Example-1: Job as a product

The first example that was discussed has been explained in details below. The example was considered to be most relevant and accepted by both. It also had an influence of a post (Job as a product) by fellow batch mate on his blog.

Let us consider the jobs offered by a company as the range of products they offer. A group of companies offering similar jobs/roles would be the competitors. The employees would be their consumers who choose a particular job from the various options available. Now, a customer would select a product based on its characteristics and value offered by the company. Similarly the selection of a job by a customer might be based on salary offered, working location, job profile, growth in the company, brand name, etc. These criteria and their weights depend on the individual customer, in this case an employee.

What happens is that once recruited, the customer checks the value an employee adds to the organization. If its considerable enough, the organization treats him/her well and makes sure to retain them. Once an image is built and impression created, the organization doesn’t easily get rid of such employees. This was very prevalent earlier in family run businesses and when global competition wasn’t very intense. The companies got complacent with the human resources they had. Also downsizing had a great negative effect on the firm. So the company retained even the non-contributing employees who weren’t adding any value to the organization but instead were liabilities for the firm.

Then there is the customer’s (employee) perspective. How do they get used to a product (job) and in turn grow complacent. An employee might get complacent due to one or many of the product characteristics. These may be the work he is doing or the perks offered. He tends to accept the current job as his fate and continues to work for the same organization rather than looking for growth opportunities and switching companies. There might be other factors too like work location, brand image of the company, family pressure, etc. But from personal experience and what I interacted with people, complacency sets into the minds of people which makes them stick to the same company. Thus complacency is a major factor contributing to employee retention in companies.