Rapidly changing demographics are at the root of a number of recruiting trends. Workers live and work longer, and fewer new workers are entering the market. For a recruiter, this means the choice of new candidates is smaller and there is a wealth of expertise available in workers once slated for retirement. As the global workforce gets older, traditional ideas about candidate sourcing need to evolve quickly. The familiar model of career development, young people moving ahead in progressively responsible positions, ignores workplace realities. Retention of good employees becomes more important and the cultural differences in the workplace between generations are changing work itself.
A generation ago, the workplace uniformly contained employees who were 25 to 65 years old. Now 70 is the new 50, and it is common for people to work well into their 70's and early 80s.
In addition, the fact that couples are having fewer children and waiting longer to begin their family has slowed the population growth. There are fewer younger people entering the workforce. Instead of the large families associated with the agricultural era, 21st Century, families are compact. The average number of children per family in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan and Asia is about 1.9 compared with 5 children per family in the early 20th century.
Attitudes toward work differ dramatically depending on when you were born. On average, people born after 1980 come from a family where both parents worked. These children grew up in daycares and schools where they spent most of their time with other people their own age. They continue to stay in touch with one another through email, social network sites and cell phones. The influence of the peer group (network) is more significant than earlier generations.
Layoffs, the product of economic fortune and “re-engineering”, affected most American households after 1990. Children who endured a parent’s layoff are unlikely to trust their employers. Coupled with tighter dependence on their peers, this group is extremely independent. They are uncomfortable with organizational affiliation.
Conversely, people born before 1960 are more likely to be the product of a single income family. Workers also stayed in jobs for long periods developing friendships and long-term social relationships through employment. The role of the workplace is larger for people in this group than today's workers who already have complex social lives and networks.
The following table highlights a few of the dynamics that shape the views of each generation. The years defining each generation often vary by several years depending on the source. Here, the Baby Boomers are defined by the end of World War II, with Gen XY starting with the availability of the birth control pill. The Millennials are children born in the decade immediately before and after the turn of this century. Many people born on the cusp of a generational shift identify with the later generation.
Other Factors That Shape Generational Perceptions
Other factors, including video games, increasing political corruption, relative importance of the environment and the ability to conduct simultaneous conversations define generational differences. This means that employees work differently, with different tools and handle information differently often with disparate belief systems about what it important.
Today’s work environment is full of challenges for recruiters. Today’s office can easily house members of four generations. Since the oldest seem to be staying longer, career paths are changing. Old school management, which worked well for people born before 1980, now causes retention problems. Hierarchical management structures (feudal pyramids) are ineffective in an era of mobile candidates and workers. An emphasis on appearance and attitude that worked in the 1980s can destroy a company’s recruiting capability.
Traditional management withholds information as a method of ensuring power and control. This tactic is ineffectual in the Internet age. Anyone can find anything about anybody. Hiding (or hiding from) bad press is a foolish way to demonstrate that you are out of touch.
Negotiating generational boundaries is not for the faint of heart. Recruiting a workforce that harnesses the differences for the good of the enterprise can seem like a magic trick. Here are some principles to guide your work.
Ten Principles For Recruiting An Intergenerational Workforce
1) Transparency, Transparency, Transparency All of the workforce is interested in honest, accurate and complete information. The employment contract is changing and no one expects either employers or employees to be perfect. Diversity is the art of harnessing differences for productivity gains.
2) Quantify and Test Your Assumptions Do dress and looks actually make a difference in job performance? (They might and they might not). Where does the work have to be done? Are the qualifications essential? Labor shortage workforce optimization requires rethinking the obvious.
3) Lead With Like Gets Like (Demographic Recruiting) Appeal to each demographic group with its own representation. It is easier to make the young feel comfortable with young representatives. It is easy to let this approach slide into tokenism. It must be authentic.
4) Encourage Collaborative Communications (Wiki) Everyone knows about Wikipedia . Wikis are a collaborative tool for building knowledge bases within an organization. Developing a Wiki for your organization creates the potential to harness the experience of your entire workforce. Other social software tools make lateral decision making easier and more effective.
5) Embrace Negative Publicity In a Google world, everyone can find out almost anything about almost anyone or any company. Negative information about you or your company is normal. Hiding or denying it is dysfunctional behavior. Be prepared to show your candidates the whole picture. You solve attrition problems by being up front. Modeling honesty and integrity builds strong cultures.
6) Measure Performance Not Appearance The temptation to prefer people, appearances and ideas that are similar to our own is very natural. Unfortunately, it creates the sort of monoculture that produces mediocrity. Specify the job performance before deciding that a candidate does not fit based on looks, qualifications or “attitude”.
7) Define Workforce Requirements, Flexible Solutions Learning to think about work as a series of end states produces clear ideas about workforce composition. Know the kinds and quantities of people you intend to hire over a multi-year period. This is the essence of proactive Recruiting Departments.
8) Practice Small Group Community Development (Meals) There are two reasons that Silicon Valley companies compete for talent based on the chef in the cafeteria. First, it makes for shorter lunch times and healthier employees. More importantly, eating together fosters the kind of community that makes great companies. People who are not loyal to the company will be loyal to their friends.
9) Tune Employment Brand To Desired Workforce An employment brand is not a fixed or static thing. If Transparency is a key value of your culture, it will mean different things to different segments of your workforce population. Understand the differences and communicate them to the right groups.
10) Teach The Problem. Use Data. Encourage Dialog The workplace is changing for everyone. Instead of trying to get people to do things the old way, find out what is not working that way. Begin there. Define the issue. Determine if there is data that can help everyone understand the problem and point to solutions. Data can also help people see that changes are normal and widespread. For example, older workers who value "face time" may look down on younger workers because they chat all day on their computers and are never there. Younger workers may resent being tied to a cubicle when they can draft the memo from a park bench. Collect information on productivity rather than assessing time cards or how many windows are open on a computer monitor. Then acknowledge the differences as a matter of style rather than quality. Talk about it openly as the way things are instead of a problem that needs to be fixed. Be willing to consider that there are many ways to do things "right."
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