Influence of Leadership Styles on Staff Retention: A Review of Literature

Prior to the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, majority of people joined organizations and stayed for a very long time, sometimes for the duration of their working lives. This study is a review of the literature on leadership styles and how well they foster staff retention in organizations. The literature review further looks at the relationship between leadership styles and employee retention, which is positively and significantly impacted by leadership style. It is worthy to note that, the more effective a company's leadership style; the more motivated the employees will be to stay there. The non-physical work environment amplifies the influence of leadership style on employee retention. It was found among other things that job mobility and voluntarily changing jobs started to rise sharply, employers started to face the issue of employee turnover, and a corresponding management tool known as employee retention started to be developed. The purpose of the study is to determine how leadership styles affect an organization's ability to retain employees. Leadership style that encourages staff retention should be adopted because of the review of several empirical studies, which revealed a substantial relationship between leadership style and employees' intentions to leave. These findings, together with earlier research, support the assertion that leadership styles have significant impact on employee retention. This review paper possesses the potential to aid HR managers and other decision makers in organizations to develop leaders through training and development programmes with the goal of increasing job satisfaction as well as reducing staff turnover rates.