Coimbatore Taxi News

Managing the talent crisis

PEOPLE are the key competitive differentiator in today's knowledge based business. Companies today require a better-educated talent pool, and the pool fast drying up.

With organisations willing to attract talent with whatever it takes, a key challenge for them is to retain their precious talent. High attrition levels push up the cost of rehiring and result in loss of organisational knowledge and skill, impacting the company's' ability to compete in the market.

Hence for organisations, managing the talent crisis is becoming a strategic focus. The following are some factors that may lend themselves to better talent attraction and retention:

Work - life balance: With working couples becoming the norm, employees tend to prefer jobs that provide them a reasonable amount of time with the family. Flexible work practices such as part-time working, working from home, etc. would be factors that an employee may look for in a workplace. Therefore organisations need to work towards building work structures that can create these opportunities and support a healthy work-life balance.

Workplace quality and work relationships: A workplace should be focused, friendly and fun. While a better compensation may be a good way to attract talent, workplace quality can be a key differentiator for talent retention.

A workplace needs to treat its employees with dignity and respect. The supervisor needs to be responsive to employees' personal concerns and treat them as capable individuals. Employees need to be provided with information that will enable them to execute their jobs effectively and have opportunities for open exchange of communication. The manager needs to be someone whom the employees can look up to, and who will take their concerns and ideas seriously.

Growth opportunities: Fairness and recognition is something that employees look forward to in a workplace. Fairness would mean avoiding favoritism, having equal access to growth opportunities, assigning tasks and schedules equitably, and being recognised for good performance. It also means not tolerating low performance.

People value opportunities to learn new skills. Often, employees' intent to stay with or leave an organisation depends on their perception of growth opportunities there.

Sense of purpose: For an employee, pride may be in simply knowing that they are performing to the best of their abilities and that they are making a difference. Pride also comes from knowing that they are constantly learning new skills.

Pay and job security: Employees work to `earn some money' and buy the common luxuries of life.

Job security is of critical importance for creating a good work atmosphere. Companies should consciously create and communicate a strong sense of stability to their employees, as it is a key factor of employee motivation and engagement.

Job change: With opportunities galore, today's employees look forward to job changes that meet their earning or growth expectations. Organisational loyalty tends to be identified with `high performance' and not `tenure'.

While the above are some factors that may significantly impact workforce attrition and retention, we need to keep in mind some differences that may come into play with factors such as gender and seniority.

For instance some women may be content with doing an`acceptable' job at the workplace and give priority to their domestic / social responsibilities. Women may also place greater importance on working for an organisation that provides flexi-time and good time-off benefits. One of the key dilemmas for most women is to balance family and work life. Most would require an organisation that provides them the freedom to redesign their careers that balance these two areas well.

Older employees may give importance to spending time with the family while the younger ones may place importance on pay, career advancement and growth opportunities.

B. SATHYA SEELAN

-The Hindu