Companies in the UK have been urged to adopt flexible retention strategies which take into account the diverse requirements of staff.

A study entitled One Size Does Not Fit All conducted by TalentDrain suggested that staff motivation and attitudes vary along with gender, age and ethnicity, among other things.

For example, the research revealed that women tend to have higher organisational loyalty than their male colleagues, place less importance on salary than them and more value on workplace relationships.

Meanwhile, ethnic minority workers were found generally to place more value on promotion and advancement than white British employees.

"People are different, so rather than adopting a blanket approach to staff retention, organisations need to be more flexible," the authors of the report stated.

In other management advice news, Toby Thompson, a networked learning executive at the Cranfield School of Management, recently told company heads they need to strike the correct balance in terms of the freedom they permit staff over internet use.