The relationship between talent management practices and retention of generation ‘Y’ employees: mediating role of competency development

Abstract

In a competitive marketplace, retention of talented and younger employees is a challenge for organizations. Thus, it becomes important for organizations to execute employees' development strategies to retain Generation Y employees. The goal of this research is to analyze the effect of talent management (TM) practices i.e. mentoring, strategic leadership, social media, and knowledge sharing on the intention to stay of generation Y employees and strengthening this relationship by investigating the mediating role of competency development. A total of 372 employees of generation Y participated in the study. The data were analyzed through the PLS-SEM model using smartPLS-3 software. Findings reveal that TM practices: mentoring, strategic leadership, social media positively affect the intention to stay of generation Y employees, while knowledge sharing has no significant effect on the intention to stay. Competency Development mediates the relationship between strategic leadership, social media, knowledge sharing and intention to stay. However, competency development does not significantly mediate the relationship between mentoring and intention to stay.

How Does Mentoring and Strategic Leadership Contribute to Gen Y Employees Intention to Stay: A Sequential Mediation Approach

“…This research is particularly designed to address the recent calls of Younas and Bari (2020) and Naim and Lenka, (2017), by empirically investigating the impact of talent management practices (e.g. Strategic leadership and mentoring) on Gen Y employees' intent to stay in pharma industry of Pakistan.…”

“…Strategic leaders display positive activities that include sharing roles, embracing improvement, collaborating with staff, reflecting on the internal needs of high-level workers, and helping to generate greater job satisfaction, motivation, and employee understanding (Younas and Bari, 2020). Exchange members, on the other hand, are passive and try only to preserve the status quo, concentrating emphasis on the lowest level of employee needs, looking at jobs, discovering job mistakes and failures, and practicing discipline to improve positive attitudes and achieve higher performance rates.…”

“…They seek career opportunities and have higher career development expectations. They are also in search to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge to remain in the talent market (Younas and Bari, 2020). Such employees have appreciated potentials to hunt for career opportunities, career development, mentoring and work-life balance.…”

“…To facilitate professional as well as personal development of Gen Y, mentoring is the best holistic HR approach. Furthermore, a plethora of research also highlighted that mentoring is effective for Gen Y employees, as such employees have a higher need for attainment and progressive orientation (Younas and Bari, 2020;Naim and Lenka, 2018).…”

“…In the view of social exchange theory and psychological contract theory, our study incorporated mentoring and strategic leadership to enhance the levels of Gen Y workers POS, leading to AC and eventually increase the chances of intent to stay. Notably, our research reports the demands for empirical study to assess the importance of strategic leadership and mentoring as the right tool to advance Gen Y employees (Younas and Bari, 2020;Naim and Lenka, 2018).…”