Around the world, a variety of business enterprises fight in the “war for talent” over the issue of the ever-growing cost of recruitment. The ability to retain good employees has become employers’ “Gate of Life.” The annual July workplace is not a season of “Supervisor Observation.” But, interestingly, a number of international management consulting organizations have announced that in this month the staff was concerned with the issues of the data found in the employee engagement or retention survey report.
One of the results surprised the Chinese. It was found that worker engagement of mainland China employees was below the target. The survey report says that while over 50% of employees are engaged, one third keep thinking of “finding another job.” In China, there are a lot of people who worked for branches of foreign companies in China who complained to the Global Times that “[i]n China, it is difficult to retain people.” But they also acknowledged that China’s economy is in a period of rapid growth. There are more opportunities in the overall market.
With the people’s impetuous attitude, employee retention is rather low. Hay Group, the world’s leading management consulting firm, released in mid-July a global workforce effectiveness study that showed that over one-third of companies’ employees cannot help each other, 21% of the employees are considering leaving their company within two years, and the loyalty rate of corporate staff is found to have hit a five-year low. The 2011 studies reported that global employee engagement was 66%. The highest employee engagement occurred in South America, while 74% of Asia was found to have an employee engagement rate of 63%, the lowest level of all the regions.
What worries was that level of Chinese employee engagement of 51%, which was lower than the global average by 15%. Compared with Brazil, Russia, India, and several “BRIC countries,” the employees who work in China enterprises only have an engagement of 51%. In other words, there is one person out of every two who is not dedicated. In response to the low engagement rate, 44% of the Chinese employees believe that their companies don’t provide enough support for their employees and that the Chinese companies’ focus on employees is not sufficient.
In an email interview on July 26 with Li Zhe, Ha group Senior director of Product Solutions, he said that the company has conducted global employee surveys for 35 years, but this year is the first time when some of the key data were released to the public. These surveys are done on around a total of 150,000 employees, who work in the Internet, automobile manufacturing, real estate, high technology, manufacturing, finance, energy, communications, retail pharmaceuticals, logistics, and thirteen other industries. The topics of these employee surveys cover issues related to “whether you are proud of your work,” “are you motivated enough to do work beyond the scope of the job requirements,” as well as “development opportunities,” “salary incentives,” and other topics.
Studies have shown that the data of Chinese low employee engagement is mainly concentrated on individuals of twenty-five years of age who have between two to five years of professional service as junior staff. The Hong Kong consulting company Community Business recently released a survey that shows that mainland China has one third of its workers considering a career change. When compared to the data for the same investigation, the number gathered from mainland China regarding the employee retention issue is increasing. This rapid employee departure has caused a headache for foreign companies in China.
The low engagement of Chinese employees has raised more attention from foreign countries as well. The German Financial Network commented on July 20 that Chinese low employee engagement is not a new phenomenon in China; foreign companies have already experienced the low employee engagement. A few years ago, in the case of German Dresdner Bank Shanghai Branch of China, the entire department had worked with a headhunting firm to get jobs in those banks that could provide better pay.
Employee engagement can be measured based on “the expression of employee loyalty to the organization,” an employee’s psychological attachment to the organization, that the employee wants to stay with his or her employer, and the employee’s wishes in wanting to work beyond his or her job requirements. The Chinese people’s solid work ethic has been praised by the world. However, it can cause a lot of headaches to keep Chinese employees on for the long term with foreign enterprises in China. As a British district administration manager, Tomlinson has participated in a joint venture on environmental projects in Guangzhou. Within a year, he encountered five Chinese professionals who left. Those born in the 1980s value short-term rewards. He joked that those ’80s people must have watched a variety of TV dramas. To Tomlinson’s dismay, he found that simply increasing the salary of the employees will more likely cause less engaged employees to become more impetuous.
Employee engagement can be measured based on “the expression of employee loyalty to the organization,” an employee’s psychological attachment to the organization, that the employee wants to stay with his or her employer, and the employee’s wishes in wanting to work beyond his or her job requirements. The Chinese people’s solid work ethic has been praised by the world. However, it can cause a lot of headaches to keep Chinese employees on for the long term with foreign enterprises in China. As a British district administration manager, Tomlinson has participated in a joint venture on environmental projects in Guangzhou. Within a year, he encountered five Chinese professionals who left. Those born in the 1980s value short-term rewards. He joked that those ’80s people must have watched a variety of TV dramas. To Tomlinson’s dismay, he found that simply increasing the salary of the employees will more likely cause less engaged employees to become more impetuous.
Tian Shengyan, a manager who set up branch offices of a Japanese electronics company in Shanghai, complained “Chinese workers like to change jobs frequently. College graduates typically change job on an average of one per year, which has caused the company huge finance losses. Once we recruit young people into the company, we send them to Japan to become more familiar with the enterprise culture in Japan. But, soon after they return from Japan, they resign from their job, which caused the company a loss. Now we could sign contracts with the new hires. Those employees who signed the employment contract will have to refund the training cost accrued in Japan if they decide to resign from the job.”
Tiansheng Yan believes that employee engagement in China is rather low, which is mainly due to the rapid rise of the economy. Many people feel uneasy with the future and they become more impetuous in their decision making and they become more interested in accumulating as much financial wealth as possible. Li Zhe believes that there is no causal relationship between employee retention and the factors associated with employee level of engagement at work and employee mobility. Based on some case studies, those companies that have rather low employee engagement and loyalty don’t appear to have substantial outflow of talent. Engagement of Chinese employees is lowest in the world. Perhaps this is due to the feeling of uncertainty toward the unpredictable economy. Looked at from a broader perspective, after the financial crisis, companies have grown in an unpredictable manner, especially for those multinational enterprises that have branches located in China which have experienced the uncertainty generated from the rest of the company worldwide.
Frank Yue Dasi from the German Institute for Labor Studies said that when the economy improves, the employees will change jobs frequently, especially in the case of China and other countries that have experienced very rapid economic growth. Yue Dasi said that people in Europe find another job after a few months or even years. In his view, the better the financial condition of the enterprise, the higher the degree of employee retention. While China is in a transition period, the personnel management in most companies haven’t matured. Ms. Wu, who was currently working as a training specialist in an innovative high-tech enterprise in China, commented that as more foreign enterprises entered into China, this resulted in more employer competition for talent. The employment opportunities for Chinese staff has grown and options of employers have enlarged, which would naturally cause employees increasingly to move from job to job.
On other hand, the managers, who were trained in China to serve their foreign branches in China, have gradually returned and been replaced by native Chinese. When there was a lack of communication, the conditions would further exacerbate employee engagement. Beside the employee disengagement issues faced by the branches of those foreign enterprises in China, some state-owned enterprise were also facing the issues of employee disengagement. Recently, a manager from a state-owned business in Liaoning Yingkou wrote, “the employees stated that those who work on the front line would be exhausted with the amount of workload, while the mangers and the unit leaders would be rewarded more. The managers are more likely to get more credit, which is unfair.”
On the other side, in the situation of economic crisis, the frequent job hopping might not mean unreliability. Based on a statistical study done in Brazil, the unemployment rate is 5.7%. Brazilian employees are more practical. In a similar study, over 80% of Brazilians believe that frequent job hopping will more likely turn an outstanding resume into waste paper. Only under the condition of low wages and deprived opportunities for further advancement, will Brazilians be more likely to consider changing jobs and their current lifestyle. But, based on the result of a survey done on July 17, a headhunting consultancy company “Thomas Castro” in Brazil announced with nearly 500 middle and senior managers in the survey in Brazil, 79% of the people quit at least once during the past two years. Sada, a company consultant, told reporters that when compared to higher-level managers in Brazil, most of the remaining Brazilians are more optimistic by nature and they generally work with pride.
In Asia, the Japanese employee turnover rate is relatively low. In recent years, the Health Ministry shows the employee turnover rate is about 17.5%. Working for the same company from college graduation to the retirement age of 60 is mainstream, and those who quit are considered to have “no roots,” and those who change jobs repeatedly are considered to have “missed forever success.” In Western countries, employee engagement also has been facing a downward trend. James, an employment agency manager at London’s “Blue Dragon” told the reporter from the Global Times, most people in banking, insurance, and creative industries change jobs frequently. UK enterprises rarely do surveys on employee engagement or loyalty, and a frequent job hopper won’t simply be considered unreliable.
Based on a study by the German Federal Bureau of Statistics, the latest survey data show that German employees stay an average of 10 years within the same company and two-thirds of the remaining employees job hop one to five times. The Germans quit mainly due to low income, unsatisfactory business environment, stressful work pressure, long commute, and the lack of continuing education opportunities. Salary alone cannot be used to retain employees.
Meath Sterling, a highly sought-after manager at an engineering consulting service company, told the Global Times reporter, most employees hope for stability and they don’t mind this year’s salary amount, after they experienced the impacts exerted by the financial crisis. Hailun Hai, a Chinese business executive for a mechanical equipment company, said that Chinese employees often complain about slow increases in wage. In fact, this Chinese branch has the largest wage increase, 10%. Uwe, a branch director at the German Sacigaite Group, said that their employees rarely quit. He told the reporters that during the period of rapid economic development in Germany, the country also experienced a frequent job-hopping phenomenon. Uwe stated that as long as the salary treatment for the Chinese enterprises are in line with the headquarters, the job-hopping phenomenon can be reduced. For example, he told the reporters about the measures taken by his company. Employees can dine for free on business trips, families can send holiday gifts to employees, there are increased subsidies for employee’s children, and there are employer-sponsored employee family weekend activities. In fact, in Japan, in most of the industries, including non-profit industries, the employee turnover rate is not high. This is primarily due to the fact that fall Japanese companies generally have a sound employee wage and benefit system. Even including less popular industries, the wage and benefit system can ensure the survival of the entire family. In Japanese companies, married men with children can earn an additional “Raising Family” allowance. The Japanese government also provides additional grants.
Today, at least some companies in China stress the importance of providing “comprehensive compensation,” including salary, bonuses, long-term incentives, continuing opportunities for professional training, opportunities for professional growth and development. In this modern of world that offers many other career opportunities, companies can find ways to retain employees. It was also necessary to maintain a benign staff turnover rate. Experts at the Hay Group believe that Chinese employee engagement and organizational support is currently experiencing double low rating. The employee’s contribution can be enhanced and the businesses can tap into the existing resources to achieve a higher potential of organizational success.
No comments:
Post a Comment