talent retention

team building

newsletter

During our team building work with client organizations, we've compiled a collection of barriers that we see creating enormous stress for individuals, blocking performance in teams, and robbing organizations of productivity.  Each issue, one of these barriers will be addressed in our newsletter.  We'll include some suggestions for breakthrough thinking to give you ideas for how you might begin busting through these barriers.

Free Team Building Newsletter

Barrier #8:    Younger workers are all clock-watching slackers. Older workers are dinosaurs who resist change.

Breakthrough #8:   Productivity comes in a variety of packages.

“Just because I want to go home at five, they infer I’m disloyal.”

 “Because I put the company needs ahead of my own sometimes, these kids think I’m a lackey.”

Are you a part of one of the nasty stereotypes that have begun to stalk the corridors of our organizations?

You know ...  “All Generation X&Y are slackers who don’t know the meaning of hard work.”

Guess what?  If that’s what you think, you’ve only got a small piece of the picture.  The Gen-X workers looked on as older generations were “outplaced” and “downsized.”  They weren’t so quick to jump on the loyalty bandwagon.  But what these technically adept people can accomplish in five hours - thanks to their familiarity with technology and their creativity - took previous generations 15 or 20 hours to do.

Your younger colleagues don’t mind hard work.  They just aren’t as ready to sacrifice their home lives and personal interests on the altar of corporate loyalty.  You may have heard people say things like: “Those yuppie baby boomers.  What a driven lot!  I wish they would all take a Valium and get out of the way and let us get on with it.” 

While the yuppies have had to work hard because so many of them showed up for work/careers simultaneously, they aren’t as sold on the old corporate “sell your soul to the company” model as one might think.  Lots of yuppies are opting for early retirement and taking off to remote retreats.    

And lest you characterize your yuppie and older colleagues as dinosaurs, remember, it was these very people who pioneered computing in the workplace and drove the information technology revolution all of us now are surfing. 

In short, be prepared for diversity in the workplace.  Some people are opting not to take early retirement, and more people are arriving from foreign shores.  To borrow from a genetics-class example: the more diverse the workplace, the more resistant it is to debilitating problems. 

   Remember:        Generational differences can enrich or divide your workplace ... the choice is yours!

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