Employee retention is one of the main challenges for any organization; you may call it employee turnover, you may call it attrition, or churn, it is a big challenge for organization to retain talent. When talented and experienced people quit organizations, it puts a big strain on the productivity by affecting organization’s bottom line. To solve the employee retention problem, you must first understand the challenges involved.

With young professionals getting increasingly restless the challenge is not only to retain them but also to identify the future leaders among this talent pool. For example,  L&T is facing the crisis of identifying  the next line of leaders. Recently, the company increased the retirement age for CMD from 65 years to 70 years and 62 to 67 years for the other directors. According to a former employee, earlier a person would reach the level of DGM and at the most AGM level at the time of retirement.

Recruitment is a business function that requires business objectives, perspective, expertise, and the ability to find the right match that fits the running position. The hiring manager makes the final decision on who gets hired, while the recruiter manages the process, laying the foundation for hiring the right people. Any organization’s HR role is to convince the prospect with diplomacy and marketing skills and align the recruitment procedure to benefit the organization for a longer period. During the recruitment process, it is hard to grab the ideal candidate’s attention because the good ones are getting multiple offers simultaneously, there is a shortage of wholly qualified candidates the ones who are ready to take on the job.

With social media doing the searching of candidates which is shared by many other organizations tracking the success rate of recruitment has become very difficult.  Organizations take time making a candidate go through multiple stages. Multiple stages of screening make it difficult for employers to close the position. Developing a data-driven mindset for hiring for various positions is a major challenge faced in talent acquisition.

Why 80,000 employees leave Infosys between January and March 2022? Top reason is salary. Infosys didn’t bother to provide enough salary hikes to its employees who started looking for opportunities elsewhere.  It led to the ‘Big Quit.’ The world today is experiencing the era of the ‘Big Quit’ or the ‘Great Resignation’. There are  organizations paying better salaries but are experiencing Big Quit.

Companies often struggle to retain talent due to various reasons. Common pitfalls include inadequate career development, lack of recognition, and not addressing work-life balance. Understanding and tackling these issues can help businesses keep their valuable employees.

Anand Mahindra advocated for liberal arts, stressed work quality over hours, by cheekily countering L&T chief’s 90-hour work week remark. Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has once again captured attention with his thoughts on liberal arts education and work-life balance. Mahindra gives importance to a person’s work-life balance. Work-life balance is a key part of a healthy and productive work environment. An individual who achieves this balance successfully is ready to dedicate an equal amount of time to work-related tasks and personal matters without experiencing stress.

Speaking at an event, Mahindra passionately advocated for the importance of arts and culture in professional decision-making.  “Even if you’re an engineer or an MBA, you must study arts and culture,” he said, highlighting the role of a well-rounded education. “We support art and culture because I believe it helps make better decisions by engaging the whole brain.” Mahindra stressed that understanding arts and culture enhances decision-making. “If you’re not spending time at home, with friends, or reading, how will you bring the right inputs to your decisions?” he questioned.

Talent retention is the process of keeping your best employees from leaving. Companies need to have a strategy to retain their top talent, as losing talented employees can be costly and disruptive. One study identifies that career growth, workplace well-being, competition within the industry, globalisation and the new employment landscape are the challenges of talent retention. Employees often cite a lack of career growth opportunities as one of the main reasons for leaving their jobs. Besides, lack of work-life balance, feeling unappreciated, low pay, and lack of work culture fit are other reasons that contribute to attrition. The attrition rate is increasing even more due to unknown reasons in a post-pandemic world. 

The pandemic has made almost everyone travel back to their home / native places. And this has made the employees preferring the hybrid work culture. People like to stay home and work for a few hours. This helps them to balance their work-life time. Moreover, the hectic daily commute is saved on a large scale. So, the productivity level is retained, and many resources are saved. That’s why many employees are preferring the hybrid or remote work module, these days. 

Many people have found that flexible working hours are vital for ensuring work-life balance. Hence, instead of a fixed time, employees prefer to switch to flexible working hours. If the company is not allowing flexible hours, employees are preferring to switch the company rather. Another fact is, during the lockdown, many people found an alternative way to earn through their hobbies or skills. Social media platforms and online opportunities opened many doors of revenue for people around the world. And people are exploring many new entrepreneurship opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought on high levels of upheaval and introspection, causing people to re-examine their priorities. In a new Indeed survey of 1,005 people who voluntarily resigned from at least two jobs since March 2020, 92% said the pandemic made them feel life is too short to stay in a job they weren’t passionate about. 

People have become more aware of the social impacts and thus started working on social causes. Having migrated to their hometown, many people have found a way to earn through agriculture and have shifted their focus to agriculture. Hence, such people also prefer the work from the home module. 

Despite its financial success, Reliance Industries faces a persistent issue: high employee turnover. The biggest shortcoming employees face in Reliance is in areas such as work-life balance, career development, and work environment. While competitive salaries fail to retain talent, solutions lie in increasing employee engagement, empowering employees, and cultivating a positive culture. Reliance needs to address employee retention issues and secure a more loyal workforce. By focusing on employee well-being and career development, Reliance can maintain its position as a top employer while reaping the benefits of a stable and dedicated workforce.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) faced challenges in meeting changing employee expectations. As competition and demands increased, HUL fell from being the top dream employer. Younger employees expected quicker career growth and more flexible work arrangements than HUL’s traditional model provided. Another big reason for quitting multiple jobs among the younger generations is they want instant gratification, they expect a pat on back plus rise in salary, plus promotion all of this instantly.

Conclusion

Employers should ensure a happy work environment if they want to retain their employees.  This will help in creating client delight, sustaining the current projects, acquiring new clients, business growth and business expansion. Accept new norms, flexibility for all the employees, build a vision for all employees – visualise the growth path in the company, motivate employees to do better. Certainly, monetary benefits play a major role in retaining employees. But organisations surely can bring new cultures and vibrancy to the work environment to retain employees. 

I think it is rare to find a person without a hobby. Most people have a hobby and do something interesting in their free time. Some people have common hobbies while some have unusual hobbies; your hobby either stirs up curiosity and delight in some people while many may have aversion for it. And when some people draw a long face and say that they have no hobby, they appear boring and drag. Your hobby provides a glimpse into your personality. It speaks a lot about your character, it allows you to paint a picture of yourself.  Progressive organizations all over world use hobby as key while hiring personnel as they look at the qualities required to perceive a hobby by a person.

For example, if you are a chess player, you might be good at making strategies. If you like fishing, you might be patient because fishing requires lot of patience. If you like playing Scrabble or doing crossword puzzles, you probably have a broad vocabulary and analytics – perhaps some untapped writing skills. If your love gardening, it shows your potential for creativity and endurance. The key is that each hobby shows some skillset a person has deep down in him/her. In a job interview, the moment interviewer asks about your hobby, the atmosphere eases and you feel little becomes hassle-free while it gives an opportunities for the employer to see your unwritten dispositions.  If you believe that your personality is an asset, then you have to get creative.  The employer also uses your hobby to get a broader perspective about you. Your life outside work may tell a lot about you. If you haven’t impressed the interviewer, here is a chance to impress him.

So, should you include your hobbies on your resume?  Well, there are strong arguments in favor of it and against it. While some people feel that hobbies are very personal and they should not be included in CV, others see is as a way to present their creative side as the best fit for the post in an organization.  Job seekers sometimes make the mistake of including hobbies that reveal too much about their dogmatic or religious beliefs that may cause the employer to have concerns about their regime or character.  However, if you never lose sight of the fact that you are trying to make the employer want to hire you, then it shouldn’t be difficult to stay on track.  There are some ways that your hobbies can make you stand out above your competitors. I think presentation matters.

Hobbies reveal your passions.  It is often said that you can tell a lot about a person by what they do in their spare time. Employers may look to find out your or to get a sense of your values.  Are you passionate about a particular cause?  Are you aware of surroundings? Are you concerned about what is going on in world around you?  Do you use your spare time to network, or instead you just like to relax? What are you, what kind of a person are your, your ethos, your interests and everything you are made of is of a great concern to the employer.

Your hobbies determine your skills.  You acquire skills from everything you do.  If you think back, you may find that you gained some of your most important skills through your hobbies. I know of this young lady who used go as an instructor in a summer camp without fail each summer, kids liked her and loved to be in her company, she was hired by a FMCG in their Human Resource Department where she rose to level of HR Director. Her hobby made her people’s leader. I think we need to review our target job and try to identify the key skills and personality traits which hobbies help us to build. If you have such hobbies which befit your job profile, then it is worth putting them on your resume.

Employers like to hire candidates who are involved in their community.  Employees who are loners and not social tend to singularly focus on their jobs, this is not healthy and may not work for the employee in networking with others. If you demonstrate through your hobbies that you are a go-getter and a friendly person, you may find that it makes your resume even stronger. Never forget that people are at the heart of the hiring process.  In addition to the required skills and experience, the employer is trying to find the right fit for a job profile.  There is a lot more to you than your professional skills.  If you allow the employer to get to know you, they will surely connect with you and decide that it’s you that they want on their team.

Yes, besides a job interview, if you have no hobby it is a sad thing. In fact it’s an alarming symptom. Probably, you just do not know how to organize your time and energy. Psychologists persistently recommend people to do some creative work besides work and house chores. Hobbies fill up our lives with new meaning and develop our creative abilities. A hobby should not distract you from your main profession or resolution of life. Don’t look at it as time killer. After all, a hobby helps you to grow in life, to broaden your mind and train your intellect.

Learning curve is defined as ‘the rate of a person’s progress in gaining experience or new skills. It can be presented in graphical representation of the common sense principle that the more one does something the better by putting in headwork; one gets better and better at it. Learning curves are geometric curves that can be graphed on the basis of a formula. In business organizations when people are hired the learning curve is measured on the basis of their output.  Typically, the X (horizontal) axis measures cumulative output and the Y (vertical) axis measures the cost per unit. The curve starts with a high cost per unit at the beginning of output, decreases quickly at first, and then levels out as cumulative output increases. The slope of the learning curve is an indication of the rate at which an employee’s learning transforms into cost savings.

One can explain the shape of learning curve in a different way. When a new task or production operation begins, a person or system learns quickly, and the learning curve is steep. With each additional repetition, less learning occurs and the curve flattens out. At the beginning of production or learning, individuals or systems are said to be “high” on the learning curve. That means that costs per unit are high, and cumulative output is low. Individuals and systems “move down” the experience or learning curve by learning to complete repetitive tasks more efficiently, removing hesitation and mistakes, mechanizing certain tasks, and making adjustments to procedures or systems.

People’s learning happens sporadically sometimes or not all such that they cannot be graphed.  But that’s exactly what you should do. The phrase, of course, has spread from management science to business and other activities generally. In the broader frame “learning curve” has come to mean that every new activity requires the acquisition of knowledge and skill. It takes time and requires money to master new jobs and new fields, but later knowledge provides efficiency and leverage.

In an average case, one follows the common path; he/she gains education in a structured setting and uses the knowledge as the basis for a career.  If an individual continues to learn ahead, advancement by gaining further education he/she grows. Career advancement is a byproduct of a person’s experience. That’s important too. Learning curve grows by unlearning what we have learnt.  In most areas of learning, there is always a “next step” with data or content one consumes because constantly things keep changing.

We all need to apprehend that we know nothing. Only when we realize this, our mind gets ready for accelerated learning.  When we think we know all or that we have answers for all problems we become unreceptive. Therefore, approaching situations with the mindset that we know nothing is better as we then learn objectively and stop thinking subjectively.  And an objective, measured mindset is necessary for learning.  Unlearning what we have learnt is very important for learning new things. In sense, we learn same topics

I am of an opinion that often the challenges we face come as blessings in disguise. If you look at them closely, they have some opportunities hidden in them. Life’s challenges usually seem like inconveniences because they disrupt our schedules, or get in the way of something we want to do. But, those challenges accelerate our learning curve. Similarly, when we are working on an important assignment, the last thing we want is to face big, unexpected challenges or obstacles. When that happens, it usually means a major delay. But, we forget to look at our added learning curve; we instead look at greater expense, or some other unplanned complication. When we are focused on results it is hard to appreciate the detours caused by new challenges.

It is rightly said that failing in a class or two in school strengthens our learning curve. We need to look at each problem/challenge in a whole new light. What if we could learn to see them as highly beneficial experiences, adventures in learning are interpreted as learning experience.  The truth is, with the right mental attitude we can completely reframe the way we experience challenges. And changing our self talk positively with the right questions is one of the most effective ways to do that. With a little practice we can view the challenges as some of our most valuable life experiences.

There are few things in life which help us accelerate our learning curve. They are:

Keep learning: You need to learn while at work from others and learn on your own many new things. In your personal life you can experiment with cooking, with daily chores etc. learn to enjoy by doing things in a different fashion. This is how you can get out of your vertical and become exposed to others.  Read blogs, books, newspapers, magazines and case studies. Visit Internet and libraries continuously.  Get books online and in local shops.  Don’t close yourself from knowledge intake because of the new and unfamiliar media formats. Keep updating yourself.

Discuss actively with friends, acquaintances: Listen while others talk on unfamiliar topics. Ask questions to gather knowledge. Your independent learning can be more structured if that works for you, but I think the most important point is it’s a subject that’s pleasurable to you.  That way you’re likely to fill free time with it. We learn best when we have some connection to what we are learning, it becomes useful, when it matters to us. We learn better when we are good at it, when the process of learning is fun. We don’t enjoy challenging and baffling topics. We learn when the reward for that learning is reinforced by positive feedback.

Travel: I think travel makes everybody an amazing person. A short trip or a long trip whatsoever, travel helps us comprehend better, think better and perform better. We end our travels way better off than when we started. While travelling life throws us in unknown situations, sometimes we get cheated, worst; loss of passport, travel documents all this prepares us to hit back with greater plans and ideas to deal with them. Travel teaches you to deal with yours and other’s errors. It teaches us correct and reduces stress. It’s just great reaching top of the mountain, crossing a gorge, helping a co-passenger with his bout of asthma, pacify somebody’s crying child, help some senior citizen by picking his baggage, these things teach skills we dint have.

Develop your hobbies: It is so important to have at least one creative hobby. Research shows that creative hobbies have the power to improve people’s mental states, their learning curve improves. And, some time every day for a bit of self-indulgent creative fun is worth it. So develop some hobbies. Give yourself some time. For example, I think photography is most creative endeavor, which involves creating something out of nothing; photography is all about capturing the beauty that already exists around us. It changes the way you see the world. Not only does it train you to see things from multiple perspectives, but it also gets you to see things that you normally overlook.

Learn few foreign languages: A foreign language is a whole new system with diverse grammar rules, etymology, pronunciation and meaning, which are just a few of parameters which keep the learner busy mentally. Learning a new language puts the brain to task by recognizing new language structure. As the brain works out meaning and connotations while expressing ideas, it sharpens skills on reading, negotiating, and problem-solving. This keeps accelerating the learning curve.

Lastly maintain a habit of documenting your progress.