Life Stages and Employee Engagement

By Tracy Leung – Manager, Sales & Marketing, Links International Hong Kong

I have recently been reading some articles about the correlation between different life stages and career aspirations, ideas that often come up in my role as a recruitment consultant in Hong Kong.

What triggered my research was a series of conversations I had with some senior candidates where the term “life stage” entered the conversation several times, and this made me think about what this really is about and how it may affect the recruitment environment.

Many people relate life stages to financial needs, which also indirectly correlates to career aspiration. Let’s put financial needs aside for a moment, assuming that different career levels should be compensated in a fair system. Let’s focus more on the increase in other needs, such as work-life balance, respect, etc., as well as drive and motivation.

The way I see it, all generations usually have similar values in life, but how they prioritise these values may differ. This leads to the following questions:

  1. How can we engage different levels of talent based on their drive and needs, rather than stereotyping them into different generational traits?
  2. How can we raise the next young leaders, who will become the majority of employees in the next five to seven years, based on those criteria?

In my opinion, it is crucial that we listen and react accordingly in order to close the gaps between expectations. What do you think?

For more information about our recruitment services in Hong Kong, please do not hesitate to contact me.