It seems I make a point of talking about the millennial generation (those emerging into the workforce now), and how there seems to be a perception that they are less motivated than prior generations. It’s probably true that they were given broader opportunities than prior generations while growing up. This simply means that they generally had better travel experiences, were open to more cultures, peoples and foods, had easier means of communicating with many people including those in other countries or continents. What this seems to mean is that the millennials value this rich diversity in life and intend to pursue this during their working life as well – meaning they will value a work life balance that many of us would consider to be very much weighted towards life than work. This is not a bad thing.
However, it does spur the consideration that as the baby boomers retire and the following generation (currently the mid career types) is a significantly smaller population, that the total amount of talent in the U.S. seems to be diminishing rapidly.
- The U.S. population is clearly more consumeristic than other nations. Only we seem to need a new car every 3 years and have leasing programs that support this. Do people in Europe really buy brand name toilet scrubbers? The point is that in order to support the level of consumerism we currently have, we need to think whether the lifestyle is sustainable if we decide to work less.
- The U.S. is already quite wealthy from a per capita standpoint. The fact that we can afford the above speaks to this. However, more importantly is that we have more available to us than prior generations did. For a fairly inexpensive rate, we can have a terrific variety of foods. The overall quality and diversity of products has increased while costs have gone down – much of this caused by outsourcing.
- Perhaps the U.S. workforce is beginning to look more like that of Europe. Where sub-40 hour workweeks are normal, some countries take a “siesta” in the middle of the day, and many countries seem to take the entire month of August off, the demand for a reasonable leisure to life is also increasing here in the U.S.
So what’s my point? The millennials have caught a lot of flack fore being lazy, and I’ve noted my discomfort with the direction of the workforce on this site as well. However, perhaps the state of the economy and the maturity of the workforce are reaching a point where life indeed is the pursuit, not the fulfillment of one’s work life. Perhaps this is the right future.
7 responses to “The Evolution of the Workforce”
The Evolution of the Workforce It seems I make a point of talking about the millennial generation (those emerging into the workforce now), and how there seems to be a perception that they are less motivated than prior generations. It’s probably true that they were … [
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Motivation has changed. The babyboomers are comprised of idealists (the Birkenstockers) and wealth achievers (brand name schools, credentials, etc. with investment portfolios). The Millennials have a different future ahead of them where money does not come as easy and the complexity of living adds additional demands on time. And this group has to live with climate change, dirty electricity and chronic illness that the babyboomers sparked from the way the consume, work and live.
Across generations, we make this all to complicated.
From a simplistic view, everyone now needs to work to live because the real concentration of wealth in the mature and wealthy nations is concentrated with a group of people that measures less than 2%.
What is also the case is the chronic complaint there is not enough talent when in reality, people when they graduate from school with credentials are not necessarily prepared for work and people without credentials (self-taught) can full fill talent work orders in ways that sometimes surprise people.
Our HR systems are so focused on channels of beliefs, we don’t actually screen for accomplishment and learn about the person’s career portfolio and structure of their personal social network to see where it is worthwhile to invest and train them or where it is beneficial to take a person, who has mastered scientific,engineering, technical or medical disciplines and teach them how to work in network and influence their leadership development.
I think we need to stop focusing more on the millennials versus the babyboomers and more about how to organize employment strategies that move us beyond the thought leaderihp that pushed HR to rely so heavily on HRM or BPO technology, we have forgot how to converse with each other and lead high performance across company based teams and project based teams that self select across sectors or companies for project that impacts a trade, profession or society.
For the last motnh, I have been living in an intergenerational community outside Boulder where most people are wired to work and the kids, workers and retired just figure out how to live in a way that makes sense for their means with each other.
There is no generation gap and no technology gap. People live with and work by what they know and hang out and live together just enjoying each other and doing what needs to get done. Amazing to see this work outside a corporate setting.
Maybe the real question that is appearing on the surface is a need for a new workforce restructuring and patterns of interaction that corporations and HRM systems create barriers to change.
Today, I am personally thinking about what it would be like to just get paid to do competent work instead of having to back track on who made a coding mistake and upset the delivery schedule of a new web site. I don’t really care how old anyone is and what their work ethic is. The people who made the mistake are on salary and giving diminishing return and the people who are working well and getting it done are all ages and bill by the hour for competent work. It really changes how you view things when you are not on a payroll.
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Sorry, but I don’t buy it. I’m at the tail end of generation X (the cutoff line for which kept getting extended until it felt arbitrary) and I’ve watched pundits constantly redefine what exactly “we” wanted ever since Douglas Coupland wrote the book.
Depending on who you ask, Gen Y is either the wealthiest generation we’ve seen yet, or crushed under a load of college debt and can look forward to years of dead-end service jobs, just to give one example of the contradictory evidence out there.
There are some important shifts going on however that are entirely cross-generational in nature. Women’s long-term participation in the workforce is now assumed as the baseline case, but it took us 50 years or so to get here. Marriage is coming later if at all, and the children are also later and fewer in number. Competitive pressures ensure that meritocracy will continue to replace seniority as the path to career success in all non-regulated, non-monopoly industries, potentially accelerating new and profound kinds of class divisions. Dramatic cost reductions in sophisticated IT, global supply chains, and more targeted marketing and sales channels open new doors for small entrepreneurs to live on the scraps big companies leave behind.
Gen Y is not entirely without interest–they have grown up in new and different times from me, even (born in 1975), but I think it’s really too soon in their lives to do anything other than make wild guesses.
[…] Systematic HR: The Evolution of the Workforce “However, it does spur the consideration that as the baby boomers retire and the following generation (currently the mid career types) is a significantly smaller population, that the total amount of talent in the U.S. seems to be diminishing rapidly.” […]