Just give me the time and keep the money

Another phenomenon that is emerging - especially in European countries where personal taxation is high - is the trend to exchange salary for time. 10 per cent of salary in exchange for a specific number of days' vacation. Sheila Bates, an HR professional, who developed this concept for the mobile phone provider KPMOrange in the Benelux comments

˜We employed a lot of young, single people and the one commodity in short supply is time. In a high-taxed country like Belgium giving up a slice of your cash income isn't that hard, because it is getting whacked for tax anyway.' She continues, ˜Younger employees always have a shortage of time to get things done, and this we found was a great motivator and a great way to retain people by giving them what they wanted - meeting their needs in a flexible, yet structured fashion.'

What all these developments show is that we must to be able to react to and meet these changing employee wish lists as and when they arise.

The respect we need to garner from our new-age employees is partly going to arise from being seen to go the extra mile in order to meet their expectations.