BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – The lecturer of ITB SBM (School of Business and Management), Dr. N. Nurlaela Arief, was invited to be a speaker at the international conference "8th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2023" on March 16-17, 2023.

The event was held by The International Network of Media and Communication (Malaysia), Xiamen University (Malaysia), and Thammasat University (Thailand). Moreover, it was organized by The International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM) with other universities from 19 countries. The conference invited other professors from other institutes to share their topics, such as Prof. Arkadiusz Karwacki from Nicolaus Copernicus University of Poland and Dr. Nawal Shaharyar from Tallinn University Estonia (Northeastern Europe Estonia).

Dr. Nurlaela was chosen as one of the speakers during the plenary session, which is known to be selective at most international conferences.

Condition of Millennials and Gen Z in Work

Dr. Nurlaela raised the theme of her research “Employer Branding, Employee Influencer, Understanding Millennial and Gen Z Employees”.

It is known that millennials and Gen Z have different perceptions towards work, ranging from their reasons to do so, to factors that cause stress at work. Good work/Life balance is their biggest consideration in choosing their job, while long-term factors like future finances have the biggest percentage contributing to stress.

According to her, the current challenge in companies is keeping most employees who only last less than two years for Gen Z and between 5 years for millennials. When provided with options, SOEs have the highest rank of 63% compared to start-ups.

Dr. Nurlaela mentioned the three main factors that make Gen Z motivated to apply for companies: social value, working culture value, and economic value.

In the Employer Branding category, there are four phases carried out, starting from Discovery, the form of communication channels in the form of career sites, university career centers, and campus invasions to partner collaboration. The next phase is attraction in the form of social media channels, content creation, internship programs to coaching. Then, applications in the form of job portals, company career sites, and job fairs, as well as engagement in the form of onboarding sessions, internal events, to partnerships.

"Regarding the role of employees who become influencers, they do not have to have a large number of followers. Instead, they must be influential and have an impact in their area of expertise and field," she added.

Dr. Nurlaela also explained how the journey of employee influencer management, starting from selection in the form of surveys and measurements of internal communication and matters related to voice and authenticity, continued with the management of governance systems related to policies, program workshops to system policies, support systems related to what Employee influencers need to maintain the program.

Reporter: Ega Anda Rista (Entrepreneurship, 2023)
Translator: Ruth Nathania (Environmental Engineering, 2019)