Abstract:

Purpose of the research:
The labour market in Europe experiences a battle for talent. The young generation of employees holds the potential for skills and competence, which is in demand in the digital era. There has been intensive research on management practices aimed at young employees, resulting into HRM and HRD practices. The purpose of this study is to explore the retention of young employees by investigating human resource management (HRM) practices that have been developed to address the unique needs and preferences of the younger generation of employees.

Aim:
This paper aims to explain ways to hold talent by identifying HRM practices with a significant impact on young employee retention. We are building on a comprehensive HRM practice survey focusing on HRM practices designed to attract and retain young employees. We focused on resourcing practices, employee development, and communication.

Methods:
Empirical research covered 4.145 organisations with over 150 employees in CRANET survey round 2021-22, from 26 European countries. The survey is conducted regularly and provides large-scale, multi-time-point, cross-national data (Parry et al., 2021). For a more detailed description of the questionnaire survey methodology, see Brewster (Brewster et al., 2004).

The context of European countries has been chosen due to common traditions, similar settings, and results allowing to find closer explanations of causalities. To interpret the results, we took a closer look at a group of organizations employing more than 6% of young employees with questionable outcomes concerning voluntary, involuntary turnover and absenteeism. The data were processed to calculate ANOVA, correlation matrix, and linear regression.

Results:
The results of this study indicate that as the proportion of young employees within an organization increases, the rate of voluntary turnover also rises. In other words, organizations with a larger percentage of younger workers tend to experience higher levels of employees voluntarily leaving their positions. Organizations with a high proportion of young employees include employees’ appraisal with a wider portfolio of input data, they also include innovative human resources development practices (HRD) aimed at young employees, as well as apply action programs in recruitment and training/career progression. The results of this study indicate that the HRM practices aimed at young employees are not significantly related to the retention of young employees. The results of this study indicate that top-down communication, specifically the communication of strategic and operational content from management to employees, has a significant positive impact on employee retention. Additionally, the study identified certain communication channels that were particularly effective in facilitating this type of communication.

Conclusions:
Companies are implementing HRM practices and developing action programs to address specific characteristics and desires of young employees to win their talents. Intensive communication personal and electronic has shown to be significantly impactful to retain young employees.

Acknowledgement:
This research was supported by a grant from the Slovak Ministry of Education Science, Research and Sport, VEGA 1/0623/22: Virtualization in human resources management - the life cycle of an employee in a company in digital transformation.

Keywords:

Young employees, New generation, Inclusion, Human resources development, Human resources management.