Workforce Management
It doesn’t necessarily call for mentoring of younger workers by older workers, but rather collaboration on projects in which older and younger workers feel as if they’re both contributing to business goals. By Mark Larson
There won’t be a skilled-worker shortage as baby boomers retire, a recent study says, but there will be a lack of talent if there isn’t more collaboration between workforce generations than currently exists.
Atlanta-based Randstad USA’s annual 2008 World of Work survey found that the four generations now in the U.S. workforce—Generation X, Generation Y, baby boomers and "matures" (those born 1900 to 1945)—rarely interact with one another.
That lack of communication, the study found, is keeping key institutional job knowledge held by the boomer generation from filtering down to younger workers.
The isolation among workforce generations is credited to a lack of recognition of the others’ skills or work ethic. According to the Census Bureau, the Gen Y’ers in today’s workforce—born 1980 to 1988—total 79.8 million, which outnumber the baby boomers, or those who were born 1946 to 1964. Those boomers, which total 78.5 million people, are considered the keepers of the institutional job knowledge in companies across the nation.
Randstad conducted the U.S. survey in December and January among 3,494 adults, 1,295 of whom were employers and 2,199 were employees. Employees came from businesses with at least five staffers. Employers sampled were involved in human resources strategies at their companies for at least six months.
Given this scenario, businesses are faced with cultivating more interaction among generations in their workforce, says Eric Buntin, managing director of marketing and operations for Randstad. [To read the entire story, go to: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/25/68/23/index.php ]
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