According to The Borneo Post Online, Kelly Services (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd managing director Melissa Norman says that Malaysian medium and large corporations should start to transform their recruitment and working culture to avoid a talent drain in future.
She highlighted that Malaysian-based multi-national companies had applied its transformed recruitment and working methods to attract fresh graduates and local skilled labour, and it had been successful. “It is no more about the money that the young generation can gain, generation Y is looking forward to the quality of life that they can obtain from an occupation,” she told Bernama in an interview recently.
The orthodox kind of recruitment and working style, such as the ‘employer says all, employees listen’ and ‘9am to 5pm working style’, did not work with the younger generation any more, she added. We’re not surprised to learn that given the current working environment, many fresh graduates from foreign universities and skilled workers opted not to return to Malaysia, reducing the talent pool that Malaysia should have in order to attract more foreign direct investments, she said.
The good news? Some Malaysians companies had started to change their working or human resources module to a more colourful, vibrant, open-office style with flexible working hours and were more friendly when approaching a fresh graduate or young skilled employee, she said.
“However, more companies have to transform, or not have their productivity dependent solely on the going-to-retire and retired employees. The working lifestyle currently experienced by the younger generation is the major reason why most of them do not stay at one company for more than three years,” she said.
Norman said the human resources department, being the lifeline of a corporation, had to develop certain recruitment and working policies which fitted well for all the working generations. “Whether this will increase productivity is not proven, but this method will certainly attract more and more young, skilled talent,” she said. — Bernama
