Abstract
The Information Technology (IT) industry is currently faced with a shrinking pool of skilled IT employees as a result of the increasing demand for these employees. This increasing demand has put organisations under pressure to start devising retention strategies in order to retain the targeted employees. This paper is based on the study that was done in the IT department of one of the leading banks in South Africa. The study was conducted in order to understand the leadership's view on employee attraction and retention, and how these can be used as tools for reducing skills shortages in the IT department of the understudied bank. Findings of this study, which followed a qualitative methodology, indicated that high employee turnover is the main contributor of the skills shortages within this department. The non-existence of a proper retention strategy is making it difficult for the leadership team to identify the type of skills that are critical to the organisation and to retain such skills.