The moderating effects of employee generation on workplace retention during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ho Chi Minh city

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic - a violent and dangerous "storm", which is spreading and devastating the world and the country of Vietnam, has extremely important effects in the economic sphere, especially on the labor force issue. This study examined generation differences in employee retention between three generation systems - Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study specifically investigated the impact of transformational and transactional leadership, corporate social responsibility, technology, autonomy, and work-life balance (WLB), on employee retention and explored differences in the correlations between three generation systems. To examine the proposed relationships, a voluntary survey was conducted on a sample of 301 employees in all fields from other corporations in TP Ho Chi Minh. The analyses using multiple regression models show that all six factors are positively related to employee retention. Overall, most of the important factors that influence how productive employees are kept at work are different from the three-generation system. For Gen Z, the most important factors are social responsibility, technology, and autonomy. For Gen Y, leadership transformation and transactions, corporate social responsibility, autonomy, and WLB are the most important factors. Meanwhile, Gen X values autonomy, WLB. This study provides insights for managers on how to manage employee retention rates differences among three generation systems.