When I came to China 9 years ago to build an IT organization for a multinational company, the job was to take a bunch of raw talents who were smart, technical, culturally reserved but yet curious and turn them into employees that can engage, and excel in, delivering service with business sense and a globally recognized aptitude. The success formula was straight forward: install a clear structure, set stretch goals and keep honing their soft skill s and gave them proper exposure. Viola, a great team took shape.
Ten 10 years on, things are much different. Today, the global exposure, social and communications skills of the 22 – 32 generation are much refined coming out of the gate. The timid and shy nature has been replaced by confidence and eagerness to express themselves. With China fast becoming the largest single market for many industries and products, a new work culture is forming that caters to the unique East-meets-West era of China. The standard Western organization structure and management value no longer represent the most effective way of organizing work and people in China. In addition to the functional or technical job skills, valuable employees of today also need to possess the ability to crisscross across Chinese and outside culture, innovate new ideas and to connect to different parts of the society.
In China the MNC workforce are typically much younger then their Western counterpart. The stereotypical workforce demography in China resembles the following:
- Do not have significant financial burden
- No longer motivated by the promise of long-term employment or ‘have new things to learn,’ but by having a chance to prove themselves or work in-line with what they like.
- Most of them enjoy the cocoon feel of the university environment.
- No longer see expressing their life value through work alone.
- Middle managers in their mid-30’s, heavy-lifting work force under 33.
In other words, the young workers in China are closer to the top of the Maslow hierarchy than we think. Those who are motivated want to be part of the herd and build a unique identity or self-image. They actively seek out new experiences and once they find meaningful mission they can convince themselves to do give it their whole.
The key to build a young successful workforce would be to create an environment and system that motivates as many as possible, especially in service and intellect-oriented industries such as consulting, BPO, research and media marketing, etc. that rely on people and creativity. The organization structure and management techniques of yore are no longer effective in attracting and retaining the right kind of employees and hence high turnover rate is a common problem. Even on the subject of leadership, a key factor to retaining talents, the traditional leadership ‘gold standard’ of merely being an effective, ethical and principled person no longer suffices for managing the ‘Post-90’ workforce. Leading the new workforce need the following additional attributes:
- Be young at heart, pay attention to things they do, talk about things they talk about, communicate in direct tone: Obama is a good example.
- Stay humble and respect equality. Most experience manager’s misconception is that they need to have formal authority; but all they’d need is respect, and with young people you earn that by just have the confidence to be who you are.
- Have a sense of humor. Appreciate all facets of life other than work!
From an organization level, some of the actions an organization can take to extend loyalty from a young Chinese workforce are:
- Top leadership should provide clear vision for the China organization and communicate clearly to the crew to give them a sense of purpose in working in their jobs, don’t just communicate assignments and tasks.
- Culture of the company has to include social idealism other than work/company related perfection. Making a profit for investors does not inspire loyalty and motivation. It is important to craft and articulate how the business advances the society.
- Structure the teams in a way that employees don’t just work together, but allow them to share something meaningful together, one would notice that employees don’t usually leave in the middle of a big project; engineer these kind of meaningful moments.
- Develop sub-group identities; recreate a campus feel. Create competition or other events outside of their job roles that require them to work as a team to induce friendship. Young people don’t want to leave their friends.
- Keep them busy: Provide learning opportunities, organize social responsibilities activities, job rotation, and even involve them in company direction development. Especially job rotation, this will give employees a chance to find the area he or she can shine.
- Ensure that your compensation system is not one size fit all. Many MNCs tend to have a global evaluation and compensation process. This is may be cost friendly but it adds cost to other parts of the company. Evaluation and compensation structure should fit the local situation and staff demographic.
- The tradition HR model needs to evolve to encumber the above talent management environment. People leaders need to be trained and coached on modern leadership and mentoring skills. There is a popular adage in China: “People join a company for all sorts of reasons but leave only because of one – the boss.” Avoid this trap.
By no means I am ignoring the value and necessity of experienced employees. But in the disrupted world with the average consumer age continues to drop, companies need young employees to help them understand the market. I have witnessed first hand how applying mature structure and analysis to young employees’ creativity; a company can create great new ideas and products that became envy of the market. Don’t get left out.
