Employee retention has become an increasingly important concern for organisations navigating today’s changing workplace. Considerable investment is made in recruitment, salaries, employee engagement, benefits and professional development, yet organisations continue to face a persistent challenge: understanding why some employees develop a genuine desire to remain and progress, while others leave or stay without feeling meaningfully connected to their workplace.
The BEVRA Framework, proposed by Dr Ben Bander Abudawood, Associate Professor and Senior Educator, approaches this challenge from a broader perspective.
Rather than viewing employee retention primarily through turnover figures or length of service, the framework considers the wider experiences that shape the relationship between an individual and an organisation. It explores the conditions that may influence whether employees feel connected to their workplace, able to contribute, recognised for what they bring, willing to remain and optimistic about their future within the organisation.
BEVRA is built around five related dimensions: Belonging, Empowerment, Value, Retention and Advancement. By bringing these dimensions together, the framework proposes a people-centred way of examining sustainable organisational membership and its potential connection with organisational performance over time.
At the heart of the framework is an important distinction: an employee who remains with an organisation is not necessarily an employee who wants to remain.
There can be many reasons for staying in a job. Financial responsibilities, personal circumstances, uncertainty in the employment market or a lack of attractive alternatives can all influence a person’s decision not to leave. Consequently, low turnover alone may provide an incomplete picture of the quality of an organisation’s relationship with its workforce.
Employees can remain in their positions while experiencing dissatisfaction, limited attachment, poor wellbeing or few opportunities to develop. BEVRA therefore encourages a wider examination of the employee experience rather than assuming that continued employment automatically represents a healthy organisational relationship.
Belonging represents one of the central dimensions of this experience.
Organisations are more than systems for distributing work. They are social environments in which individuals build relationships with colleagues, managers, teams and professional communities.
The experience of being accepted and included can consequently shape how employees understand their place within an organisation. In the BEVRA Framework, Belonging reflects inclusion, interpersonal connection, acceptance and the sense of being a legitimate member of the organisational community.
The distinction between working for an organisation and genuinely feeling part of it is significant. Two employees may hold similar positions and perform similar responsibilities while experiencing their organisational membership very differently.
The next dimension, Empowerment, focuses on employees’ ability to exercise meaningful agency within their working environment.
Employees may possess extensive knowledge, professional expertise and practical experience, but these qualities do not necessarily mean they feel able to influence decisions or contribute in meaningful ways.
Within BEVRA, Empowerment encompasses autonomy, voice, influence and meaningful participation. It is concerned with whether employees experience a genuine capacity to contribute rather than simply whether formal mechanisms for participation exist.
This is particularly relevant because organisations frequently introduce employee surveys, feedback channels and consultation processes as evidence that employees have a voice. Yet having a mechanism through which people can speak does not necessarily mean they believe their views are heard or have an impact.
BEVRA consequently draws attention to the difference between organisational structures and employees’ lived experiences of those structures.
The third dimension is Value.
Employees constantly interpret signals about how their contribution is regarded. These signals can emerge through managerial behaviour, recognition, fairness, access to opportunities, respect for professional expertise and everyday interactions across the workplace.
Within BEVRA, Value concerns the extent to which employees perceive their knowledge, effort, contribution and presence as recognised and respected.
This makes the concept broader than formal awards or recognition schemes. An employee’s sense of being valued may be shaped by numerous everyday experiences, including whether their expertise is taken seriously, whether their work receives appropriate acknowledgement and whether they believe the organisation recognises what they contribute.
An organisation may therefore have extensive recognition programmes while some employees continue to feel that their contribution is overlooked.
The fourth component, Retention, introduces another important distinction.
Traditionally, retention is often evaluated through measurable outcomes such as turnover rates or length of service. BEVRA approaches the concept primarily from the perspective of an employee’s psychological orientation towards continued organisational membership.
The central issue becomes not simply whether the employee remains, but whether continuing the relationship with the organisation is something the employee positively desires.
This distinction separates staying from wanting to stay.
An employee who remains because of meaningful attachment, positive experiences and a desire to continue contributing has a different relationship with the organisation from someone who stays principally because alternative employment is unavailable or leaving would create significant personal costs.
From this perspective, actual workforce retention can be viewed as a potential behavioural outcome, while the employee’s willingness and desire to remain represent an important part of the underlying organisational relationship.
The fifth dimension is Advancement.
Employees assess their workplaces not only according to what they experience today but also according to what they believe may be possible tomorrow.
Questions about learning, development, greater responsibility and career progression can influence how individuals view their longer-term relationship with an organisation.
Within BEVRA, Advancement concerns employees’ perceptions of meaningful opportunities to learn, develop professionally, progress in their careers and pursue a credible future within the organisation.
This gives the framework a forward-looking dimension. Employees can be satisfied with their immediate responsibilities while simultaneously questioning whether remaining with the organisation will allow them to achieve their longer-term professional aspirations.
An organisation’s ability to offer a credible sense of future possibility may therefore become an important element of sustainable organisational membership.
The significance of BEVRA lies partly in considering these five dimensions together.
Employees do not experience belonging, empowerment, value, retention and advancement in complete isolation. Their working lives involve multiple overlapping experiences through which they continually interpret their relationship with the organisation.
A person may feel a strong sense of belonging while seeing limited opportunities for advancement. Another may have excellent career prospects but feel that their voice carries little influence. Someone else may receive considerable autonomy while feeling that their contribution is insufficiently recognised.
By placing the five dimensions within one conceptual architecture, BEVRA offers a way of examining these related yet distinguishable aspects of organisational life together.
The framework also gives particular attention to employee wellbeing and work–life balance, positioning them as foundational conditions for sustainable participation in organisational life rather than simply additional employment benefits.
This perspective broadens the meaning of sustainable organisational performance.
Workforce sustainability cannot be understood entirely through productivity statistics, performance indicators or turnover figures. The conditions under which employees continue participating in organisational life also matter.
An employee who remains productive while experiencing prolonged exhaustion or an unsustainable relationship between work and personal life presents a different picture of organisational sustainability from an employee who is able to contribute while maintaining wellbeing over time.
BEVRA therefore places the employee experience within a broader discussion about what sustainable organisational participation may require.
Another notable element of the framework is its emphasis on the potential gap between what organisations intend and what employees experience.
Organisations may design policies with positive intentions. They may introduce initiatives intended to promote inclusion, increase employee voice, recognise contribution or support career development.
However, the existence of those initiatives does not automatically demonstrate that employees experience their intended outcomes.
An organisation might consider its culture inclusive while some employees experience limited belonging. Management may believe employees are empowered because consultation mechanisms exist, while employees may feel that their participation rarely affects decisions. Career development programmes may be available while employees perceive few realistic opportunities to progress.
The employee perspective therefore becomes particularly important within the logic of BEVRA.
Rather than focusing solely on whether particular organisational practices exist, the framework directs attention towards how those practices and wider workplace conditions are actually perceived by the people experiencing them.
Belonging, empowerment, organisational support, commitment, career development, wellbeing and employee retention are not new areas of organisational research. Each has been examined extensively within human resource management and organisational behaviour.
The proposed contribution of BEVRA instead comes from integrating related but distinct dimensions within a single people-centred conceptual architecture focused on sustainable organisational membership.
At this stage, however, BEVRA remains a proposed conceptual framework rather than an empirically validated model.
Its proposed dimensions and relationships require systematic empirical examination before conclusions can be reached about the framework’s measurement characteristics, predictive ability or practical application.
This distinction is essential. Conceptual development provides a theoretical foundation, but empirical research determines whether proposed relationships are supported by evidence.
Future research is intended to involve employees as well as HR specialists, HR managers, senior HR professionals and other practitioners whose roles involve working directly with employees.
Such research can examine the dimensional structure of BEVRA, its measurement properties, the relationships proposed within the framework and its potential practical relevance.
Employee participation will be particularly valuable because the framework is centred on experienced organisational conditions. HR professionals can provide a complementary perspective, potentially allowing researchers to compare organisational intentions with employees’ actual experiences.
These comparisons could reveal important differences.
For instance, an organisation may believe that its practices successfully empower employees while workforce evidence indicates that people experience limited influence. HR leaders may consider existing recognition practices effective while employees report feeling undervalued.
Identifying these differences could help organisations move beyond asking whether particular HR policies have been implemented and towards examining whether those policies produce the experiences they were designed to support.
The future development of BEVRA will ultimately depend on empirical evidence. Research may support elements of the proposed framework, identify areas requiring modification or raise questions that lead to further theoretical development.
That process is a necessary part of moving from conceptual proposition towards a framework supported by systematic evidence.
Nevertheless, the questions underlying BEVRA are already relevant to organisations attempting to understand their workforce more comprehensively.
Recruiting capable employees represents only the beginning of the employment relationship. Organisations must also consider what makes continued participation meaningful and sustainable.
Instead of concentrating only on the question, “How can we prevent employees from leaving?”, the framework encourages a wider conversation.
Do people genuinely feel that they belong within the organisation?
Do they experience meaningful autonomy, voice and influence?
Do they believe their contribution and expertise are recognised?
Do they actually want to continue their relationship with the organisation?
Can they see realistic opportunities to learn, develop and progress?
And can these experiences coexist with employee wellbeing and a sustainable relationship between work and personal life?
These questions reflect the broader perspective at the heart of the BEVRA Framework.
#BenBanderABudawood. #BenAbudawood
