Contents

• Synopsis
• 1. Introduction 7
• 2. Generation Y and the emerging job markets 7
• 3. Why turnover is high among generation Y employees? 8
• 4. A study on the mindset and attitudes of generation Y employees. 9
• 5. Would generation Y stick to jobs if offered better long term career prospects by the company? 10
• 6. HRD methods to counter job hopping nature of generation Y employees. 11
• 7. Cost effectiveness of HRD approaches to retain generation Y employees 14
• 8. Employee career goals in the context of organizational goals – A holistic approach 15
• 9. Would the methods really restrict employee turnover to healthy limits 16
• 10. Conclusion 17
• References

Description

Today’s organizations are facing high turnover among employees like never before. The boom in information technology and opening up of markets that were hitherto conservative are opening up job markets even to the semi-skilled workers. Let us take an example of call center employees. The primary skills prospective employees need to possess to land up a job in a good call center are good language and communication skills. The skill sets required to get an employment are becoming generic these days and not task specific as in the past. For example, a person with good communicating skills could land up a job as a sales person in as insurance company, as a front desk executive in hospitality industry or as a call center agent. Such jobs require college level education and not even graduation as a pre-requisite. So the temptations to start earning even before acquiring a specialized knowledge are too high for generation Y to resist. So they jump into the work force of an organization even before they complete graduation or just after the completion. Barring the current recession such has been the requirement of work force of the corporate world since the past decade or so. Even the organizations are inadvertently adding to the high turnover by wooing the employees of some other companies to join their work force. With such tempting offers all over the place, the generation Y employees are pampered with higher perks, designations etc. Such being the scenario, it is impossible for the corporate entities to cut down their efforts to woo employees of competitor organizations. In the cut throat atmosphere of deadlines, deliverance parameters of the 21st century corporate atmosphere, the corporate entities do not mind paying more to get their work done. This calls for a complete different approach as a solution towards retaining generation Y employees that are prone to change jobs at the drop of the hat.
It is the task of the HRD in an organization to come up with ideas and practices that help retaining generation Y employees. HRD must approach the problem in a holistic manner and not just with a view that ‘my gains could be your losses and I am not accountable for your losses’. This view would shift the approach from wooing the prospective employees to no end to absorb them in the work force to thinking of ways to retain the existing employees. If HRD in organizations just concentrate on getting new employees to fill the short fall in manpower, they would enter the ‘dog eat dog’ atmosphere. The HRD policy has been to meet the needs of the day than to have a long term vision of the organization and the well being and efficiency of the manpower. Such short sighted recruitment processes to meet the needs encourage prospective employees to make the best of the situation i.e. to cash in on attractive salary packages offered by different companies without long term career goals in mind. The irony of such fast paced recruitment is that in the recent times of recession, the employees are laid off at the same pace as they were recruited.