Engagement & retention in China

China: looking for meaning in the Corporate environment

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Having a dinner with some of my EMBA students and my young assistant I had the opportunity to discuss about an important challenge the Chinese society is facing: the loss of values and meaning. The huge transformation Chinese people are living brings the feeling of having lost common values. The ones from traditional culture have somehow lost their strenghts after the cultural revolution, the new ones coming from the West are accepted but felt as external. The young generation feels lost, without points of reference in this extremely fast change. The more mature people are worried about this lost of ethical values and standards. 
In this context my assistant explained me that many young people look for values and meaning in the organizational context, they are attracted by strong corporate culture that can give them a sense of belonging and "spiritual", "value based" directions. In the meanwhile they do an individual search for alternative thinking where they may find a path to happiness. Positive psychology starts to have a strong appeal in China: trainings, videos about this new approach are becoming more and more commonly distributed here in China and this seems to be one of the possible answers to young Chinese' quest of sense of community and meaning. Here attached an example of a video on Positive psycology by a Harvard Professor posted on web channels in China with Chinese subtitles: See the Video
If there is a lack of well being in current Chinese society, on the other end it is important that a movement of search is under going. 
Even if personally I feel difficult to find an answer to life meaning only in the corporate environment, for sure in terms of engagement and retention  the companies have now a huge opportunity. If they find a way to build a real sense of belonging they may succeed in engaging the young staff not only using, the less effective, economic incentive. We are observing today a rise of quest of collective sense, hopefully organization can be the first step to find an answer and than maybe collective society will follow.