Employee retention is a demanding concern of the organization ( Priya Sharma, 2023 ). Employee retention, or the stability of organizational employees, refers to the efforts made by an organization to retain experienced, high-performing employees and encourage them to continue working for the organization. The simplest explanation of retention is that hiring new employees is more costly than training and retaining current employees ( Nandin-Erdene, 2018 ; Mohammad Alzayed, 2017 ; Priya Sharma, 2023 ; Darmayanti, 2024 ).

On the other hand, employee retention can be defined as the art of optimally structuring an organization’s culture, environment, and salary incentives to keep employees engaged for the long term ( Table 1 ).

Source: S. Nandin-Erdene “The Impact of Employee Retention on Organizational Performance” 2018.

From these definitions, retention can be broadly defined as a multidimensional HR activity aimed at ensuring employees remain satisfied and work productively for the organization’s objectives over an extended period.

Researchers J.R. Heckman and J. Lloyd studied the factors affecting employee retention. Their research found that employees are more likely to stay in an organization when the following conditions are met:

Additionally, the social environment, work-life balance, and work design appear to have a favorable impact on employee retention, according to the study ( Shayrine & Venugopal, 2024 ).

Researcher Tsetsegdelger (2016) identified that factors such as social benefits, internal environment, salary, organizational reputation, additional incentives, working hours, team dynamics, and career growth opportunities as influencing employee stability ( Tsetsegdelger, 2016 ).

Saikhanbileg (2013) categorized factors into:

Researchers Beni Widarman, Nur Naha Abu Mansor, and Ayub Hassan in 2005 highlighted five key factors: Organizational change, employee consensus and participation, opportunities for personal development and learning, job structure, and work-life balance ( Flamholtz, 1971 ; Beni Widarman, 2015 ).

Calvin Wakely in 2004) proposed four primary categories for enhancing employee retention: recognition, problems to solve, salary and incentives, and communication ( Flamholtz, 1971 ).

Otgontuya (2016) outlined four groups of factors affecting employee retention: work-related, cultural, personal, and external factors ( Otgontuya, 2016 ).

Nandin-Erdene (2018) assessed retention based on five factors: career development, training, performance evaluation, salary and incentives, and health and safety ( Nandin-Erdene, 2018 ).

Darmayanti (2024) showed that there are six factors that most influence employee retention: recognition, compensation, leader-ship, career development, training and development, and job satisfaction ( Darmayanti, 2024 ).

A 2012 study by the Insync HR Research Institute in Australia, involving over 11,000 employees from more than 40 organizations, identified five factors influencing retention and turnover: structural, work-related, personal, family life, and external environment ( Insync Surveys Pty, 2012 ).

It can be concluded that multiple factors influence employee retention in organizations. While some researchers focus solely on organizational factors, others approach the issue from multiple perspectives. Insync Surveys’ model was selected for our study because it was more comprehensive and included potential factors that could be addressed by the organization’s management to address employee retention ( Figure 1 ).

The demographic breakdown of respondents is summarized below:

This demographic overview provides valuable insights into the workforce composition of Mongolia’s hotel sector, supporting further analysis of factors affecting employee retention.

A factor analysis was conducted using 33 indicators from the study. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) statistic for each factor ranged from 0.62 to 0.83, indicating good sampling adequacy (KMO ≥ 0.5 is considered valid).

To assess the reliability of the factors in the study, reliability and factor analyses were performed for each factor. The Cronbach’s alpha was determined to be 0.7 or higher, signifying that the questionnaire was well-designed and suitable for further analysis. The reliability of Cronbach’s alpha for each factor is presented in Table 3 .

Correlation analysis was conducted using Pearson’s correlation coefficient to evaluate the relationships between variables. The primary goal was to determine the closeness of the relationships among several variables. The results of the Pearson coefficients are presented in Table 4 .

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

From Table 4 , it is evident that job stability and other influencing factors have a significant positive correlation, which indicates the feasibility of performing regression analysis.

Based on the results of the correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed to explore the relationships between the influencing factors.

The results revealed the following:

1) Work-related factors (e.g., job satisfaction, career opportunities, and professional development) have a strong positive influence on job stability.

2) Structural factors (e.g., organizational environment, pay, conditions, and incentive plan) also have a strong positive impact on job stability.

3) Interpersonal factors (e.g., managerial support, relationships with work team, and work-life balance) significantly affect job stability positively.

The regression analysis results are detailed in Table 5 .

Note: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; *p < 0.1 is significant level at t-value > 1.96.