes of job profiles in the SSC industry that predict a shift from low-skill work to specialist roles with more responsibilities. It is yet understudied how the transformation of job profiles affects employees’ satisfaction, engagement and commitment towards the company and the ultimate effect on the importance of turnover reasons. This research is framed in a multiple case-study design and follows a mixed-methods approach. Qualitative data allows the identification of pat-terns in turnover and retention reasons as well as an SSC’s retention measures. Quantitative analysis aims to help identify the most important turnover and retention reasons and to validate the findings of qualitative research. Qualitative data is collected through semi-structured interviews with fourteen employees of [enterprise] SSCs in Budapest, Hungary and San José, Costa Rica. Interviewees either represent an employee or an organizational perspective. Quantitative data is collected through an online survey with open participation in both locations. The quantitative results suggest a statistically significant relationship between some of the studied turnover reasons and turnover intention. The results are supported and expanded by the qualitative findings, which additionally explore employees’ perception of the organization in the context of retention management. A further analysis proves the efficacy of the SSCs’ retention measures and suggests that employee involvement is at the core of sustainable retention management. However, additional research is required to better understand the power of each turnover factor to apply a proper focus on the most significant components of retention management, especially in the light of changing job profiles in SSCs.