The chapter explores how firms collectively and separately coped with the retention constraints and continuous adaptation to the challenges and the dynamic effects of the industrial ecosystem, which had an essential effect on firms’ and government policy responses. It reviews how the challenges of retention and building an industrial workforce were overcome through a nuanced combination of factors and market and non-market labour solutions, focusing on industrial parks as a case study of the Ethiopian apparel and textile sector. The chapter focused on investigating how firms sought to address the binding constraint. Moreover, it explored how government policies responded to labour retention and, in broader terms, the development of the industrial workforce. This chapter provides empirical evidence and a review of the firm-level and industrial ecosystem of the work environment and living situation, including the major causes of the labour retention problem, how firm managers sought to cope with the retention challenge, and how government policies approached the issue. It also reviews workers’ evolving attitudes and perspectives concerning living and working conditions and their response to productivity-improvement schemes. The chapter also reviews the variation among firms’ human resource and production management practices and offers some insights on issues common to all firms. Work and living environments directly and indirectly affect the retention and building of the industrial workforce. These insights have significant implications for African industrialisation and industrial development strategies.