Every one of us has something special in all of us. And it holds true for the business organizations. Every organization has something special too. It can be anything from the brand symbol or the relaxing area in the office. Most organizations take pride in their policies as the reason why their employees to stick around with them. Same HR policies can bore the job seekers and organizations are getting involved in changing them from time to time to yield maximum results.

Any policy is considered to be a success if the organization reaps the benefits and so do the employees. In some cases certain programmes have delivered the goods while in certain other cases they have not. These programmes have been designed as retention and attraction tools.

It is seen that certain HR policies do not do any good to the employees and the organization as they were initially initiated for.  In most organizations, there is a sense of complacency after such programmes were introduced. Most of these policies ensured a lock in period for the employee. Thus, the means became the end.

As organizations started to grow exponentially, the employee benefits soon transformed themselves into symbols of power and an acknowledgement of one’s position within the company. This factor perhaps created more problems than it could solve. Overtime, inequality of distribution of benefits actually fuelled employee dissatisfaction rather than addressing it. Retention bonuses were always going to be a double edged sword since they also indicated the relative importance of certain employees to the organization. 

One of the innovations devised are the sign-on bonuses. It has to be paid back if the employee quits within a stipulated time. Thus, it also acts as a retention tool. However, the perception is that sign-on bonus is an instant solution but they don’t buy loyalty. Many times they cause an additional turn-over within the industry and can cause resentment amongst employees at various levels.

Companies should be very clear who is their talent community and understand the psychological, social and demographic factors that make a highly engaged employee. A company in the BPO sector has a much younger population than a manufacturing company. The benefits package for different age-groups must be different and according to the industry. HR practitioners are getting convinced that a general purpose benefits strategy does not give the required solution as organizations need a bouquet of retention benefits programmes. It is important to recognize that every employee’s need varies with time and specific situations and they need to take into account their problems and personal priorities. HR policies should ensure that every employee is heard, given personal attention in multiple forums and without deviating from personal policies.  HR needs to understand that the policies need to be tweaked upon on a regular basis to keep the productivity and engagement high. A lot more personal and segmented policies are the need of the hour and HR must act fast to avert the dangers of attrition and have a happy workforce.