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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com
Seattle
Post Intelligencer -
USA
By MARY DIEBEL
February 13, 2006
'Brain drain' coming
with wave of retirements
Prescient companies find ways to keep older workers
Online entrepreneur Renee Ward wanted to start a Web site to help teenagers land
their first job, only to find that corporate employers sought to recruit an
older crowd.
"They asked us to put together a site to reach 50-plus workers and
current retirees looking to work part time and bring their talent, energy and
experience to the bottom line," she says. Today, her 5-year-old Web site --
www.seniors4hire.org -- counts Bank of
America, Regal Cinemas, Petco and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield among
its clients. These employers are ahead of the curve, to judge by a new white
paper from consultant Ernst & Young. It found that two-thirds of employers
across a spectrum of industries are aware of an impending brain drain as 76
million-plus baby boomers march toward retirement, but fewer than a fourth of
these companies consider the issue of strategic importance to their future, and
fewer than 3 percent had tried phased retirement.
"Every seven seconds in
America this year a boomer turns 60, yet 70 percent of our survey
respondents have not yet attempted to identify where business wisdom resides in
their organization," says William Arnone of Ernst & Young's human-capital
practice. "This means one thing: Corporate
America is facing a significant wisdom withdrawal." Former Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan, newly retired at 79, also says older workers will be
vital to the nation's prosperity, given that there are 12 million fewer workers
in the "baby bust" generation for each would-be boomer retiree.
The latest boomer survey by AARP, the 50-plus lobby, finds that 80
percent of those born between 1946 and 1964 plan to work in retirement. Already,
about 7 million Americans 65 and older continue to work at least part time,
according to a new Putnam Investments report. For now, however, Uncle Sam is
standing in the way of many older workers under phased-retirement rules that
forbid collecting a paycheck and a pension check from your current employer. So
people "retire," then return as consultants, start a second retirement "career"
-- or go to work for a competitor.
The Bush
administration proposed relaxing the rules in 2004, only to face criticism that
its proposal was too complex, prompting a reworking that may be ready by
midyear. Meantime, the House approved easing of phased-retirement rules in the
pension-overhaul bill it must negotiate with the Senate. The House provision
would let workers 62 and older continue to work part time for their employer and
collect a partial pension.
Eugene Steuerle, an Urban Institute economist who has written about
phased retirement, expects more employers to offer phased retirement once the
government acts. The
U.S. economy can ill afford outdated rules designed to get rid of older
workers who are "our largest untapped pool of human talent," he said.
Some companies couldn't afford to wait on
Washington. Two years ago, Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly executives launched
YourEncore, a privately held
Indianapolis company, to link retirees to companies that need scientists,
engineers and other skilled people for short-term projects. "We were formed to
serve a network of forward-looking companies that need knowledge workers to
leverage a vast amount of talent and provide better products and better services
to their customers," YourEncore Chief Executive Officer Brad Lawson said.
President Bush used his State of the Union address to promise
stepped-up science and math training for today's students, an initiative already
blessed by the
National
Academy of Sciences. But corporate employers say there are too few
homegrown Generation Xers to step in when boomer researchers retire, nor can
companies get visas and security clearances in the numbers they need for young
foreign Ph.D.s, Lawson says.
As General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt put it at a
Washington gathering last week, the problem with training younger workers and
students today is that "we had more sports-exercise majors graduate than
electrical-engineering grads last year. If you want to be the massage capital of
the world, you're well on your way."
The federal government is trying to retain older employees in its
own work force. With 44 percent of all federal workers eligible to retire over
the next five years, agencies are offering flexible scheduling, reduced work
hours and mentoring programs to capture older workers' institutional memory, a
Society of Human Resource Management survey of federal personnel practices
finds.
Health care is a constant concern for new and near-retirees.
Employers are scaling back or doing away with retiree coverage, and 46 million
Americans already go without any health insurance. With health-care costs rising
50 percent since 2000, many seniors look to return to work to get retirement
expenses under control. " 'Will work for health benefits' is important to older
job-seekers, and so is the extra money to cover rising medical costs," says
Arthur Koff, a 70-year-old veteran of
Chicago
advertising who founded the www.retiredbrains.com online jobs board.
Patricia Gates agrees that attitude counts. At 66, the former
junior-college professor from
Pittsburgh
moved to
Nebraska
to be near family and "landed a job before the moving van arrived" teaching at
the local junior college and working for the
Omaha
World-Herald's newspaper-in-education program. "It's the can-do attitude with
which you approach a job at any age that makes a difference," Gates says.
http://www.cbsnews.com
CBS News - USA
Feb. 5, 2006
The Graying of the Boomer Generation
It's the never ending party for the generation that's never stopped
celebrating itself. And this year the leading edge of those over-hyped baby
boomers are turning 60 at the rate of nearly 8,000 a day. And leading all the
78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 is Kathleen Casey Kirschling of
Cherry Hill, N.J. Born just seconds into Jan. 1, 1946. Perhaps the very first
boomer, speculates CBS Sunday Morning contributor Jerry Bowen. "I know
people don't consider us the greatest of generations, but I think we were
great," Kirschling says, adding that when she was a child "I wasn't sure I was
going to be here. When they said 60, the 6-0, I thought, 'Oh, people die by that
time.'"
The population boom began when the troops returned from World War II and started
families. It ended 18 years later with the development of the birth control
pill. "It's a generation that grew up in a unique historical moment: at the end
of World War II, when there was prosperity, a sense of expectation and hope
about the future. So it's a generation that was born with a sense of
entitlement," says Steve Gillon, author of "Boomer Nation" and resident
historian of The History Channel.
He says the boomers are really two generations. "Those who are born after 1958
I refer to as shadow boomers," Gillon says. "I think in order to be a genuine
baby boomer, you have to have some recollection of the Kennedy assassination.
"The Kennedy assassination is, it's the first event of national significance
that people experienced simultaneously and through television," Gillon adds.
Watching television gave boomers across the country a shared experience. "Part
of what makes the generation coherent is that it's watching the same things,"
Gillon says. But that didn't mean all boomers would follow the same path. For
a certain segment of free-spirited boomers, their most famous crossroad was the
corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. It was the energy behind flower
power. The home of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The Grateful Dead lived here
and in 1967 it gave birth to the hippie in what became known as "the summer of
love."
Those boomer hippies were a cultural curiosity to the older generation, like
late CBS newsman Harry Reasoner in a 1967 documentary. "We would all like to be
able to live an uncluttered life," Grateful Dead front man Jerry Garcia told
Reasoner. "A simple life. A good life and like, think about moving the whole
human race ahead, a step or a few steps. We know what we're trying to do. We're
trying to grow up."
As the boomers grew up, they pushed every social hot button and then some.
Picking up the civil rights banner. Expanding the universe of choices people
have from women's rights to gay rights to abortion. Fighting the war in Vietnam
and protesting it at home. They fought the system and they fought each other
On college campuses across the country the battle lines between left and right
were drawn early and shape the red state/blue state political landscape of
today.
"I
think the debate we're having today between liberal and conservatives is really
a debate over the legacy of the boomer generation. There are those who embrace
this legacy of choice, the expanded lifestyle choices that people have. And
there's those people who believe that those expanded choices have eroded
authority in society," Gillon believes.
Whichever side of that divide the boomers found themselves on, there's no
disputing the quarter century that followed until 9/11 was a time of relative
peace and prosperity. The boomers became the wealthiest generation in history
with spending power of $2 trillion dollars a year. But they've spent far more
than they've saved -- much of it on themselves -- especially in their search for
the fountain of boomer youth, part of a legendary self indulgence that has a
dark side. “I mean when you look at us, we're the most obese generation, the
most drug abusing, the most crime problem. We show the biggest increase in AIDS
and new HIV infections," says University of California-Santa Cruz sociologist
Mike Males.
Males claims that some boomers -- one in nearly every seven -- never outgrew
their wild side, adding that "the conventional wisdom is in their youth we were
a wild generation -- I'm a boomer myself -- we were a wild generation. "You
know all kinds of partying, drugs and things like that and political protest
and, and all that sort of thing. And then when we got older, we settled down and
became very austere and clean living. But that's not happened at all. We've
actually gotten worse as we've aged," Males thinks.
Deaths from drug overdoses are up more than 200 percent among 40 and
50-year-olds compared with 35 years ago. And the crime rate is up 180 percent.
While the numbers in both categories actually fell among young people. And yet
all across America, from marathons to yoga studios, other boomers are turning
the whole notion of aging on its head, or trying to. For all their failings they
are still fitter than their parents ever were. And most don't believe old age
will actually start until they are 85. That's three years beyond the life
expectancy of today's 60-year-olds.
"If you address boomers as senior citizens they'll refer you to their parents,"
says Marc Freedman. Freedman is the founder of Civic Ventures, a San Francisco
think tank looking for ways to tap into the boomer talent pool, the generation
that won't go quietly to life's sidelines. "We have no language that captures
this group of people. It's, it's the, it's the stage of life that has no name.
And that would be no problem if it wasn't an extended period of time for many
people, decades in duration," Freedman says.
Surveys indicate that 80 percent of Americans over age 50 plan to keep working
in their retirement years either because they have to or because they want to
give back to their community through meaningful jobs or public service. And yet
there's no getting away from another image of the boomers. That in retirement,
they will be a burden. "People are talking about the Floridization of America.
This long, gray wave of greedy geezers who are soon gonna be taking the country
to the cleaners," Freedman explains. Even President Bush took notice this past
week in his
State of the Union address, calling the
influx of nearly 78 million baby boomers reaching 60 years of age a "national
challenge."
In short, how will this country pay for them. How will taxpayers support all
those government programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid when there
will be millions more people drawing down on the system.
Gillon says, "It's certainly possible that, that we could see, playing out over
the next 20 or 30 years, as the boomers move into their senior years, a cert, a
form of generational warfare. As, as you have fewer and few people paying into a
system and more and more people taking benefits out of it. So that's certainly a
possibility. But my sense is that, you know, we will find some way of
accommodating them." Freedman adds, "We've seen a national hand-wringing over
the cost of people living longer lives. But the irony in all of that is that our
goal has been to live longer and healthier lives. We've succeeded.
"How could the best thing that ever happened to us, a near doubling of the
American average lifespan over the last century be the worst thing that ever
happened to us?" Freedman asks.
If you're Kathleen Casey Kirschling, newly 60 and proud to be a boomer, the next
phase of life is reason to celebrate. "Would I want to go back to 30 or 40 or
even 50? No," she says, "because right now I really like where I am."
The generation shaped by the 60s is turning 60 and about to shake up America
again. It's not their final act, just the next.
Because the one thing boomers still believe they have is time.
http://www.sitnews.us
SitNews - Ketchikan,AK,USA
By MARY DEIBEL
February 04, 2006
Older workers in demand
in 'brain-draining' job market
Online entrepreneur Renee Ward wanted to start a Web site to help teenagers land
their first job only to find that corporate employers sought to recruit an older
crowd.
"They asked us to put together a site to reach 50-plus workers and
current retirees looking to work part-time and bring their talent, energy and
experience to the bottom line," she says. Today, her 5-year-old Web site -
www.seniors4hire.org site - counts Bank of
America, Regal Cinemas, Petco and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield among
its clients.
These employers are ahead of the curve, to judge by a new white
paper from consultant Ernst & Young:
It found that two-thirds of employers across a spectrum of
industries are aware of an impending brain drain as 76 million-plus baby boomers
march toward retirement, but fewer than a fourth of these firms consider the
issue of strategic importance to their company's future, and fewer than 3
percent had tried phased retirement.
"Every seven seconds in
America this year a boomer turns 60, yet 70 percent of our survey
respondents have not yet attempted to identify where business wisdom resides in
their organization," says William Arnone of Ernst & Young's human-capital
practice. "This means one thing: Corporate
America is facing a significant wisdom withdrawal."
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, newly retired at
79, also warns that older workers will be vital to the nation's prosperity,
given that there are 12 million fewer workers in the "baby bust" generation for
each would-be boomer retiree. The latest boomer survey by AARP, the 50-plus
lobby, finds that 80 percent of those born between 1946 and 1964 plan to work in
retirement. Already, some 7 million Americans 65 and over continue to work at
least part-time, according to a new Putnam Investments report.
For now, however, Uncle Sam is standing in the way of many older
workers under phased-retirement rules that forbid collecting a paycheck and a
pension check from your current employer. So people "retire," then return as
consultants, start a second retirement "career" - or go to work for a
competitor.
The Bush administration proposed relaxing the rules in 2004, only
to face criticism that its proposal was too complex, prompting a reworking that
may be ready by mid-2006. Meantime, the House approved easing of
phased-retirement rules in the pension-overhaul bill it must negotiate with the
Senate. The House provision would let workers 62 and older continue to work
part-time for their employer and collect a partial pension.
Eugene Steuerle, an Urban Institute economist who has written about
phased retirement, expects more employers to offer phased retirement once the
feds act. The
U.S. economy can ill afford outdated rules designed to get rid of older
workers who are "our largest untapped pool of human talent," he said.
Some companies couldn't afford to wait on
Washington. Two years ago, Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly executives launched
YourEncore, a privately held
Indianapolis company, to link retirees to companies that need scientists,
engineers and other skilled people for short-term projects. "We were formed to
serve a network of forward-looking companies that need knowledge workers to
leverage a vast amount of talent and provide better products and better services
to their customers," says YourEncore CEO Brad Lawson.
Larry Houston, vice president for innovation and knowledge at
Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, helped start YourEncore to reach out to older
researchers, and "cannot think of a group of people better prepared to
contribute than highly motivated retirees who can apply their heart and mind to
creative innovation that will wow our consumers." YourEncore works with more
than a dozen companies to recruit retirees with critical skills - scientists and
engineers in their 50s and 60s who were schooled in response to Sputnik and the
space race.
President Bush used Tuesday's State of the Union address to promise
stepped-up science and math training for today's students, an initiative already
blessed by the
National
Academy of Sciences. But corporate employers say there are too few
homegrown Generation Xers to step in when boomer researchers retire, nor can
companies get visas and security clearances in the numbers they need for young
foreign Ph.D.s, Lawson says.
As General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt put it at a
Washington gathering last week, the problem with training younger workers and
students today is that "we had more sports-exercise majors graduate than
electrical-engineering grads last year. If you want to be the massage capital of
the world, you're well on your way." The federal government is trying to retain
older employees in its own work force - and not only because the departure of
top people at the Federal Emergency Management Agency is cited as a key reason
for its failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina.
With 44 percent of all federal workers eligible to retire over the
next five years, agencies are offering flexible scheduling, reduced work hours
and mentoring programs to capture older workers' institutional memory, a Society
of Human Resource Management survey of federal personnel practices finds.
The health-care field also faces a talent shortage and has reached
out to older professionals to come back aboard. Among the pioneers in phased
retirement is SSM Health Care of
St. Louis,
one of the nation's largest Catholic hospital systems. It won a waiver from the
Internal Revenue Service to offer the option to older current employees like
Kathlyn Peterson.
At 66, Peterson works three days a week at SSM's St. Mary's
Hospital in Madison, Wis., for a paycheck, a pension check and health-care
coverage, which the hospital provides to all employees who work 16 hours a week.
"Other facilities require at least 24, 32 or even 40 hours per week" to qualify
for health insurance, Peterson told a recent Senate Aging Committee hearing into
changes in federal phased-retirement rules. She calls health benefits
"especially valuable" as a cancer survivor who would have trouble buying a
policy to supplement Medicare coverage.
Health care is a constant concern for new and near-retirees.
Employers are scaling back or doing away with retiree coverage, and 46 million
Americans already go without any health insurance. With health-care costs rising
50 percent since 2000, many seniors look to return to work to get retirement
expenses under control. " 'Will work for health benefits' is important to older
job-seekers, and so is the extra money to cover rising medical costs," says
Arthur Koff, a 70-year-old veteran of
Chicago
advertising who founded the www.retiredbrains.com online jobs board.
Ward, whose Web site operates out of Huntington Beach, Calif., adds
that updated skills and a positive attitude help older workers when "they're
competing against up-and-coming 35-year-olds and eager, willing and talented
55-year-olds, too."
Patricia Gates agrees that attitude counts. At 66, the former
junior-college professor from
Pittsburgh
moved to
Nebraska
to be near family and "landed a job before the moving van arrived" teaching at
the local junior college and working for the
Omaha
World-Herald's newspaper-in-education program. "It's the can-do attitude with
which you approach a job at any age that makes a difference," Gates says.
Contact Mary Deibel at DeibelM(at)shns.com
http://www.management-issues.com
Management-Issues - London,UK
Author: Nic
Paton
Businesses
face 'perfect storm' over talent, skills and older workers
Impending baby boomer retirements, a widening skills gap and outdated approaches
to hiring and retaining talented workers are combining to produce a "perfect
storm" that threatens long-term business performance, a study has suggested. The
global survey of 1,396 HR professionals by the Irish arm of consultancy Deloitte
found nearly seven out of 10 felt attracting new talent was the greatest threat
to their competitiveness.
This was followed by
the inability to retain key talent (66 per cent) and incoming workers having
inadequate skills (34 per cent). "Deloitte's new research points to an
inescapable conclusion: the widening skills gap is a global phenomenon,
particularly among the categories of key workers who disproportionately drive an
organisation's performance," said Deloitte partner Cormac Hughes. "This trend
will leave behind companies that do not begin to rethink their approach to
talent management," he added.
Ireland's economy is
currently operating close to full employment, meaning that talent shortages are
not only a concern for the HR departments in Irish businesses but are also a top
priority for senior management as a whole, said Hughes. Organisations were
offering money, perks and new challenges in order to attract and retain staff.
But such knee-jerk measures were often ineffective because there was inadequate
medium and long term resource planning, he added. "Rather than fight a futile
'war for talent', business leaders should 'build talent' by looking within their
organisations for the critical skills, knowledge and attributes required to
execute their company's most important roles, while continuing to seek to
attract the best people," said Hughes.
"Irish companies can
avoid sustaining a direct hit from the looming talent crisis by rethinking and
reinventing their talent management processes into a well-designed talent
strategy that drives productivity and differentiates a company from its
competitors," he added. More than 70 per cent of those surveyed confirmed they
were experiencing or expected to experience a shortage of white-collar workers.
Worryingly, just 13 per
cent identified approaching baby boomer retirement as a concern, despite
overwhelming evidence indicating a large exodus of experienced staff from the
labour market in the next three-five years. "Retirement legislation is under
review in some countries but the current situation sees skilled workers
continuing to leave their profession or trade around late middle age and too few
people are joining the workforce to fill their place," said Hughes. "Governments
are able to partially alleviate the depth of talent pools through policies on
immigration, taxation and education but their impact is likely to be superficial
in the face of global working population forecasts," he added.
The survey found the
level of significance accorded to recruitment and retention of able staff was
consistent across every region surveyed, irrespective of the size of the
organisation. Almost half stated demographic changes and the impending skills
shortage had been discussed at board level and most identified a clear link
between talent management and business performance. A total of 54 per cent
believed talent management issues would have an impact on their overall
organisational productivity and 40 per cent felt it affected the firm's ability
to innovate. Three out of 10 acknowledged it would limit their ability to meet
production requirements and fulfil customer demand.
"It is encouraging to
see that so many organisations have discussed the impending skills shortage at
board level," concluded Hughes "Given the potential impact on business
performance, it is essential that board-level commitment is gained to help drive
rapid change to talent management strategies," he added.
http://www.expertclick.com
NewsReleaseWire.com (press release) -
USA
October 7 2005
Business Bracing For Baby
Boomer Retirements
MORRISTOWN, NJ (Expansionary News Service) It seems like only yesterday
that the 78 million baby boomers were the students and hippies of the 1960s and
1970s, the Yuppies of the 1980s, and the nation’s leaders and business heads of
the 1990s. Don’t be shocked, but the oldest of the boomers is about to
reach retirement age. And their employers--- businesses, schools, and government
organizations are beginning to ask: Will they stay or will they go? According to
many experts, if the boomers retire en masse, businesses will be hard pressed to
find replacements for what many consider the largest and most educated group of
employees in U.S. history.
One expert, sociologist/futurist Dr. Michael G. Zey tackled this issue in a
recent article that ran in several newspapers, including the Newark Star-Ledger
and the San Diego Union-Tribune. According to Dr. Zey, U.S. businesses that wish
to remain competitive must find a way to keep as many of these employees as
possible. Speaking from his offices in Morristown, NJ, Dr. Zey cautions that
U.S. businesses that wish to remain competitive must find a way to retain as
many of these employees as possible. “If Boomers walk out the door”, Zey claims,
“they will take with them their unparalleled skills, years of experience and
training, plus an extremely strong work ethic.
Michael Zey advises human resource directors and business managers to develop
programs to ensure that the best and the brightest boomers remain in the
workforce. “They can try offering them bonuses and flexible time schedules”, he
says. However, he also suggests that “companies send clear signals to their
older workers that they are part of the organizations' future plans”. He
also offers a unique suggestion in his forthcoming “Ageless Society”, to be
published by New Horizons Press/Kensington. Employers, he says, can induce
boomer workers to stay by offering them the option of taking a "job hiatus" of a
few months to a year.
What ever strategy they adopt, business, university, and government employers
better act soon. As Michael Zey reminds us, the first boomers turn 60 in January
2006.
About Michael G. Zey
Dr. Michael G Zey is the author of the forthcoming Ageless Society (New
Horizons/Kensington), the recently-published new edition of “The Future Factor:
Forces Transforming Human Destiny” (Transaction Publishers; McGraw-Hill hard
cover), as well as “Seizing the Future: The Dawn of the Macroindustrial Era”
(Simon and Schuster, hardcover; Transaction Publishers/ Paperback) and several
other books.
Dr. Michael Zey’s controversial and original views on social and techno-trends
have appeared in the LA Times, Boston Globe, Worth, the Christian Science
Monitor, Entrepreneur, the Sacramento Bee, the Dallas Morning News, The Age
(Melbourne, Australia) La Liberation (Paris), The Wall Street Journal, Forbes,
ABCnews.com, Radio Free Europe, La Monde, and XMSatellite’’s USAToday/Newstalk
station, NJ Business, as well as on WABC’s “Batchelor and Alexander Show” and
Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Conversations with Tom Clark”. He has been interviewed
for The Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC, CNN, The Turning Point, and the
Brazilian Globotv network program “Jornal Nacional”. Zey has been interviewed
about the space program and NASA’s future by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and
radio stations in the UK. He has been an invited guest on FoxNews, PBS’s Nightly
Business Report, and ABC’s 20/20.
Michael Zey serves as Executive Director of the Expansionary Institute (www.zey.com),
is a Full Professor at Montclair State University, NJ. and consults to
corporations and government agencies.
(Source: Expansionary News Service, Morristown, NJ.)
9/26/05
KELLY GREENE
The Wall Street Journal
Wisconsin State
Journal - Madison,WI,USA
Companies prepare for
baby boomer exodus
When executives
at Platte River Power Authority, an electric company in Fort Collins, Colo.,
surveyed its employees 18 months ago, they were stunned by a particular finding:
40 percent of the company's 200 workers said they intended to retire over the
next five years.
With little chance of hiring from
other stretched power plants - and apprenticeships for technicians typically
taking at least four years - executives faced a stark reality. "We've got to be
moving right now," says Dave Green, human-resource manager. He is scrambling to
hire trainees and recently created a new job - plant assistant - to fill
apprenticeships as soon as they open up.
Across a wide swath of industries,
companies are starting to address the impending exodus of baby boomers - the 76
million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. The oldest boomers will begin
turning 60 years old next year. Just two years later, they can start collecting
Social Security benefits. Many company retirement benefits kick in around the
same time: Most workers in traditional, defined-benefit pension plans become
fully vested between the ages of 55 and 62. And those with 401(k)s or other
defined-contribution plans can tap them with no restrictions starting at age 59.
Many baby boomers, of course, may
decide to stay on the job longer than previous generations - particularly to
shore up savings. Still, the number of potential retirees is stark: More than 40
percent of the U.S. labor force will reach the traditional retirement age by the
end of this decade, according to a new study by the Conference Board, a New York
research organization. In the next seven years, the number of U.S. workers
between ages 55 and 64 will grow 51 percent to 25 million, meaning the
fastest-growing portion of the work force is the one at most risk of retiring
soon. At the same time, the number of workers between ages 35 and 44 is expected
to shrink by 7 percent.
Some experts think the impact
won't be as stark as the numbers suggest. Fully 70 percent to 80 percent of baby
boomers expect to continue working in later life, several studies show. Still,
many companies simply don't know how many of their workers plan to retire, and
when - in part because they fear that asking will open the door to
age-discrimination claims, says Jeri Sedlar, co- author of the Conference
Board's report. There are no federal rules against asking employees
retirement-related questions. But the formal collection of such information
could be used as fodder in a lawsuit if a company later laid off, fired,
demoted, or failed to promote the workers who had been surveyed.
Some companies have sidestepped
these concerns by querying workers anonymously or asking employees of all ages
about their plans five years from now, says Linda Barrington, research director
at the Conference Board.
Some companies that are concerned about a wave of
retirements are getting creative, including offering programs that let employees
technically retire, yet stay connected to their employers.
For instance, Southern Co., an
Atlanta-based electric utility with 26,000 employees, found that many workers
already had made plans to retire in the next five or 10 years, but were also
interested in coming back to work on a temporary basis. As a result, the company
created a "retiree reservists pool."
Lincoln National Corp., a
financial-services firm in Philadelphia with 5,500 workers, put together a task
force last year to design flexible work arrangements for older employees who
want to work part time or take longer vacations.
International Business Machines
Corp. similarly taps some retirees to work on special projects so they can share
their expertise with younger workers. And the company's 330,000 current
employees are being encouraged to post detailed descriptions of their job
experience in an online directory called the "Blue Pages," so that employees far
from retirement can find "knowledge before it walks out the door," says Eric
Lesser, an associate partner in IBM's business- consulting services unit in
Cambridge, Mass.
Home Depot last year launched a
partnership with AARP to recruit older workers, many of them laid off from other
companies. "We needed more experience, more reliability, and people who were
great with customers," says Dennis Donovan, executive vice president of human
resources at the Atlanta home-improvement retailer.
The Age
(subscription) - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
By Liz Gooch
September 28, 2005
Children of baby boomers hoping for a generous inheritance
courtesy of their parents' major asset - the family home - may need to think
again.
The family home may have
traditionally provided financial security for the next generation, but baby
boomers have shown no inclination to grow old quietly at home so that their
children can reap the financial benefits. Preliminary findings from a national
study of 7000 men and women over 50 revealed one in three had moved house in the
previous five years.
One in three also said
they expected to move in the future. The research, commissioned by the
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, found baby boomers, defined as
those aged 50 to 59, were the least likely of the respondents to want to remain
in their present home.
"For them, the notion of
ageing in one place is likely to conjure up images of immobility and old age,
something to which they express hostility," said the report's author, Diana
Olsberg, director of the University of NSW Research Centre on Ageing and
Retirement. "Whether the choice was to sell and spend, or sell and move to a
location which provided access to better lifestyle opportunities, the prevailing
attitude was the same: that after years of hard work they have earnt the right
to enjoy the fruits of their labours in any way they choose."
The study, which
included respondents in their 80s, also suggests baby boomers' desire to enjoy
life in their later years is starting to rub off on their own parents. Dr
Olsberg said older people had started to take on baby boomer values. "They are
valuing lifestyle and consumption just as much as their baby boomer children,"
she said.
Dr Olsberg said while
some people wanted to stay in the same area, where they knew people and were
familiar with the facilities, they did not necessarily want to remain in the
family home. Dr Olsberg, who presented the research at a conference in Sydney
yesterday, said the findings challenged common perceptions that older people
were resistant to change.
Plant Services,
Itasca,IL,USA
By Keith Mobley, CMRP
Map your workflow before
the Baby Boomer workers retire
What's going to happen when we
no longer have experienced, skilled people to plan, manage, operate, maintain
and support our enterprises? American business is facing a massive number of
worker retirements during the next decade. By 2010, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, the population of workers older than 65 will increase by 30%,
and the number of those between 55 and 64 will rise by 52%. In the same period,
the number of workers aged 35 to 44, the logical replacements for retiring
workers, will decrease by 10%. Further compounding this growing problem, the
younger segment of the workforce is expected to increase by less than 23%. These
demographics, confirmed by the Employment Policy Foundation, clearly define a
growing problem that may signal the end for many American businesses.
One would think that the
effects a loss of 50% to 70% of an aging workforce will have on corporate
survival rates would be a serious concern to most companies. Apparently, this
isn’t the case. A 2003 survey conducted by the Society of Human Resource
Management indicates that less than half the companies surveyed were aware of
the aging workforce problem. Thirty-five percent reported not being aware of the
growing problem, 35% were just becoming aware, and fewer than 7% had taken any
positive actions to mitigate the problem.
So, what’s going to happen
when we no longer have experienced, skilled people to plan, manage, operate,
maintain and support our enterprises? No problem, right? We’ll simply fall back
on our detailed and effective processes, procedures and practices, hire some new
workers and continue business as usual.
For years, American business
has relied almost exclusively on a mature, experienced workforce, armed with the
requisite skills learned on the job, in lieu of established, standardized
processes and procedures to survive. Outside each employee’s sphere of
influence, no one has a valid, comprehensive understanding of how we do what we
do. Somehow, we manufacture or produce an acceptable product, in sufficient
quantity, and at a competitive cost to meet the business plan. Somehow, we meet
delivery demands. Somehow, maintenance keeps the equipment and systems in good
enough operating condition to satisfy the plan. Somehow, we get new business to
feed the manufacturing engine. Somehow? Do you really know how your plant,
company or corporation gets things done? Even if your answer is yes, what
happens when you retire or move on to new vistas? Will your replacement know?
We must act before it’s too
late. Companies can no longer rely on the knowledge of individual employees. We
must document how things actually get done. The process, called workflow
mapping, documents step-by-step how your company accomplishes each and every
activity, from marketing to shipping. It defines roles and responsibilities and
the systems required to support these activities. One immediate benefit of
workflow mapping will be the identification of obvious waste and inefficiency.
Simply changing the process eliminates these losses.
Knowledge gained from workflow
mapping can identify the standard procedures that support continuation of the
company as experienced workers retire and are replaced with a new generation.
Remember that the work ethic of the retiring generation isn’t the same as the
replacements, nor does the new workforce have the acquired skills that are the
only reason you’re still in business. That said, there’s a reasonable
expectation that the new workforce can support continuation of a viable business
-- if they know what to do and how to do it.
Because the existing workforce
collectively has the best understanding of how the company currently functions,
these employees are the only resource with the knowledge required to develop the
workflow mapping. Don’t wait until they’re gone and then try to back-fit
procedures. It won’t work because no one with the required knowledge will be
around to write them.
God willing, I’ll still be
around in 2010 to see which companies survive and which don’t. As one of the 10%
of the population who will pass the magic age of 65 shortly, I continue to be
amazed by the way American industry ignores potentially catastrophic problems
and still does nothing. It’s going to be an interesting five years. Will your
company still be here in 2011?
Contributing Editor R. Keith
Mobley, CMRP, is principal consultant at Life Cycle Engineering in Charleston,
S.C. E-mail him at
kmobley@LCE.com.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver
Vancouver Sun (subscription) -
Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada
September 17, 2005
Gillian Shaw
Targeting
Talent: Boomer retirement wave is rapidly approaching. Where will you get your
talent from?
You might think it's perks like the visiting masseurs or the on-site fitness
instructor that have earned Envision Financial a reputation for three years
running as one of Canada's best employers. And that is certainly a mark in this
organization's favour, but in a sector known for a low unemployment rate and hot
competition for talent, attracting and keeping good help can also depend on such
measures as Envision U, which contributes to the now-so-important lifelong
learning for employees.
"One of the reasons we have an employee well-being strategy is so that we can be
seen as an employer of choice," said Nathalie Pasin, who specializes in
recruitment and employee well-being at Envision. "The competition for talent is
tough and we believe it is only going to get tougher." Along with the wellness
room, the on-site massages, flexible work scheduling, a fitness facility with
aerobics classes and personal trainers not only for employees but their spouses
or partners as well, plus other benefits, the company also promotes training and
education.
It contributes up to $1,200 a year for individuals to take courses and stretches
that even more with a fast-tracked Bachelor of Administration degree that is
being delivered to 20 Envision employees by professors from the University
College of the Fraser Valley. If the employees stay with the company for two
years after they gra uate, the cost of the education is entirely borne by
Envision. If they stay only a year, they must pay back 50 per cent.
Envision is only one company demonstrating that it is taking much more than
foosball tables and junk food in the lunchroom fridge to manage talent these
days. Companies that fail to address the new reality are liable to be vanquished
in the war for talent. The "war for talent," so named first in a study by the
management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company and later the title of a book, has
broken out in B.C. where companies and organizations are realizing that talent
management is crucial to the bottom line. The McKinsey & Company consultants Ed
Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones and Beth Axelrod found that high-performing
companies are marked by a belief among their leaders that superior talent brings
about a competitive advantage.
Managing that talent is a top priority, and companies that are successful at it
produced higher returns for their shareholders than their dinosaur counterparts
who failed to recognize and act on the connection. "There are three fundamental
forces fuelling the war for talent: the irreversible shift from the Industrial
Age to the Information Age; the intensifying demand for high-calibre managerial
talent; and the growing propensity for people to switch from one company to
another," the authors write. "Since these structural forces show no signs of
abating, we believe the war for managerial talent will be a defining feature of
the business landscape for many years to come."
While The War for Talent focuses on managerial talent, the authors point out
that it is a war being fought on many fronts. Here the talent can range from
trades skills, so sought after in B.C.'s booming building economy, to the
financial sector, to educators, miners, health-care specialists, science and
technology innovators and many others in the burgeoning workforce. The winners
in the war are not necessarily the ones with the deepest pockets. While
undoubtedly money talks when it comes to recruitment and retention and such
measures as B.C.'s move to a more competitive tax regime have helped, many other
factors come into play. It could be career opportunities within an organization,
such basics as whether employees are treated with respect and regard by their
bosses, flexibility in meeting the challenges of a work-life balance -- the
priority list is long and varies from one employee to another, from company to
company and from sector to sector.
Stephen Diotte, a partner with Deloitte & Touche and the company's human capital
practice leader for central Canada, said the concept of the war for talent was
misinterpreted when it first came out. "One of the realities is that it is not
going to hit every sector of the economy in the same way, there are certain
industries that will be affected more than others," he said. "The other reality
is that there is a lot more to it than buying available talent." Diotte said
what is going to be most important going forward is the ability of organizations
to foster talent from within.
"It is understanding what people bring to the table from a skills and abilities
perspective and fostering an environment where they have a sense of ownership, a
sense of belonging," he said. "The way the war for talent was interpreted in the
business community was, whoever has the deepest pockets will win. "That is not
the case. The next evolution of this -- and you will see more and more of it in
the coming months -- is what we do to develop, deploy and connect the talent we
have." The war has led to alliances in which companies, even competitors, join
together in research and initiatives aimed at improving their success rate in
recruiting and retention.
Allison Rutherford, executive director of one such group, the HR Tech Group, a
non-profit affiliated with the British Columbia Technology Industries
Association, said the issue tops the competitive agenda in business today.
"Everyone thinks it is all about salary, but with tech people, they are bright,
they want to be challenged and they want to feel they are able to contribute,"
said Rutherford, whose group includes HR professionals from some 80 tech
companies. "It is important to have good leadership and management that
encourages growth. "A company will fail if it has the old boss who doesn't want
people to move. Tech people want to be working on the latest and the greatest
and some of those things are as equally important as their compensation."
At the height of the dot.com boom, compensation was not necessarily a measure of
competence and Marc-David Seidel at the University of B.C.'s Sauder School of
Business cautions companies against letting their standards slip in their rush
to fill positions. "If they start to lower standards because of the perceived
shortage, that is when we'll get into trouble," said Seidel, an assistant
professor specializing in organizational behaviour and human resources. "In
terms of managers, it is fine to have extra perks and go after the top talent,
but they really shouldn't lower the bar in terms of what they are willing to
take." According to Seidel that's just what happened at the height of the
dot.com bubble, and he would argue that shortages in some areas today are a
reflection of more stringent hiring standards that went by the wayside during
the boom.
He tells of running into a former student when he was in the Silicon Valley.
Fresh out of university, the student had landed a six-figure VP of marketing
position with a startup. His lack of experience cost dearly. "The startup went
bankrupt and had to shut down," said Seidel. "All the buzz in the media was that
the reason they went bankrupt was that they were spending too much money on
marketing. "That whole experience highlighted to me that obviously something was
wrong," he said. "The fact he was getting $100,000 with options was absurd, and
he was solely responsible for marketing with no experience. That would be a sell
signal for me."
Seidel later ran into the same student who had turned down an $80,000 US salary
with a large and well-respected bank, judging the marketing position being
offered too much of a step down for a former vice-president. 'I bumped into him
in a cafe six months later and he was working in Nordstrom's selling shirts,"
said Seidel.
Corporate accountability has led recruiters to be more rigorous in determining
their hiring pool. "Realistically when people are talking about there being a
shortage it is because they are no longer hiring students into those types of
jobs," said Seidel. "Before people were getting these jobs and they weren't
qualified." Seidel also points to changes in the labour market that have led to
two distinct segments -- one in which there is a shortage of a certain class of
worker and another where is there is a surplus of workers in some types of
categories. "The demands are very different in those two segments," he said.
"For the very skilled worker class, there is very strong demand and not a lot of
supply. If you look at the less skilled workers, they are having difficulty
finding jobs."
Skill doesn't necessarily mean a university or college education. "Unless they
have certain specific skills, certain types of technical skills, or certain
types of language skills, the average students who graduate from the average
college are taking jobs below their education level," he said. That could be the
BA-turned- barista, trying to pay off a student loan on earnings from the corner
coffee shop. Grads with sought- after skills like language and technology fare
better, according to Seidel.
"At that entry level of skilled jobs, these are the people who are highly sought
after," he said. "There is definitely a shortage there. Companies go after those
people and recruit for the cream of that crop." Despite the surpluses in some
categories, labour economist Kerry Jothen points to Statistics Canada findings
in which five of the 10 occupational categories have an unemployment rate under
3.5 per cent, a figure considered to indicate a very tight labour market. "The
larger companies are doing more workforce planning and looking long term," he
said. "For smaller businesses it is harder to do that. "More and companies have
discovered the concept of employer of choice and they are trying to offer more,
not just to attract people, but to keep good people."
Jothen said one of the ways of alleviating skills shortages is to prevent them
through retention and the creation of career paths within an industry. He points
to tourism in B.C. as a sector that is successfully doing that. In construction,
companies are trying to develop project managers, superintendents and estimators
from within their ranks. They are also looking to non-traditional sources to
augment their labour pool, appealing to women and aboriginal communities with
recruiting and training initiatives. Jothen said companies and industries have
to consider a wide range of benefits, not just financial. "It may not be a
benefit, like a contribution to RRSPs and medical and dental coverage, but just
the way you treat people is important," he said.
The upcoming generations of workers are also putting different demands on
employers. "Some of them tend to be concerned with the values of the company: Is
the company environmentally responsible? Or is the company community minded?"
said Jothen. "Some of those younger folks who are now 20 and 30 seem to have
more of a conscience about that and that affects an employer's ability to
attract them and keep them." The war for talent has catapulted HR departments
into new prominence and Vivien Corwin, a professor of human resources and
organizational behaviour and director of the MBA program at Royal Roads
University in Victoria, said an organization's overall strategy must be closely
connected to its human resource strategy. "Frequently these two are divorced in
organizations," she said. "But this can't be considered just an HR problem. "It
has to be looked at more broadly and HR has to have the ear of the chief
executive."
Flexibility in working arrangements are key and Corwin said while some companies
pay lip service to the idea, the reality is that many are slow to respond to
initiatives that can mean changing their corporate values and culture. "If a
company did this and did it well and in a comprehensive way, I think it would be
a competitive advantage," Corwin said of flexible working arrangements.
"Companies that are trying to get on the bandwagon by advertising this type of
flexibility and not carrying through leave people ending up feeling frustrated
and angered by promises they feel have not been fulfilled."
gshaw@png.canwest.comTARGETING TALENT
"By 2050, 40 per cent of Europe's total population and 60 per cent of its
working population will be people over 60." -- It's 2008: Do You Know Where Your
Talent Is? by Deloitte Research
© The Vancouver Sun
2005
Sydney Morning Herald
(subscription) - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
By Julie Robotham Medical Editor
September 15, 2005
Stress hits younger
generation hardest
Women suffer their
highest rates of stress in their 20s. Then it gradually declines over the course
of their lives, shrinking to negligible levels for most women by the time they
are in their 70s. "Older women have very high levels of mental health and
general satisfaction with life, despite the fact they're often sick," said
Christina Lee, the co-ordinator of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's
Health, from which key results were released yesterday. "I wonder, is my
generation and the younger generation going to be like that too? Are we going to
turn into our grandmothers?"
Studying was
overwhelmingly the largest factor in young women's levels of stress, which they
experienced at four times the rate of the oldest in the study of 40,000 women,
Professor Lee said. The researchers found stress was highest among students and
lowest among new mothers. Marriage and motherhood during the 20s were "expected,
positive and normal changes" that despite their momentousness were easily
introduced into women's lives - perhaps because of community support for them.
By contrast, women who
perceived their lives as moving backwards during their 20s - if they divorced,
lost a job, or had to move back to their parents' home - found adjustment
especially hard. "There's this notion of life transitions being on time or off
time," she said. Louise Newman, the director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry,
said, "Significant life events are the things that give structure to people's
lives. They're understood in our culture and mark a progression."
She said the current
generation of people in their 20s had questioned traditional roles more than
previous generations, which made it harder to create their own "sense of meaning
and connection". The survey results were consistent with other recent findings
suggesting young people were swinging back towards conservatism. The survey also
revealed the vast majority of Australian women were drinking alcohol in healthy
quantities. Fewer than 5 per cent of women in any group drink at total levels
regarded as risky according to health guidelines, while frequent binge-drinking
among one in five young women rapidly tails off.
"We were quite heartened
that even among the older women a few drinks a day is associated with good
health," Professor Lee said. "Our feeling from our data is that alcohol is not a
major health problem for Australian women."
Age
(subscription) - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
By Liz Gooch
June 6, 2005
Generation Ys working it out for themselves
When Dante
Gabriele graduated from university, starting at the bottom in a large
corporation held little appeal. So he began creating his own opportunities.
Using his savings, the 22-year-old science graduate opened a clothing store in
North Melbourne. Mr Gabriele is indicative of a generation unprepared to wait,
according to Peter Sheahan, 25, the author of a new book, Thriving and
Surviving with Generation Y at Work. It warns companies to cater more
creatively for youthful ambitions to avoid losing workers.
The Ys,
those born in the 1980s, want everything most youth have always aimed for -
fulfilling work, a good income and a balance between work and play. But they
want it now. "It's a generation that aren't going to sell their soul and
sacrifice their life to climb the ladder in the organisation," Mr Sheahan says.
To fulfil
their dreams, more generation Ys are starting businesses and there are now about
50,000 in Australia owned and operated by people under 25. Mr Gabriele
supplements income from his store, Kids in Berlin, with three night shifts a
week at a pathology laboratory. "I could have just finished my degree and gone
off to work in a lab and been there for life but this way I get to do what I
want," he said.
Social
researcher Mark McCrindle says Australia's skills shortage is also allowing the
Ys to shop around for the best employer. He said a recent survey of university
graduates found achieving a work-life balance was their top priority when making
job decisions.
They also
wanted a good workplace culture, a team-focused management style and a job that
offered variety. "They get bored quite easily," Mr McCrindle said.
http://www.sltrib.com
Salt Lake Tribune - Salt
Lake City,UT,USA
By Mike
Cronin The Salt Lake Tribune
June 2, 2005
School enrollment numbers surpass
baby boomer record
This is one of
those rare instances where the nation is catching up to
Utah.
Unlike public school enrollment nationwide - which has declined since it reached
the 1970 "Baby Boom" crest of 48.7 million - Utah's enrollment has increased nearly every year since 1976, when
state officials began tracking those statistics.
Utah suffered declining enrollment during only three years: 1998-2000.
That dip "occurred between the baby boomers' children and their grandchildren,"
said Patty Murphy of the state Office of Education. She uses rates of growth
from the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget to estimate student
enrollment.
Meanwhile, Census Bureau statistics released Wednesday show elementary and
high school enrollment in 2003 (the most recent data available) reached a
record-setting 49.5 million nationally.
Utah enrollment has mushroomed from 314,471 in 1976, and the Utah Office of
Education expects it to increase to 652,662 by 2015, the final year of the
state office's projections.
The state's 2004 enrollment was 495,682. Education officials predict 2005
numbers to jump by almost 10,000 students, or 2 percent, to 505,400.
"The increasing trend will continue until 2011, when the peak will reach 2.8
percent," Murphy said. "At that time it will level off [2012 is expected to also
have a growth rate of 2.8 percent], then decline again" to a rate of 2.5 percent
in 2015.
National census data show that 75 million people in 2003 - more than
one-fourth the
U.S. population who are 3 and older - were in school. Immigration
contributed to the spurt, with more than one in five students having at least
one foreign-born parent.
Nursery-school enrollment growth has been dramatic, from a half-million in
1964 to about 5 million in 2003 - a burst of about 6 percent to about 60 percent
in 3- and 4-year-olds.
The percentage of kindergartners also has grown, from one in five in 1973 to
more than three in five in 2003.
http://www.connpost.com
Connecticut Post -
Bridgeport,CT,USA
June 2, 2005
Census: Baby-boomer
offspring fills schools
More than 30 years after becoming the largest group of
schoolchildren in U.S. history, baby boomers have finally lost their record — to
their kids. Across the nation, a total of 49.6 million children attended public
and private school in 2003, beating the previous high mark of 48.7 million, set
in 1970 when the baby boom generation was in school.
Connecticut has yet to meet its peak enrollment. Associate Commissioner of
Education Fran Rabinowitz said the school population is expected to continue to
grow through 2006, then begin to decline slightly. The state's current
enrollment level is not close to the 650,887 public school students and 112,861
non-public students in 1970, the peak of the baby boom.
In 2003, public school enrollment was 577,133 students and
nonpublic, 74,143. Districts across the region have been building new schools to
meet the demand. The national growth is largely due to all the children who were
born in the late 1940s to early 1960s and have since become parents themselves,
the Census Bureau said Wednesday. Rising immigration played a part, too, in
pushing enrollment past the 1970 record of 48.7 million.
"You could have predicted this back in 1970 when we had all those
kids," said Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau,
which assesses population trends. "We knew they were going to have kids of their
own. We have this classic echo effect going on." Even if it isn't surprising,
the record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for
schools: recruiting teachers, helping children who don't speak English, keeping
class sizes manageable and coming up with enough financial aid for college
students.
In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states such
as Nevada and
California, the growth has been concentrated, increasing demands on schools.
"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott
Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of
State Legislatures.
In districts outside
Atlanta,
Houston
and Las Vegas,
enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in last five years, said Bruce
Hunter, who directs lobbying for the American Association of School
Administrators. His group has identified more than 400 such districts.
"The pressures are to stay up with it, to hire, to get the
classrooms staffed, to find quality principals," Hunter said. "But the joy of it
is you have this tremendous opportunity, because the communities have a real
clear stake, so you have vibrant school systems."
In other parts of the country, such as the upper
Midwest,
the school population has declined in some counties, Mather said. "Some of those
kids are driving an hour or two on a bus to get to school because there aren't
enough kids to keep local schools open," he said.
Immigration helped fuel the boom. A total of 22 percent of students
had at least one foreign-born parent, including 91 percent of Asian children and
66 percent of Hispanic youngsters.
Many high-growth states have not prepared well for that racial and
ethnic transformation, said Patrick Callan, president of the
National
Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. With the largest ever high
school graduating class coming soon, colleges are being pressed to provide
capacity for everyone while keeping tuition affordable. "These kids are coming
along at a time when — unlike the baby boomers — their chances of a middle-class
life without college are almost nil," Callan said. "It's going to drive higher
education policy over the next few years. This is a huge challenge."
In the peak enrollment year during the baby boomers' time in
school, almost eight in 10 students were non-Hispanic whites. In 2003, 60
percent of students were white, 18 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent were black
and 4 percent were Asian.
Yet the diversity of the teaching corps has not nearly kept pace,
said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, which is
working to address that disparity. "The question is, what's going to be the
match?" Weaver said. "It's not that the teachers who are not minorities cannot
teach — they can. But what's going to be done to create an excellent environment
for all teachers and students?"
The enrollment growth is likely to continue through this year,
according to the Census Bureau report. Enrollment is expected to drop slightly
through 2010 — due to a decline in births from 1991 to 1997 — but then pick up
again, Census figures show.
All the estimates are based on survey responses from a sample of
the population in 2003.
Staff writer Linda Conner Lambeck and the Associated Press
contributed to this report. On The Net: Census Bureau report: www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school.html
http://www.citynews.com.au
Canberra City News -
Canberra,Capital Territory,Australia
by Kylie McKinley
Wednesday, 25 May 2005
Let them know if they have the job within twenty four hours, don’t wait twelve
months for a performance review, offer quick promotion strategies, good pay, a
flexible work environment and listen to their ideas for improvement. These were
some of the ideas on how to deal with Generation Y in the workplace that Peter
Sheahan provoked the audience with at the Australian Institute of Management’s
(AIM) XChange talk and dinner held at the Lobby restaurant last week.
Sheahan is an acclaimed expert on Generation Y-those born between 1978 and 1994.
Top CEOs and officials have lauded his expertise. Queensland Premier Peter
Beattie recently said "Peter is insightful, thought provoking and inspiring".
What makes Sheahan thinks he understands this generation better than most? Well,
he is one of them. After leaving a cadetship in the financial industry when his
boss could not explain the value he was offering to the company of re-numbering
350 pages in green pen instead of black, Sheahan quit and has since become
Australia’s leading expert on dealing with Generation Y at work.
Through his fast, fresh, participatory and engaging delivery style Sheahan
challenged the audience to re-think their approach to dealing with Generation Y
in the workplace, and was the first to recognise that you could not pigeonhole
an entire generation. "The reference to Generation Y is a useful tool to
pinpoint the underlying characteristics of people born within this period of
technology.
"When you look at the differences in key influencers on generations, you can see
a variety of patterns emerging which help form the mindset of a generation. Just
think. Baby boomers grew up listening to LPs and EPs, Generation X to cassettes
and CDs, and Generation Y has digital music in the form of Ipods and MP3s. he
said.
"When you look at the concept of loyalty to an employer, baby boomers worked
their way to the top, Generation X looked for shortcuts to the top, and
Generation Y insist on Saturday off or they’ll quit" he said. The changing
structure of the workforce and the entry of Generation Y into its ranks offers a
new challenge to employers. How do they deal with a generation who demand
instant gratification, who will not hesitate to walk out the door with a
moment’s notice if they feel they are being unrewarded, and who are not
satisfied with ‘doing time’ in order to gain higher pay and promotions?
Sheahan’s solutions were provocative for the audience who were mainly composed
of Baby boomers and Generation X. Suggested strategies included embracing
Generation Y’s propensity for seeking the easy way out as it would lead to
greater efficiencies, and not waiting for medium to long term formal performance
review programs, but rewarding input and good work instantly.
He
then outlined that Generation Y’s different attitude to work was of the
audience’s creation. "You created this! You wanted your children to change the
world and break down barriers. You gave them opportunities. You taught your kids
not to accept the ordinary!".
Generation Y are eager for success and many employers have noticed that they do
not expect to follow the traditional routes to gain it. In fact, the ABS
estimates that a third of students who leave school this year will start their
own business. This is certainly a different world to that experienced by the
majority of mature-age workers.
Sheahan pointed out to the audience that what Generation Y want in the world of
work is not very different to what the rest of us want. It is just that they
want it faster and expect it-not just desire it! Meeting the expectations of
Generation Y is going to be a difficult journey for many of today’s employers.
Many simply do not have the budgets to address this problem and with the ageing
workforce others feel that efforts will need to be invested into retaining the
older generations, rather than caving into the demands of the new.
Sheahan also recognises this and has made it his mission to address thousands of
students about how to conform with the expectations of the current workforce.
The day following the AIM talk, he appeared at the National Careers and
Employment Expo and addressed more than 3,000 school children on how to become a
valuable member of a workforce team by recognising the mindset and expectations
of Baby boomers and Generation X.
Essentially, the goal is not for one generation to cave into the needs of
another, but for all generations to recognise their differences and work
together to create harmonious, productive, and fulfilling work teams.
What do Gen Y want?
Is this so different to
what we all want?
-
Purpose and meaning: They want to know they’re making a difference
-
Responsibility: Let them feel important
-
Promotional opportunities: Recognise that they’re ambitious and dying to make
their mark in the world
-
New challenges: They’re stimulus junkies, so stop them from getting bored
-
Fair compensation: They’ll disengage if they feel they’re being taken
advantage of
-
Flexibility: Can be in the dress code or work program
-
Belonging: They need to feel a part of things
-
Mentored-not directed: They are happy to be coached but do not like ‘bossy’
bosses
-
Recognition: Always look for something they did right and quickly reward the
little things
http://www.management-issues.com
Management-Issues -
London,UK
Author: Management
Issues News
23 May 2005
Young workers will be a rare
breed in tomorrow's workplaces
With almost a
million fewer 16-25 year-olds in the workplace by 2020, tomorrow's young people
are going to find themselves in a prime bargaining position with companies
looking for fresh blood as the demographic crunch puts the squeeze on talent.
Declining birth rates and longer periods in learning will mean that young people
aged 16-25 will comprise just 11 per cent of the workforce in 2020, compared to
16 per cent today - a plunge of nearly one million.
This shortage will
lead to younger employees demanding better pay and remuneration packages as well
as direct access to more senior posts, according to a new report by vocational
training organisation the City and Guilds of London Institute. But at the same
time, adults will be working for longer as pension pressures mount, restricting
the number of senior posts available. The social and cultural practices of
companies will play a crucial role in influencing the career choices of young
people
As
a result, bosses within young or specialist industries will have to radically
rethink how they recruit and retain fresh talent, with the social and cultural
practices of companies playing a crucial role in influencing the career choices
of young people. Employment choices will be based on the reputation of a company
and whether an organisation's values fits in with their own, the report argues.
"The UK faces a demographic timebomb which is now starting to impact on UK
businesses," said Chris Humphries, director-general, City & Guilds. "Over half
of British companies have experienced sustained difficulty in recruiting young,
skilled staff in the last few years. As young talent becomes scarcer, employers
will need to radically rethink their recruitment and management strategies,
focusing on empowerment and respect of young workers. "Managing such a
newly empowered workforce will inevitably present an unexpected management
challenge," he added.
Britain's soaring
living costs will also have a significant impact, with the high cost of housing
leading to young people requiring high salaries to get on the property ladder.
The report predicts that remuneration packages will inevitably have to include
housing support as employers compete to attract young staff. But
recruiting young talent will not be the only challenge for employers – retention
will be a further test. Previous research by City & Guilds identified that the
average British employee starting work in 20 years' time will have had several
career changes, undertaking 19 different jobs during their working lifetime.
Training and development will, therefore, be a key motivator for this ambitious
group and a necessary investment for forward-thinking bosses.
Although the British
workforce is set to grow over the next 20 years, the proportion of older workers
is set to grow much faster. City & Guilds predicts that over the next two
decades, more than one in five (22 per cent) people will be working well into
their 60s. As the pace of technological and organisational change accelerates,
it is critical that investment in training for older workers keeps pace. Chris
Humphries added: "The workforce will be a very different place in years to come,
with growing numbers of older people, and increasing competition for young
staff.
"All companies need
fresh talent to survive and prosper, but the skills and experience of older
staff will also be crucial to the success of many businesses. UK Plc will need
to balance the demands of both groups and investing in ongoing training
programmes will become even more vital."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com
Australian - Australia
By Kate Legge
May 18,
2005
The blissful
generation that just does not care
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