For the first time in history, corporate managers face the challenge of managing four generations at once: the Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y (the Millennials). As Boomers get ready to retire en masse, their children offer a unique challenge to corporations, which need to change their workplace cultures, recruiting methods, and retention strategies or face a loss of billions in turnover. Managers need to help their organizations and employees adapt to the highly educated, technologically savvy, confident, and demanding Millennials. The Millennials, born between 1980 and 1999, do things differently than their Boomer parents and bring a fresh new perspective to the workplace. If corporations make the changes necessary to keep their Millennial hires, all generations will ultimately benefit. In Keeping the Millennials by Dr. Joanne G. Sujansky and Dr. Jan Ferri-Reed, corporate managers learn strategies to create a multi-generational workplace.
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Recent research shows the geeriatnons aren’t talking to each other in the workplace – which isn’t very different than in the greater culture, either. But the cost to the company can be very significant.Mark Larson of Workforce Management recently wrote about this research by Randstad. Interestingly, Randstad found that Generation Y, the youngest group, actually outnumbers Boomers in the workforce, laying to rest the fear of a worker shortage as Boomers retire. Alarmingly, however, Randstad’s findings also show there is little to no knowledge transfer in organizations between those who hold most institutional knowledge – the boomers – to their heirs in Generations X and Y.As reported in Bnet, a Harvard Business School research team also recently found very little interaction across three major organizational boundaries: business unit, function, and geography.Neither finding is particularly surprising. We’ve seen these informational and relational silos in place for decades. The most effective way to break them down is with a simple thank you through strategic employee recognition programs that allow anyone in the organization to thank anyone else for their help, insights, above-and-beyond efforts, etc.To foster sharing of institutional knowledge between the geeriatnons also requires giving people of the various geeriatnons opportunities to collaborate together on projects and learn from each other through the work. Then using strategic recognition programs as the mechanism to both acknowledge efforts and then, critically, communicate those contributions and capabilities to members of all geeriatnons, overcomes these barriers of distrust and misunderstanding.Did a subject matter expert help with your project, but he’s based in another country? Thank him anyway! Did you work on a team drawing from multiple offices to achieve a strategic goal? Thank everyone equitably. Recognize people when they go above and beyond and see them want to repeat the tasks. Our clients have done this successfully across multiple geeriatnons, regions, divisions and even continents.