This chapter consists of background of the study, motivation of the study, purpose and questions of the study, delimitation and definition of key terms.
Background of the Study
A generation can be generally identified by three overlapping effect: (a) life cycle effect, (b) period effect, and (c) cohort effect. Life cycle effect means when people getting older, their behavior and the way of thinking will resemble the senior in today. Period effect stand for the impact of major external environment event happened in certain period that exposes simultaneously to different generation (e.g. social movement; economic depression;
technology advancement).
Cohort effect comes after period effect and explains why does each age group different from each other. Cohort effect makes age groups different from another because the degrees of influence will be different depend on where is the stage of life cycle. The influences to specific generation make core value and work attitude discrepancy from another age group.
Hung, Gu, and Yim (2008) defined generation as “the generational cohorts or groups, who belong to the same age group, experience or will experience accordingly the similar life experience in the years they may shape their lives.” View on predecessors, each of generation is classified by their distinctive trait, for example, Traditionalists, is generally born between 1900-1945, they suffered by wars and Great Depression in their whole lives, result in being thrifty and want permanency in their jobs because the financial security is of crucial importance for these people. They are authority-orientation and try to obey and hierarchy demand as much as they can.
Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were the generation after Traditionalists, also called
workaholic generation. In that period of time, about 1 billion babies were born soon after the World War II. Because of crowed people pursue limited resources, the members of this generation had to be always individualist and competitive. Afterward, Generation X born between 1965 to 1979, who are the children of a workaholic generation, in the period of time, they experienced several remarkable event, such as Watergate Scandal, Vietnam War, First AIDS Cases, also the first personal computer were create. Furthermore, the rapidly advancing technologies enable them to learn news globally by broadcasting on TV. Because they faced an enormous changing world, they learnt to be high reliance and be more creative in order to grow in a restricted environment. Regarding their perspective of career plan, a chance of improving their career is the most important point in their business life, they value their personal career develop by assess the current company whether satisfy their development need. Compare to their parents, who start to pursue a flexible working hours, pleasant working environment, and possess sources to establish their own business.
Based on the definition, Berkup (2014) listed a table to classify the generation from each other. As Table 1.1. showed, the duration of a generation has shortened sharply, researcher asserted the situation is caused by advanced-technology.
Gen Y is the youngest generation that live together with technology which already affect the way of their communication or built their network with worldwide. especially the advanced information and communication technologies is change the pattern also cultivate Gen Y a distinctive trait. Regarding the population and influence of Gen Y, Erickson (2008) found that Gen Y represents a quarter of the population in world, and they will dominate the future workforce in a decade (Erickson, 2008). Moreover, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also analyzed and forecasted that there will be approximately 70 million of the Gen
Y entering the workforce by 2015 and they will be 75 percent of all working professionals by 2030 (Axten, 2015).
Nowadays, the youngest generation, have been 25 percent of global workforce and will be the domination of workforce in nearly future, Gen Y has been taking a critical role of sustain company’s competitive advantages, and be considered as target member of human resources development.
Table 1.1.
Chronological Generation Classification
Generation Name Chronological Generation Classification Duration
Traditionalists 1900 - 1945 45 years
Baby Boomers 1946 - 1964 18 years
Gen X 1965 - 1979 14 years
Gen Y 1980 - 1993 13 years
Gen Z 1993- ...
Apart from the worldwide situation, a report from Taiwan Executive Yuan analyzed that 4.94 million of the total population age 22-35 who have had occupied 21% in 2014. Several document and analysis evidenced the Gen Y will dominate workforce both global and Taiwan in nearly future. It’s a chance also a challenge to human resource practitioner, because the youngest generation have has different perspective toward both workplace and personal life.
Recently there has been a growing interest in and recognition of the value of investigating Gen Y’s retention in organization, a number of research and article addressed that Gen Y possess the essential factors of company development and economic revival due to their numerous population (Barkhuizen, 2014; Hao, 2006; Luscombe, Lewis, & Biggs, 2013; Martin, 2005; Stanimir, 2015). According to Morrison (2012), Gen Y’s population is equal to their parent generation and more than twice workforce of pervious generation. A
press of Forbes estimated that Gen Y would be occupying 75 percent of the global workforce in 2025, and taking an important place and influencing it positively.
Motivation of the Study
A famous saying said by US steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie “Take away my factories, my plants; take away my money; strip me of all these; but leave me my people, and in two or three years I will have them all again” (Gupta, 2007) clear express how critical is employee retention.
Plenty of research has proved job satisfaction as one of key factor of high turnover caused, (e.g. Cotton & Tuttle 1986; Muchinsky & Morrow 1980; Trevor, 2001) even money earning considered as a direct influence on employee retention. Base on this, researches suggest some solution to enhance employee retention, for instance, Walker (2001) identified (a) compensation and appreciation of the performed work, (b) provision of challenging work, (c) chances to be promoted and to learn, (d) invitational atmosphere within the organization, (e) positive relations with colleagues, (f) a healthy balance between the professional and (g) good communications as the key factors of enhancing retention.
Even though the widely discussion given to enhance employee retention, the problem of Gen Y retention is still an unsolved and knotty problem to employers, view on Yer’s traits, Gen Y do not afraid of becoming unemployed as they trust in their families who are ready to support them. The Gen Y, with its character open to change, do not have a difficulty in adapting to the new companies in which they are employed. Gen Y are considered as a high-potential generation and will stimulate organization to success, it’s necessary to gain more understanding of Gen Y retention intention. Moreover, the analysis of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan showed that the average of salary are much lower when considering
commodity price factors of the salary in average regular earnings of employees, therefore, the young generation will face a disappointment when they realize they may not be compensated what they contribute in the work place even though they are well-educated.
As Gen Y workforce has dominate in nearly future, and technology-centered world strongly influenced Gen Y the way of communication, learning style, working ethic and concept of work-life balance, result in several managerial problem and challenge.
The more attention is given to Gen Y, the more issue revealed related to Gen Y characteristics and retention problem. Some studies impute the problem of high turnover rate to external factors, such as organization environment, compensation, learning and developing opportunity, etc. However, according to Ajzen (1991) indicated that attitude toward behavior, subject norm and perceived behavior control as the main character to perform a behavior, which mean the reason of high turnover rate is not only result in external factors but also related to an individual attitude and personality.
In this research, the attention is specific given to explore the relationship among learning intention, career adaptability and employee retention of Gen Y in Taiwan.
Purposes of the Study
The main purposes of this research is to have further understanding of how strong does the learning intention, career adaptability influence the level of employee retention of Gen Y.
Furthermore, since every generation have specific characteristics caused by cohort effect, this research also investigate how does the demographic difference (e.g. gender, educational level) impact on variables. The purposes of the study listed as followings:
1. To explore the relationships among learning intention, career adaptability and retention of Gen Y in Taiwan.
2. To discover the variances of gender among learning intention and employee retention of Gen Y in Taiwan.
3. To discover the variances of educational levels on learning intention of Gen Y in Taiwan.
Research Questions
Based on the background, the problems are aroused as below:
1. Does learning intention and career adaptability affect the level of employee retention of Gen Y?
2. Are there significant differences between male and female on learning intention, and employee retention of Gen Y?
3. Are there significant differences between educational levels on the learning intention of Gen Y?
Delimitation
According to the research topic, this research only focuses on Gen Y born between 1980 and 1993 with over one year working experience. The processors such as baby boomer and Gen X are excluded in this research.
To provide an overall concept of the relationship among Gen Y learning intention, career adaptability and employee retention. This research has no industry limitation.
Definition of Key Terms
This section describes the definition of Gen Y, learning intention, career adaptability and employee retention that applied to this study.
Gen Y
This study defined Gen Y as those individuals born between 1980 and 1993. Gen Y also called as Millennials, Echo Boomers, the Digital Generation or Generation Me (Martin, 2005;
Smith, 2010).
Learning Intention
Kyndt, Govaerts, Dochy, and Baert (2011b) defined learning intention as a readiness or willingness to undertake a concrete action in order to neutralize an experienced discrepancy, and to reach a desired situation by means of training and education. This study adopted the definition.
Career Adaptability
Savickas (1997) defined career adaptability as “the readiness of cope with the predictable tasks of preparing for and participating in the work role and with the unpredictable adjustment prompted by changes in work and working conditions” (p254).
Career adaptability has four dimensions: concern, curiosity, confidence, and control. The definition of career adaptability from Savickas (1997) was employed in this study.
Career concern. Concern means the essentially a future orientation, a sense that it is important to prepare for tomorrow. Individual who concerning about their own career will foster themselves looking forward and starting prepare for coming vocational tasks and occupational transition. An attitude of future orientation enables person become optimism about the achievability of future goals embedded in the construct, and well aware of the connecting experience between preferred occupation and present occupation. A belief in persisting difference experience provide people to explore possible selves. Most of all, the attitude and belief encourage people to promote advanced competencies in order to planning and preparing for the future.
Career control. Control is defined as an aspect of intrapersonal processes that stimulate self-regulation. Individual controlling enables people being conscientious, deliberate, organized and to use self-discipline and persistence to shaping themselves in performing vocational development tasks and making occupational transitions clearly.
Career curiosity. In career construction theory, career curiosity means a sense of curiousness of exploring career information and simultaneously arouses motivation to seeking differences experiences and roles when exploring possible selves and alternative scenarios. The attitude of inquisitiveness enables people to scan the environment to learn more about self and situations.
Career confidence. The person who is confidence means he or she possess certain ability to perform things successfully, feeling peaceful when encountering challenges and overcoming obstacles. In career construction theory, career confidence is a sense of self-efficacy, self-esteem, and feeling of encouragement.
Employee Retention
Stauss et al. (2001) defined employee retention as “customer liking, identification, commitment, trust, readiness to recommend, and repurchase intentions, with the first four being emotional-cognitive retention constructs, and the last two being behavioral intentions.”
This study adopted Stauss et al. (2001) as the definition of employee retention.