By Paul Plotczyk, President, WSA
Why is so much attention being paid to managing today's multigenerational workforce? Haven't we always had multigenerational workforces? Do we really need to bend over backwards to accommodate idiosyncrasies of each generation?
The answer is a resounding YES! If you want to attract, retain and develop the best and brightest.
In fact, given the predicted labor shortage and the expected Talent War that will ensue, you will have to expend quite a bit of effort to attract even the average and not-so-brilliant.
What Do You Need to Do and How Do You Do It?
Before you going rushing off to throw a Sundae party for the Yers or let the Boomers and Xers work from home, take the time to make workforce management a strategic vs. reactive series of initiatives.
Managing a multigenerational workforce should be a piece of your overall talent management strategy which hopefully supports for your business strategy. To follow are some basic steps to start you on your way.
1. Define your Business Objectives
Any good strategy starts with a clear understanding of your short, medium and long-term business goals.
2. Conduct a Workforce Assessment:
- What is the makeup of your current workforce?
- What skills and competencies do they have?
- What will they need in the future?
- Can they deliver on your business strategy?
- How will your staff needs change in the medium-to-long term time frame?
- What kind of talent do you need to successfully deliver on those goals?
- Will the talent be readily available when you need it?
3. Assess your Talent Strategy: Attract, Develop, Retain
- Where will you find the people you need to succeed? (college grads, second career boomers or traditionalists, re-entry mothers)
- What do your target employees want?
- How can you align what is important to your employees with what is necessary for the business?
The clearer you are about the type of talent you need and what those individuals value, the better prepared you will be to win in the war for talent.
Creating a Generational Friendly Workplace
1. Find out what people want
Surveys are a great start to finding out how satisfied your employees currently are, but supplementing anonymous surveys with live discussions is invaluable.
Work/Life balance might be very important to a large percentage of staff but what does that balance look like to a baby boomer vs. a Gen-Yer? One-on-one conversations or focus groups can go a long way to creating a generationally friendly work environment.
2. Review your workforce policies
Do they add to or detract from employee satisfaction? Are your policies fair and equitable to the entire workforce? Are there any generational or other biases?
Do you say you support flexible work hours and work locations but your policies make it more complicated to arrange than the Normandy Landing?
Remember that everything a company does must support its business objectives. That means there will always be a balancing act between an employee's ideal work environment and how the organization needs to operate in order to succeed.
3. Accept a fundamental paradigm shift
The old paradigm says that you go to school, go to work, and then go to play (retire.)
The new paradigm is a cyclic or blended life where education, work and leisure are interspersed throughout. People are retiring at 62 but they aren't necessarily staying in the same career with the same intensity. And retirement for many is just a different flavor of work.
4. Innovate Performance Measurement
What are the best ways to measure performance? Does logging a 50/60 week translate to a significant contribution?
Focusing on results vs. time served will have a dramatic impact on creating the latitude you will require to deliver what your diverse workforce wants.
5. Lifers are a thing of the past?
While it is true that few people will stay in the same job for more than 2-3 years, you can keep them with the company longer. Design career strategies that allow individuals to have multiple careers within one company.
6. Watch out for generational stereotyping
"You can't teach old boomers new tricks." "Those Xers are such slackers." "The Yers can't unplug!"
When you start stereotyping generational groups, it is a clear sign that your organization is not generationally friendly. Stereotyping can land you in court battling discrimination charges.
7. Make "on-boarding" easy
Make it easy for people to enter and re-enter the work force. This will give you access to a huge talent pool of professionals that want to re-enter the work force after raising children or caring for elderly parents. It will also make you the employer of choice for seasoned professionals who don't want to pack it in and move to Florida but don't want to be working 50/60 hour work weeks with 3 weeks vacation either.
Conclusions
Do you really need to do all this work? Can't you just hire people that will conform to the way you do business? Of course you can but it will be a fairly small workforce.
You need to ask yourself how much do you want/need the talent and how much do you want them to stay? That will determine how and what you will do to shape a talent management system that supports your business goals.
We are currently working with a multibillion dollar company in the arena of talent management. Give me a call at 781-343-4005 if you would like to discuss these or any other talent/workforce management issues.
Until next month, Paul Plotczyk.
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