Finding qualified workers is a difficult and tedious process. Every industry has been finding ways to attract and keep its workforce. One of the factors leading to turnover is by adopting bad retention management. Turnover is a perennial problem and to retain talents within the organization requires the process of attracting, career planning, skills upgrading, developing and motivating the staffs. Talent, sometimes also called high potential, high performer or high professional, being identified by the organization, requires training, development, presented opportunities, work challenges and appreciation. People with this special talent are normally in demand as their productivity and other value-added traits exceed their total compensation costs (Rothwell, pp.163).

One of the strategies to retain these talents within the organization is through appreciation. The act of appreciation includes carrying out formal personalised employee development, flexible working arrangement, recognition and rewards. This paper shall discuss in details the influence of recognition and rewards in retaining talents within an organization.

1.2 Objectives and Research Questions

Management is constantly seeking solutions on the provision for the best method to recognise and reward the innovations and achievements of their staffs. In today’s world, most people do not regard money as the best motivator and in fact, they are looking for more. This paper aims to find out:

Objective 1 : To identify the different categories of recognition and rewards

• Research Question 1 : What are the four types of intangible recognition and rewards?
• Research Question 2 : What are the four types of tangible recognition and rewards?

Objective 2 : To identify an effective recognition and rewards program to retain talents

• Research Question 3 : What are the elements of an effective recognition and reward program?
• Research Question 4 : How to develop an effective recognition and reward program?

1.3 Overview Of Chapters

In the first chapter, this paper discusses about the background issue of turnovers within any organizations. The objectives and the research questions of this topic are identified as well. The second chapter relates the theories by past researches and a research framework is developed. In the third chapter, the methods used to identify the research questions are explained and implemented. Chapter four shall provide the findings and analysis derived from the applied research methods. The final chapter concludes and reflects on the findings of this study.

Chapter 2 : Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

Definition of Talents

The term ‘talent’ may means differently between organisations based on their strategic goals and objectives. High potential, high performer and high professional in this pool of talents have been defined by Roth well (2010, pp.128) as :

High Potential (HIPO) :

People who does at least acceptable work but promotable to the next level when expectations are met;

Doing at least acceptable work but are capable of promotion to two or more levels higher within five years based on objective assessment;

Capable of being promoted to CEO in the future;

Well matched to the organizational leaders’ definition of HIPO which may be specialized.

High Performer (HIPER)

People who consistently outperform the average and measurable performance level of workers in their job categories;

People who are the most outstanding performers based on objectively assessed measures of productivity in their job categories.

High Professional (HIPRO)

People who are experts on specific problems, challenges or issues that confront the organization;

Unique and important organizational work processes;

Specific technical or functional competencies of the organization;

The history of the organization and how the organization overcame past.

These groups of high flyers call for special attention from their managers and specific arrangements from their organisation to develop their career advancement.

Definition of Recognition and Rewards

Smith (2001, pp.161) defines recognition as a form of sincere praise or appreciation given to an individual by another and reward as the earned item of value presented to an individual for successful accomplishment of a particular service, task or mission. Recognition and reward program has always been an effective strategy for retaining employees and it normally do not cost much and not very time-consuming. Informal recognition and reward program can recognize outstanding performance rather quickly while formal program develops the performance growth in a long term basis. A wel