Enhancing Higher Education Recruitment and Retention through Considering the Employee Voice

Astute recruitment in any industry is a source of significant competitive advantage because hiring high quality performers can have a significant impact on teaching and learning quality, research output and brand recognition alongside reputation enhancement. The challenge that many Higher Education (HE) providers face is how to attract high quality and reliable staff, and subsequently retain them. This is a challenge leadership and managers continually face in what are often administrative heavy days, where personal recommendations can carry a lot of weight given the issues involved if poor hiring decisions are made, even with probationary periods providing a degree of protection in this respect. To better appreciate the forces that motivate employees and then subsequently either satisfy or dissatisfy them this paper considers the case of two of the largest and most well-known Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) providers in Asia and listens to the insights that their staff share. The implications are important for HE institutions and those who run them and are responsible for staffing them, as all too often time demands mean that recruiters get lost in statistics and data and overlook the human dynamic.