Immigration policies are just one issue adversely affecting the management of staff in the Cayman Islands according to a Human Resource specialist.

Rollover may be adding to an employee crisis which is further compounded by mismanagement and misunderstanding about what employees want.

Fifty per cent of the workforce is “disengaged” and feeling no loyalty to, or are feeling detachment from, their jobs according to experts.

The average employee used to change jobs once over the course of a career and now this change happens eight times throughout a given career.

Employee loyalty and tenure are decreasing and, based on current trends of no younger employees entering businesses at the required rate to replace older employees, in just about 20 years, there will be huge gaps in the workforce.

These are just some of the facts that Human Resource professional, Kevin Horseman, identified at a Cayman Islands Society for Human Resource Professionals (CISHRP) meeting on 5 July 2006.

Mr Horseman – Deloitte’s Manager of Human Capital Consulting – said that based on such empirical data, “The competition for talent is fierce” and, countries the world over, were “about to face a demographic shortfall in talent” that would make the experience of the 1990’s seem insignificant.

He said too that ‘A’ players, the most critical staff are the first to leave and as a result businesses needed to change their approach to managing employees.

He said corporations need to understand that pay is not even in the top five of things that matter most to the employees.

When businesses started the wage-war for talent, by giving high compensation packages and hot-skills bonuses some workers still left their jobs looking for challenges.

Moreover the work-life balance is real to this generation, that is, they don’t live to work like older employees, they work to live.

Mr Horseman said that surveys showed that employees expect challenging work; two-way communication and, the tools and operational structure,  that will lead to their own growth and development.

To bring balance to the point about the importance of remuneration to employees, Mr Horseman said, “While money is certainly not a de-motivator, it is not a motivator.”

To show how businesses had been travelling along the wrong path Mr Horseman said that statistics showed that “fifty times more money had been spent on recruiting than was spent on training employees.”

He explained that with these trends, Talent Management – designed to develop, deploy and connect with the “critical workforce segment” – was now essential for business success.

Mr Horseman said that while just about 59 per cent of companies taking part in an international poll said that they used “surveys” to communicate with their staff, in fact, only three per cent of them actually administered surveys more than once a year.

He said that employees needed to even have an input on what type of “rewards” they received – an item that could have financial and non-financial components.  He added that dialogue about employees’ rewards should be designed around critical employees.

However, almost half of the companies reported that they don’t collect feedback about rewards.

The audience was asked about “creative” rewards packages where they worked and the responses included a “compressed workweek,” where if an employee completes a certain number of hours in four days of the week, then one day-off in that week is awarded; a pay out of half the number of sick-leave days leftover in a year; spot rewards like gift certificates throughout the year; getting birthdays off from work; as well as other examples.

Becky Kalahiki – a Consultant at Deloitte in the field of Human Capital Consulting who was also a presenter at the meeting – placed emphasis on consulting with employees about their rewards. However, she also underscored that development strategies for employees to stay competitive should be implemented.