What should companies do to reduce the turnover rate of staff?

I feel that companies firstly need to understand that different employees have different motiavations to working.

A fresh graudate would (in general) seek for career progression, having a good mentor to guide them and serve as a role model and to take on different projects. As millennials, we (whew, I still fall under the millennial category) are used to multi-tasking and have short-attention span and want to be recognised for our efforts put in. We have more drive, are more opinionated and want our ideas heard, therefore involvement would be one way to get millennials to stay in the company. Change is the only constant.

Then you have employees in the 40's to 50's who simply want a job for the sake of the income. They do not want to be disturbed. Report to work at 9a.m., leave at 6p.m. Their motivations aren't incentives, they just want stability and keeping things status quo.

However, what's most important is the synergy of these 2 groups of people. I've worked in a couple of companies previously and the common concern was the mismatch in ideation, causing unhappiness to arise.

So if the bosses are able to ride on the motivations of these groups of employees and find ways to bond these 2 groups of employees, staff turnover should see a significant decrease.

From company to company, I think that the perks and benefits might be similar. I don't think that what makes an employee leave is due to the reasons you stated (at least for those who are working to really gain the experience and develop themselves for the future and not working for the sake of working) Having said that, I'm not discounting the fact that these might be some factors in which employees factor in when joining a company and ofc there is nothing wrong with that...

What would make an employee stay would be based on these factors in my opinion...

1) Management

What I mean by this is the top staff and those holding positions in the company. I have had work experiences before and the constant thing that I hear people talk about is about the management and their ability to

a. make decisions

b. how well they take care of their employees

c. their whole management philosophy

2) Growth opportunities

Some people that I know have plans to grow and learn as much as they can from their career. Hence, employees might leave as they feel that they are able to move on and grow in other areas.

Like I said the benefits and perks that each company can provide will not be exactly the same but might be similar across companies. Hence, I feel that ultimately the management is a crucial factor in influencing whether an employee decides to leave. Hope this helps.