In the industrialized countries, it is being noticed that people are no longer working for the basic need of living alone. Money is no longer considered as the lone driving force behind peoples work. Yet, people continue to work hard. A question thus arises is: What drives them to work that hard? Or is it their passion for the job? Just as every organization looks for the best, brightest, dynamic and most productive workers to man their organizational rolls, employees too look for organizations which offer them a chance to use their skills to fullest extent, an employer who can tell them what they can do better, an organization that offer them excellent scope to grow intellectually, a job that challenge their wisdom, a leadership that can be relied upon, etc.
Retention needs to be looked at differently
The first step towards management of employee retention begins with acceptance of the reality that today it is not the company, which determines the movement of its employees but the market. The reasons for such conclusion simple: It is not too impossible for a single company to counter the pull of the market. In the world of Internet that provides easy access to information, no company can insulate its employees from knowing about the attractive opportunities thrown open by the aggressive recruiters in the market. This hard reality calls for a new paradigm in managing retention: Instead of attempting to minimize migration, the management practices must aim at influencing those who leave and at what time.
Acceptance of the reality thus enables the management to develop a focused retention program duly accompanied by an effective contingency plan for filling the prospective gaps in skills. An honest assessment of an organization need for a set of employees to remain with the company makes it clear as to which group should be handled with what ‘concern’ for retaining them. It is obvious that there would always be some employees who would need to be retained indefinitely, for some of them could be highly creative such as design engineers or sales persons most preferred by the customers.
There may be another set of people who are very critical in the short run such as those who are engaged in the launching of a new product; those with certain skill which are under short supply in the market. Lastly, there would be another set of people about whose retention the management need not bother, since they are easily replaceable. Once this analysis is over and the management identifies who is to retain for how long, it can customize retention practices to encourage employees to stay loyal to the organization. Some such practice could be:
Compensation
One of the age-old retention mechanisms is compensation. Organizations try to hold back their most valuable employees by paying them more than the market-defined salaries. Unfortunately a poaching company can always outsmart the original employer in weaning them away by paying a hefty ‘singing bonus’. Here again, some smart poachers pay such ‘signing bonus’ in installments, so that the employer can be sure of having the employee on roll till payout is effected and such pay spread can always be matched with the required period of retention of such skills in the organization. There are also practices in the market to pay what is today known as “hot skill” premium to attract such techies whose supply is short, as it happened sometime back with SAP programmers. Of course, payment of such retention-intended compensation is not a real answer for a long-term retention and at the most, it can only provide a cue as to who is leaving when and accordingly manage the migration-driven skill gaps. In the world of ‘golden handcuffs’ and ‘golden hellos’, no compensation, can guarantee retention of an employee for the period desired by the organization, unless it is accompanied by other essential element like job satisfaction and environs which are to the liking of the members.
Job Designing
Research indicates that by carefully and thoughtfully deciding which task must be assigned to which job, companies can exert greater influence on the retention rates of employees. It is often noticed that in the IT industry junior level programmers often move away from a company after gaining experience of working in a project or two. This was often found to be causing dislocation in the availability of skilled pool to execute ongoing or fresh projects. Taking a cue from this experience, many mid-caps IT companies today go to campuses and recruit raw graduates for executing a specific project, say of two year duration and train them for imparting ‘project-specific’ skill so that they could work with commitment. Such job designing give an advanced warning to the employers about so and so junior programme leaving the organization at so and so time. Such advance information enables a company to plan for bridging the skill gaps well in advance. Simultaneously, it also facilitates the junior programmers to mention the project in their resume and thus build-up their resume. A good job design exercise can thus create a win-win situation both for the employer and employee.
Job sculpting
Unless a manager attempted to satisfy the deeply embedded “life interest” of an employee, no job satisfaction can ever be attained by the employee. They propose to achieve this objective more effectively by using “job sculpting” as a tool. Here, by sculpting they meant “the art of matching people to job that allow their deepest embedded life interest to be expressed”. It involves creations of a customized career path.
Job sculpting touches the very deep and innate core of human desire. It goes beyond the commonly perceived expectation of “doing what one is good at”. These life interests are considered to be “long-held, emotionally driven passions, intricately entwined with personality and thus born of an indeterminate mix of nurture”. It is, therefore, essential for a manager to identify those deeply embedded ‘life interest’ of an employee and sculpt the job or his assignment in such a way that it enable the employee to express himself fully. This “double bind” kind of process job sculpting more an art than a science, demanding all the time in the world for a manager to unearth those hidden interest and build a symmetry between the individuals and his job to ensure job-satisfaction, and in turn, capitalize on the potential of the employee.
Every manager should have a keen interest in his employee and should listen intently to whatever an employee talks about. He should keenly watch for sign of excitement while the employee executes a particular assignment. He should be attentive to pick the cues as to which job generates enthusiasm and which puts him off to unearth the hibernating life interest. The need is to master the art of observing the employee’ Behaviour and probe into the underlying motive so as to identify the interest and accordingly sculpt a job. Such customization of job facilitates retention of middle and senior level manager for long.
Nursing Social Ties
It is said that in the good old day’s pastoral relation were often found difficulty to break. Even today, it is observed that people may be disloyal to the companies but not to their colleagues. It thus makes sense for organization to nurse strong social ties among the employee by encouraging them to from employee clubs such as literary club, cinema clubs and games squads consisting of employees’ family ,etc. Similarly, building up of teams at work places with clearly defined objective facilitates emergence of bondage among the employee besides effective execution of project. Toyota Toyota
Job Location
‘Location’ of a job is another tool that is leveraged upon by many big companies to manage retention. IT companies such as Infosys and wipro are known to establish their developmental centers across the country with a view to retain the talent within the company by offering choicest location to their employees. Even international companies like IBM, GE, Oracle, and Microsoft are known to establish their knowledge centre within the ‘supply zones’ of talent, obviously with the intent of reducing employee turnover. Such multi-location facilitates tapping of new skill by way of attracting competitor’s employees. There is, however, a danger in this proposition: projects that are having long lead-time are likely to be adversely effected by such high turnover. It is therefore desirable to locate project such as research and development programs that have a long gestation period in serene isolated surrounding where, by its very location, the scope for high employee turnover is reduced.
Recruiting Techniques
Unwittingly, every company makes an attempt to recruit such people who are prone to migration. Instead, if companies could focus on such ‘talent’ who could perform the job under reference well, through they are right now in high demand. By doing so, the companies can, to a great extent, protect themselves from poacher. It is only the ‘celebrities’ who are under the watch of the market. Hence, it makes great sense for companies to hire people who are likely to becomes celebrities rather than hire the celebrities. Than philosophy has of course caught the attention of many recruiting companies and in the recent past, they are recruiting a band of raw of candidates with average score and training them at the induction stage it to make them competent enough to man the jobs. Such recruits, for obvious reasons, usually remain grateful to the company and make every effort to grow along with it. They ultimately constitute the core of the company for a long time to come.
Creating Enabling Organic Bureaucracy
As against a majority of the bureaucracies of companies which are static, internally focused in efficiently, unresponsive to external development and therefore unpleasant to work with, Toyota Toyota
Conclusion
It is time companies accepted the fact of competent employees leaving the organizations as and when they find more stimulating and challenging new jobs. There is no single reason that can be attributed to such migration, for each employee is driven by his intrinsic-motivation. Hence, compensation however attractive it might be, fails in retaining the talent on its own. Market force is certainly bigger than that of individual companies influence the decision. Managing retention of talent has thus becomes a big challenge. Management must strives to create ‘pastoral clam’ at work places, enjoying ‘whose tranquility’ employees becomes unexcited by other possibilities /opportunities and refuse to change their job.
