Employment Security

In China, many MNCs have been spoiled by the abundance of labor and view people, particularly in non-managerial positions, as a commodity. Until recently, those companies were not troubled by high attrition rates and poor work design leading to burnout, stress, work-life-imbalance.

Nevertheless, as the salary levels rise, companies are increasingly concerned with the effectiveness of their workforce. More and more companies have embraced the concept of employee retention and strive to increase the productivity, accountability and responsibility among their workforce. Employee engagement programs are frequently utilized solution to achieve such objectives.

Employers however remain not very effective at defining what is it that they want the workers engage in. They also remain unable to effectively operationalize organizational objectives and link them to performance expectations, essential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness. Corporate missions in such companies are reduced to creating a “fun” place to work, participating in CSR initiatives, and postulating empowerment. At the same time, profit targets and business objectives are tabooed, not shared with employees with overall financial literacy remaining low.
What do the companies try to hide, that they do not make money at all or have solid profit margins and are simply afraid to share it with the workforce.

I believe however, that demand for improved productivity requires that employees understand how the company, as a for-profit entity, is doing toward achieving their essential objective (profitability) and how everyone is contributing to this end. How else can one instill ownership?

Profits should not be hidden. Only profits can guarantee long-term employment security. If the company does not make profits, it goes bankrupt and lay-offs all employees.

In turn, employment security is one of the most valued elements of Employee Value Proposition and a critical piece of high performance work arrangement. Then, innovations in work practices and productivity improvements can be only sustainable when employee to do not fear that that by increasing productivity they will work themselves out of their jobs.