Retention factors perceived by software development employees in Taiwan

Attracting and retaining IT staff in Taiwan is a human resources issue. The purpose of this paper is to identify important retention factors and their relationships with software development employees’ decision to remain with their company in the IT industry in Taiwan. Six research hypotheses were established and an online web-based survey was conducted. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and regression analysis were conducted with 415 returned surveys. The contribution of this paper is that in the Taiwanese context retention factors of fair remuneration, career development, recognition, autonomy, and workplace flexibility are found to have a positive relationship with decision to stay but, surprisingly, challenging work does not. These findings offer managers of human resources in the IT industry in Taiwan a deeper understanding of the needs of their software development employees and know how to manage them for a long-term employment relationship.