The Attraction and Retention Strategies to Employees

Over recent years, the role of the human resources function has changed. HRM functions (selection, compensation, appraisal, etc) are closely linked to job, and, via this connection, to various performance outcomes. And many organizational leaders now recognize HRM as a vital contributor to the success of an organization. Indeed, the employees who perform the tasks and create the productivity make a significant contribution to performance of the company. Therefore, in many company, jobs and their associated tasks have become changeable and unstable bases for managing the human resource. However, the importance of people in company is the central focus of the human capital management perspective.

Our company is a telecommunication company. As we all known, the employee of this career is in high demand. So we must have some unique strategies to attract and retain employees. The objection of this report has introduced some attraction and retention strategies to employees.

First, we have focused on the methods such as supply compensation and benefits; provide the convenience in employees’ life; create specific policies and development the career planning, to attract new staffs. And we consider the approach of career planning is more suitable to our company. To the retention strategies, we have discussed the manners that provide realistic job previews to the employees; create challenging and career enhancing work experiences; good communications with the staff; establish fairness among the employees and set up a relaxed working environment. In our opinion, we can not just select only one strategy to retention our employees. Instead, we should use a combination of several strategies to retention the staffs. Next we introduced how to implement these measures in our company. Because of our competitor, Virgin Mobile Australia, has introduced peternity leave policy recently that allows its employees time off to care for the family pet. We think this will post a threat to our company in attracting and retaining staffs. And our CEO, who has returned from the United Kingdom not long ago, noted a growing trend for organization to allow employees time off to care for the family pet. So this report also wants to investigate the possibility of implementing this employee benefit at our organization. We have analysis the advantage of the peternity leave policy. The conclusion is that our company should implement this policy, and we will do a better job than Virgin Mobile Australia. And it will also give us a huge help in attracting and retaining staffs.

Table of content

1.0 Introduction 5

2.0 Analysis 6

2.1 Human Resource Management (HRM) Strategies 6

2.2 Attraction Strategies and Retention Strategies 7

2.2.1Compensation and Benefits 7

2.2.2 Providing the Convenience in Employees’ Life 7

2.2.3 Policies- Creating 8

2.2.4 Career Development and Opportunities 8

2.3 Retention Strategies 9

2.3.1 Providing Realistic Job Previews 9

2.3.2Creating Challenges in Work 10

2.3.3 Communications 10

2.3.4 Equity among the Employees 10

2.3.5 Establishing a Relaxed Working Environment and Form the Organizational Culture 11

3.0 The Best Attraction Strategy and how to Implement Retention Strategies 12

3.1 The Best Attraction Strategy to our Company 12

3.2 how to Select and Implement Retention Strategy 13

4.0 Peternity Leave Plan 15

5.0 Conclusion 16

Reference 18

1.0 Introduction

“Peternity leave” is relatively a new concept for most Australian companies. Some of the companies has been trying to implement this employee benefit in the organization. Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) is an example. Our company has the similar situation with VMA. The main business of our company is the telecommunication. VMA is one of the most powerful competitors to our company. We sell through over 3500 retail outlets, including flagship stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as via telesales and web-based stores. While VMA offers pre-paid, monthly and CAP plans for mobile phones. And they also have two wireless broadband products.

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Recently, VMA has introduced a special leave for employee. It allows employees time off to care for the family pet. And our CEO, who has returned from the United Kingdom not long ago, also noted a growing trend for organization to allow employees time off to care for the family pet. So the objective of this report is to investigate the possibility of implementing this employee benefit inour organization.

In this report, first of all, various human resources management (HRM) will be evaluated to improve attraction of new employees and to retain the talent. And the best attraction strategies will be adopted to the company. Then this report will discuss how the employee retention strategies could be implemented, followed by the third part, where the objectives of peternity leave and its relationship to employee rewards management will be focused. The report will formulate a plan and make a recommendation for peternity leave to the organization as well.

2.0 Analysis

2.1 Human Resource Management (HRM) Strategies

Before the discussion on the “peternity leave” plan, it’s better to learn about HRM strategies. Various HRM strategies which could be adopted to improve attraction of new employees will be evaluated in this part.

Over recent years, the role of the human resources function has changed a lot. HRM functions (selection, compensation, appraisal, etc) are closely linked to various working performances and the whole business strategies of the company. More and more organizational leaders now consider HRM as vital element to the success of an organization (Phillips, 1996). Indeed, the employees who perform the tasks and create the productivity make a significant contribution to company’s performance. Therefore, in many company, jobs and their associated tasks have become the critical issues for managing the human resource (Cardy, et al, 2007).The importance of people in company is the central focus of the human capital management perspective.

The employee of telecommunication sector is in high demand. Frazee ((1996)) reported that 47 percent of a group of 434 CEOs of fast growing companies felt that the lack of skilled and trained workers is a potential barrier to company growth, which forces companies to think of new ways to attract and retain talents. As Chambers et al. (1998) indiated, “a war once conducted as a sequence of set piece recruiting battles is transforming itself into an endless series of skirmishes as companies find their best people, and in particular their future senior executives, under constant attack.” So how to get and keep talented people is prominent for the company’s development According to the literature review, the most common advice offered is to provide satisfing compensation and treat talented people well. This report will focus on two important aspects in HRM, attracting strategies and keeping.

2.2 Attraction Strategies and Retention Strategies

2.2.1Compensation and Benefits

Compensation includes fixed (base) salary and variable pay, including short-term and long-term incentive pay (Sharma, 2009). As one of the most traditional means of rewards, compensation remains effective for HRM. In basic form, benefits programs protect employees and their families from financial risks. Benefit seems to be continuously challenged during this time of shrinking health-care benefits, and expanding health-care premiums, businesses are trying to redefine the traditional benefits program.

If the company can offer a satisfactory compensation, the benefits of retirement, medical and dental insurance, it will definitely attract some talents.

2.2.2 Providing the Convenience in Employees’ Life

Now, more and more employers are realizing that the stress of today’s time-crunch takes its toll on employees both on and off the work. A well-designed employee’ life programs, including family care, flexible work arrangements, personal convenience services, financial wellness, career counseling, and maybe the peternity leave plan, are highly valued to attract employees and relatively low in cost. These performances will encourage employees to do their job effectively, which is considered as the “secret sauce” in many organizations’ recipes for business success.

2.2.3 Policies- Creating

There is no doubt that some companies are more successful than others in their efforts to attract and retain talented people. In order to find out why, the McKinsey researchers compared the HRM practices of highly successful (‘talent-winning’) firms with those of laggards. The results show that the following HRM practices allow talent-winning companies to perform better than their competitors:

• They recruit continuously, rather than simply filling openings when they (are about to) occur.

• They are good at specifying the type of people and qualities they need for their business.

• They put talented people in challenging jobs before they are ready for them.

• They view mentoring and coaching as essential to offering effective training and career development.

• They do not allow poor performers to stay in position for years (Hiltrop, 1999).

These findings put enormous pressure on organizations to improve the ways in which they manage their ‘human resources’. The key challenge is to create effective policies and practices that enhance the firm’s ability to attract talented employees and minimize employees’ confusion and frustration (Hiltrop, 1999).

2.2.4 Career Development and Opportunities

This key of career development and opportunities focuses on the concept that motivating and engaging the workforce entails planning for the advancement or change in responsibilities to best suit individual skills, and desires. In light of Noer, (1993) the concept refers to job enrichment, employability and providing the opportunity for employees to develop the skills and perspective to take care of themselves. Thus, when the company recruits employees, it should explain its training for the employees’ future career life, which will attract many employees who want to learn more knowledge and gain more opportunities. In this way, both the business and the employee benefit from this symbiotic relationship.

2.3 Retention Strategies

Besides attraction strategy, how to retain employees is another important task for HRM. A lot of companies find that the key to retention strategy should consider both employees’ personal aspirations (career development, recognition, reward) and the aspirations they possess for their organizations. In fact, some of the attraction strategies can also be used to retain employees, which will not be repeated in this part.

2.3.1 Providing Realistic Job Previews

Setting realistic expectation should be emphasized to initiate the process. Since the initial stages of employment have been shown to be highly critical in generating loyalty and commitment, special attention must be paid to means of how people are introduced into the organization. Research on the earliest stages of employment has shown that most people begin new jobs with inflated expectations and that unmet expectations during the initial stages of employment result in higher levels of employee dissatisfaction and turnover(Hiltrop, 1999). To reduce this problem, new recruits need to be given a ‘realistic job preview’ which illustrates both the attractive and less attractive aspects of the job and organization (Wanous, 1975). In view of the fact that most turnover occurs within the first six months of employment, more ‘realistic job previews’ and a concern towards understanding and meeting new employees’ expectations could provide a more positive initial organizational experience and reduce the cost of early resignations (Hiltrop, 1995).

2.3.2Creating Challenges in Work

The challenge of work experience has been shown to be one of the most significant factors in the development of employee commitment and loyalty.From this point of view, efforts should be made to design tasks and structures that will enable talented employees to feel a sense of accomplishment, to express and use their talents, and to exercise their own decision-making powers (Hiltrop, 1995). By creating opportunities for challenge and self-development, steps can be taken to help ensure a high commitment and identification with the organization.

2.3.3 Communications

Communication is one of the most important steps to create the harmonious working environment that employees care about and is considered one element to keep them stay. This is not means to please employees or make false praise to create a misplaced sense of security. Indeed, it refers to keep the employees in the loop about what is happening in the company. The employees should be aware of the policies and principles of the company and what issues the company is attempting to address. The point here is that the employees should be treated as the partners rather than the working tool . An effective communication makes the employees may not have to worry about covering the payroll this week, but have worries of their own (Sharma, 2009). And treating the employees with at least as much respect as they present.

2.3.4 Equity among the Employees

The equity theory demonstrates that, for most employees, motivation is influenced significantly by relative rewards as well as by absolute rewards. But some key issues are still unclear (Cardy, 2007). However the perception of fairness and equitable treatment is important in employee retention. Especially, the information about salary is a sensitive issue in companies, the sentiment and working performance of employees are always badly affected beyond a doubt of unfair pay. For example, a qualified staff with ten years of working experience, an M.B.A. degree and a great contribution record to the table, finds that he is making less money than this colleagues. The feeling of anger and cheated is well up his heart. He is likely to look for a new job. At least, the morale and motivation will be terribly hit.

2.3.5 Establishing a Relaxed Working Environment and Form the Organizational Culture

Schein has stated that organizational culture is a pattern of basic assumptions-invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration-that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (McDermott & Stock, 1999). The organization’s culture is built on shared values and ideas. And it is becoming increasingly clear that it can and does play an important role in many aspects of the organization. Organizations with strong cultures will achieve high levels of effectiveness. In our opinion, the communication is beneficial to the formation of organizational culture. As we all know that organizational culture has a great influence on the work efficiency. A good organizational culture can produce a high efficiency of work. And it is an important factor to retain the employees. The organizational culture is not only including the physical factors, like the size of the office or lighting conditions, et al, but also including the working atmosphere and relationships. Therefore, it is a challenge for the human resource managers to establish a good organizational culture to retention talents. Some basic practices such as let the employee to speak his mind freely within the organization or never threaten an employee’s job or income are all effective.

3.0 The Best Attraction Strategy and how to Implement Retention Strategies

This report will choose the best attraction strategy to our company, and explain why we choose this strategy. Then we will discuss how to implement retention strategies specifically in our company.

3.1 The Best Attraction Strategy to our Company

The main business of our company is telecommunication. As we all known, the employee of this career is in high demand. So we must develop a very good plan to attract talents. The strategies like compensation and benefits and provide the convenience in employees’ life and develop an attractive recruitment program, which many companies have already done. And now, these methods are ineffective in attracting talents. So we must formulate a unique planning to attract new employees. In this paper’s opinion, the career planning is an important strategy to attract new staffs.

Why we take the career planning as the most important factor in attraction strategy? Because the significance of career planning is be noticed by more and more companies. It is now recognized that in the course of the employee’s working life an individual may have a number of different careers. There is a need to build up human capital through the acquisition of core competences (Parker and Arthur, 2000), skills, professional expertise and employ a range of strategies in the planning and development of career (Van der Heijden, 2002).

From an organization perspective career planning and development can affect and influence human resource planning techniques and the needs of the organization. With the demise of the traditional organizational career and of vertical advancement within the organization, it has been argued that individuals need to develop core skills, increase their marketability and develop employability (McCabe, 2008). In the rapidly changing condition of the contemporary organizational career environment the development of a career is now considered to be more about building out from core jobs (McCabe, 2008). As identified by Van der Heijden (2001) career mobility can also assist an individual in his employability and help in building up a network of contacts both inside and outside the organization. This is also evidence that in the planning and development of a career an individual needs to be proactive, flexible, ensure the development and maintenance of a range of core skills and competencies together with professional expertise. And for the employee a career is now seen to be one of the continuous self – development. Especially the top talent, they pay more attention on the career planning. Top talent is very concerned about opportunities to learn and grow. So currently, most companies incorporate professional development and educational assistance programs into their recruitment. And an investment in training and development sends a strong message that management cares about employees, believes their potential is worth developing, wants them to grow, and aims to promote internally to fill key positions.

If our company can draw up an extraordinary human resource career development planning, it will definitely attract many top talents. We should introduce our training and education plan in details, and provide many opportunities to the staffs’ future development. This could explain our company emphasis on the growth of the staff, and it will be bound to attract many talents.

3.2 how to Select and Implement Retention Strategy

In the paper’s opinion, we can not select only one strategy to retention our employees. We should use a combination of several strategies to retention the staffs.

First, we should provide realistic job previews. “Realistic job previews (RJP)” means for serious candidates to truly understand the job for which they are applying. In our company, RJP should give the employee the full picture of his job in both work activities and job context. It focus on helping candidates understand the kind of position they would be taking on, essentially, RJP tells employee “what it is like to work here and do this job” (Mills, 2008). And the RJP should be clarity, relevance and simplicity. Clarity means when we identify the expected results rather than the method for achieving them. The advantage of identifying the outcome is that the manager focuses only on the goal; after all, the employee will develop the method for achieving the desired results. The principle of relevance helps define the “why” of the assignment. If the employees have a full understanding of the project’s importance, they can make adjustments as unanticipated factors crop up within the process. They probably also will be more committed to the result because they can see more easily how it fits into the big picture and how their efforts impact the company (Sharma, 2009).Simplicity creates a sense of grounding for employees as they endeavor to carry out assignments. If managers identify the work in simple, straightforward terms, employees will find it much easier to follow through on managers’ wishes. To accomplish this, a manager must identify the key message in a fashion that the employee can embrace (Sharma, 2009).

Second, we should communicate with the employees to establish a relaxed working environment. It means that the managers should regularly keep the people up to date with important events affecting the company. Let the staff know how the company’s performance. Share good news, as well as points of concern. The point here is that we should treat these people as our partners, which they are. They may not have to worry about covering the payroll this week, but they do have worries of their own. And listen to the employees when they have ideas for improvement. Again, the benefits extend beyond just making people feel appreciated for their contributions. These are, after all, the people who do the work every day. They may have some ideas to improve productivity, and when they do come up with one, let everybody know where it came from. The pay-off is a contagious feeling of pride and, perhaps, some new efficiency that saves the company money (Michelman, 2003).

Third, to achieve fairness is also important. We can discuss the equity from many aspects. But the most significant aspect is the fair compensation. Today employees have higher expectations for what work can and should be, and they want to receive rewards that reflect their personal efforts and contributions. And lots of employees resent those who only put in their time and yet receive the same reward as those who go the extra mile. This is also why so many companies are moving toward performance-based rewards, including performance bonuses, gain-sharing and non-monetary recognition. Although not a panacea, companies are finding that these new reward systems do allow them to give substantial rewards to those who really deserve them. So we can see that the pay equity play an important role in the employees. If we can not let the employees satisfied the fairness of the payment, it will make many employees leave the company. So if we want to retain the talents, we must reach the standards we mentioned above at least.

4.0 Peternity Leave Plan

In this part, we will discuss the peternity leave plan, and discuss whether it can be implemented in our company.

Recently, Virgin Mobile has introduced a special leave allowance for staff to take care of pups and kittens. Like paternity and maternity leave, the “peternity leave” gives staff five unpaid days off to introduce a new pet to their home. Although Virgin’s peternity policy is only available to staff introducing a new kitten or puppy to a home and it must be 10 weeks old or younger, and it available to its 600 staffs who have been employed for two years or more. Many staffs still think it is providing more options for staff.

We can see that the objection of Virgin Mobile’s “peternity leave plan” is to attract and retain the staff. Now, more and more people keep pets, and very concerned about their pets. They must be more willing to the companies that implement the peternity leave plan in selecting a job. So in attracting the talents who have a pet, Virgin Mobile has an advantage than our company. And this policy has also played an enormous role in retention talents. Because, they all think that it is providing more options for staffs. And the relationship between the company and employees has improved. The employees consider that the company would be more humane; more concerned about the employees’ private life. In other words, peternity leave policy can be seen as a flextime policy. The main objective of this kind of policy is to provide opportunity to employees to work with flexible work schedules and set out conditions for availing this provision. Flexible work schedules are initiated by employees and approved by management to meet business commitments while supporting employee personal life needs (Buck & Watson, 2002).

In view of, there are many advantages in such a policy. Therefore, this report recommends that our company should also implement the peternity leave plan. We can do better job than the Virgin Mobile. First, we can expand the staffs that can use the peternity leave policy. Not only the staffs who have worked for two years or more, but also the company’s new staffs, are available to the peternity leave policy. Second, we also allow staffs to take time off to care for a sick pet. Third, we expand the range of pet. Leave is available for the animals, such as snakes, rats, turtles, fish and iguanas. Indeed we may carry with a cost, but this will help us attract and retain employees, and also help us form a good atmosphere within the company. In the long run, there is more advantages than harm. So our company should implement the the peternity leave plan.

5.0 Conclusion

As we all known, the employee of this career is in high demand. So we must have some unique strategies to attract and retain employees. This report is mainly talking about the strategies to attract and retain the employees. We are focused on the methods such as supply compensation and benefits; provide the convenience in employees’ life; create specific policies and development the career planning, to attract new staffs. To the retention strategies, we have discussed the manners that provide realistic job previews to the employees; create challenging and career enhancing work experiences; good communications with the staff; establish fairness among the employees and set up a relaxed working environment. Finally, we have analysis the advantage of the peternity leave policy. And we think our company should implement this policy, and we will do a better job than Virgin Mobile Australia. And it will also give us a huge help in attracting and retaining staffs.