A STUDY OF MILLENNIALS AND THE PHYSICAL WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS ON TALENT ACQUISITION AND RETENTION

Abstract

John F. Kennedy mentioned “the future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth” (“The 2017 Deloitte”, 2017). Youth - millennials of today will be the leaders of the future, the present prospects given to them are as important as the promised change of workplace environment for better talent management. Today, organisations have to re-adapt to manage the transformation of workforce and are looking into new ways for recruitment and retention. As such, the importance of physical workplace environment may influence an organisation’s capability to attract and retain talented millennium workforce (Leblebici, 2012). The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between millennials and the physical workplace environment, to assess the role of physical workplace environment as a tool to attract and retain talented millennials. To achieve these, a survey was conducted with the millennials to understand their perceptions to the physical workplace environment. Interviews were also carried out with the millennials and Facility Management (FM) professionals to get deeper insights of how the workplace contributes to talent management. Subsequently, case studies were evaluated to investigate the connections between the workforce and the physical workplace environment. The study shows that the physical workplace environment today can contribute to retention but not completely. It was found that the quality of physical workplace environment is significant to the millennials. The findings shown that almost half of the millennials were willing to compromise their sleeping time and travel at a longer distances for a better workplace environment. Henceforth, the importance of the workplace was rated higher than expected. As a result, FM and Human Resource (HR) can work hand in hand towards an inclusive millennials’ talent management approach. This study provides an introductory research on millennials and the physical workplace environment. This study also demonstrated the importance of physical workplace environment towards workforce engagement and eventually retention.