Generational Background And Briscoe's Engagement Strategy: Impact On Human Resource

Generational Background

Discuss about the Impact on The Human Resource and Briscoe’s Engagement Strategy.

In every organization, human resource is the most valuable and long-lasting asset. Human resource resides in the skills, knowledge, and motivation of all personnel. It is a scarce resource that improves with age and experience. Due to changing economic situations, generational motivation has changed. To ensure that staff remains productive and efficient, firms have taken a role train their workers to ensure they can keep up with new trends. The current business environment has been fed up with advanced and sophisticated technologies that necessitate the establishment of good approaches to human resources to create a competitive advantage over the rivaling firms. This report seeks to explore the various generations, their differences, and how these distinctions impact on the human resource. It also evaluates Briscoe’s engagement strategy for its workers.

In an economic point of view, people have been classified into generations. These generations were divided into time periods differentiated by various characteristics. The depression era, born between years 1912-1921, is the first generation identified. People in this era were great savers, conservative and preferred to keep minimal debts (Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, & Friedman, 2004). They wanted to leave legacies for their children, were patriotic, loyal, work oriented and had respect for authority.

The following generation was born between 1922- 1922. The World War 2 era was comprised of people that fought for a common goal, but they liked postponing. Post-war cohort, on the other hand, had many job opportunities since the economy was booming. However, the cold war began, and people valued security and preferred more familiar environments. The boomer group followed it (Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, & Friedman, 2004).

The Boomer generation was divided into two. The first had real economic opportunities, and people were highly optimistic. They also had trust in the government as the leaders then helped to unite them after the war (Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, & Friedman, 2004). However, the second group lost confidence in their governments, had worse economic opportunities but maintained the optimism. These groups differed in their attitudes, behaviors and had different life experiences. The latter group was shadowed by the former.

Generation X born between years 1966-1976 followed.  It is referred to as the lost group since its children were exposed to divorce and day care. These people were highly skeptical but were also classified as the best educated. They were cautious about family by avoiding divorces and were good financial planners (Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, & Friedman, 2004).

Demographic Characteristics of Generation Y

Generation Y which is the largest generation comprises of people born between1977-1994. This group is racially diverse, politically disengaged, materialistic, and selfish and utilizes technology. The use of the internet has made them more flexible (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). This generation pays emphasis to extrinsic values such as image, fortune, and fame while self-acceptance and teamwork are not given much consideration. Nonetheless, it has positive characteristics such as open-mindedness, self-expressive, confident, creative and liberal.

Gender equality exercised by people in this group is one of the key features that make it stand out from the previous generation. Both sexes are given equal chances in education and workplaces. This is the reason that generation Y has recorded high education levels for both genders. In workplaces, both women and men compete for the same opportunities (Shandler, 2009).  

Compared to other generations, this group has shown tolerance and accommodation for differences in perspectives and identities. It is racially diverse and has little regard for politics. Besides, it is culturally inferior compared to its predecessors. Except its cultural attitude, generation Y is described to be a flexible group, creative, and open-minded (Shandler, 2009). Its utilisation of the internet has helped this team to keep up with new trends compared to the previous generations. It is also known to be confident and good in communication and expression.

However, generation Y have a sense of entitlement. It, therefore, highly relies on its parents for financial and emotional support. This reliance is evident in their education and working places (Armstrong, 2014). Parents have helped shape the direction of their studies and aided them in active promotion in their workplace.

The characteristics of Generation Y have impacted both positively and negatively on human resource. On the positive perspective, this group is known to be optimistic, have high expectations and is well informed on the technical aspects of their jobs. Generation Y is responsive to training and works efficiently since it is known to be confident (Shandler, 2009). Equal opportunities to both genders ensure that firms attract qualified personnel by taking advantage of superior qualities. Besides, its flexibility helps it to keep up with changing business trends.

However, its attitude has had a negative impact on the human resource. This group lacks the motivation required by firms to ensure the human resource is productive. Generation Y lacks ambition in career and prefers to pursue its personal interest (Armstrong, 2014). It does not identify itself with an organization but rather with its job and, therefore, undermines teamwork.

Attitude Characteristics of Generation Y

Briscoe group engagement strategy aims at helping workers in retail to prepare for the future. It hopes to reduce employee turnover. This approach introduced on-job training program where workers were trained and awarded on improvement. Briscoe group believes that an organization cannot afford not to train and it would better to have trained employees who leave than retaining ignorant ones (Noe, 2006). Since incorporating this program, Briscoe group has had a dramatic drop in employee turnover, increase in sales and recruitment campaigns attracting quality applicants.

This strategy has worked for Briscoe group due to some key factors. They include;

Employees were allowed to work through the content of their training at their pace. This ensured that workers are not rushed through the training process hence would retaining content and skills learned. Training and development of the personnel have impacted significantly on the productivity of Briscoe group and therefore should be maintained.

Staff managers offered support to the training program by giving the employees time off to study. This helps employees to concentrate and promote understanding. Sufficient time to reflects improved performance on the part of all departmental managers as they can analyze vividly the techniques gathered in the training process.

Coaching staff identified the areas that workers needed support. They helped them to improve on their weaknesses hence giving them more confidence to carry out tasks. Coaching of the personnel improves their strengths and creates opportunities for creativity over new business approaches which enable the firm to compete advantageously.

Briscoe group employed a training-oriented program to improve employees’ performance and reduces turnover. However, other approaches have been proposed. Communication helps to build teamwork and motivate workers (Hundley, Jacobs, & Drizin, 2009). Managers have to ensure that employees feel included by considering their feedback. Besides, communication helps to identify problems in a firm and relay expectations (Werner & DeSimone, 2006). This strategy has increased production and distribution.

Incentives and recognition of employees are other alternatives. Proper remuneration for employees especially the youth provides sufficient motivation (Noe, 2007). Rewards given for recognition of good performance helps encourage and motivate the staff. Motivated employees have their morale on undertaking their roles and responsibilities within the workplace rejuvenated, and this leads to the overall success of the company.

Briscoe group analysis and evaluation of engagement result are appropriate. It measures the results by comparing the performance of its employees with those of other firms. This helps reduce bias in assessment (Noe, 2007). Also, it considers the feedback from customers and the trainers. They used account records as numeric evidence of the improvement in their workers’ performance. Some of the tools used Briscoe in measuring the performance of employees include the employees rating one another, self-appraisals, and management appraisals (Sandler, 2009). These job performance evaluation techniques assist Briscoe group determine the amounts of compensation suitable for different staff under different departments accurately and undertaking varying responsibilities within the organization’s workplace.

Conclusion

This report is a detailed analysis of human resource. Human resource is a crucial element for the success of an organization. It explores the current generation that forms a large part of the available workforce, its distinction from other cohorts and the impact of this differences on human resource. It also evaluates the engagement strategy by Briscoe group and the factors that led to its success. It identifies communication and remuneration as other alternative strategies that can be employed to improve the efficiency of workers and supports Briscoe’s way of measuring engagement results.  Therefore, the management of business enterprises should encourage the participation and integration of roles and responsibilities carried out by different human resources properly to enable the business to thrive.

References

Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice.

Askegren, P. (2005). Human resource. New York: Ace Books.

Caligiuri, P., Lepak, D., & Bonache, J. (2010). Managing the global workforce. Hoboken.Wiley.

Chase-Lansdale, P., Kiernan, K., & Friedman, R. (2004). Human development across lives and generations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hundley, S., Jacobs, F., & Drizin, M. (2009). Workforce Engagement. Scottsdale: WorldatWork  London: Kogan Page.

Noe, R. (2006). Human resource management. Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill.

Noe, R. (2007). Fundamentals of human resource management. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Press.

 Sandler, D. (2009). Motivating the Millennial knowledge worker. Axzo Press.

Twenge, J. & Campbell, W. (2009). The narcissism epidemic. New York: Free Press.

Werner, J. & DeSimone, R. (2006). Human resource development. Mason OH: Thomson South-  Western.