Last week, Cisco launched their annual research project to track how technology is changing the workplace. Arguably, the most notable finding from the survey is data showing just how connected young people are to social media; so much so that they will often forgo a pay increase if it means keeping social media access or their choice of a smartphone device.

Study Highlights:

• Many respondents cite a mobile device as “the most important technology” in their lives.
• Seven of 10 employees have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook.
• Two of five students have not bought a physical book (except textbooks) in two years.
• Most respondents have a Facebook account and check it at least once a day.
• Half of respondents would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
• More than two of five respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to mobile device choice, social media access and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility. Read the rest of this entry »

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: Authored by Lisa Orrell. Orrell is known globally as The Generation Relations Expert. She is the author of the top-selling books Millennials Incorporated and Millennials into Leadership. In the final part of this three-part series, Orrell further explains the importance of training your Millennial employees for leadership roles – and shares practical tips for teaching your employees that crucial leadership skill: problem-solving.

As a consultant, I often hear employers tell me that one of their main challenges – and one they feel their Millennials struggle with – is problem solving. With that in mind, I’d like to share the following tips for problem solving, which you can share with your Millennial team members as you continue to groom them for leadership.

12 Problem-Solving Tips to Teach Your Gen Y Future Leaders:

1. Leaders First Envision Success: Leaders know that every problem has an answer; it just needs to be found. Worrying about the problem gets you nowhere, while working towards the answer will get you everywhere. Leaders control their attitude and focus on results.
2. Leaders Clarify the Problem: Leaders determine what’s wrong by cutting through clutter and noise, and by focusing on the issues that are at the core of the problem.
3. Leaders Get the Facts: Leaders collect all the facts about the problem because they know that some problems are not as big as they seem. Fact-finding is an analytical, rather than an emotional task, so it is useful in other ways, too. When a follower comes to a leader with a problem, a good leader will start asking questions and gather the facts, rather than engage in an emotional discussion.  Fact-finding is a process and you may have to dig deep to get to the real problem. Leaders are great at asking the right fact-finding questions. They’re also adept at listening to the answers and “hearing” any sub-text that could illuminate the situation.

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GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: Authored by Lisa Orrell. Orrell is known globally as The Generation Relations Expert. She is the author of the top-selling books Millennials Incorporated and Millennials into Leadership. In the second part of this series, Orrell shares nine ways to teach your Millennial employees how to adopt a leadership mindset now – regardless of their current position within your organization.

In the leadership workshops I conduct for Millennials, one of the key points I emphasize is that even an entry-level management position IS a leadership role. I also explain to them the need to understand the difference between a leadership mindset and a manager mindset from Day One of their first professional job. After all, they are judged on everything they do and say – and everything they don’t do and don’t say – from the very beginning of their career.

As their supervisor or employer, your goal should be to help your employees understand this concept; however, I know many upper managers who still struggle with it themselves, so it’s important to remember the following (which you can then pass on to your employees):

Even if you just manage one person, you are also a leader. Yes, you may be considered a “manager” on paper, but you are leading, too. And even though your current position may not be one that “sets direction for the entire company or a department,” you are still a leader. Furthermore, even if you currently don’t manage anyone, you can take on leadership roles (e.g. heading up a project, volunteering to plan a company event, etc.).

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It’s dangerous — and often inaccurate — to generalize generations’ workplace preferences and behaviors. Many hiring managers, however, are still clinging onto generational stereotypes, particularly of the oft much-hyped Millennial generation (those workers born between 1980 – 1995) — stereotypes that Millennials themselves have moved well beyond since first entering the workplace in the last several years.

In How the Recession Shaped Millenial and Hiring Manager Attitudes about Millenials’ Future Careers, Alexandra Levit and I examine various research initiatives to determine how the attitudes of Millennials toward their career paths have changed as a result of the economic downturn, how these attitudes compare to the way hiring managers view Millennials’ career paths, and what hiring managers can do to better understand this generation of workers. Many of our report conclusions have been drawn from The Future of Millennial Careers research study, which was commissioned by the Career Advisory Board, presented by DeVry University, and conducted by Harris Interactive among 500 Millennials age 21-31 either employed or planning to seek employment, and 523 hiring managers age 18+ who interact with Millennials at work.

While Millennials and hiring managers can generally both agree that Millennials tend to have certain commonalities, like digital comfort and impatience with certain established processes, there is also much disparity between how Millennials view themselves and how they are viewed by their bosses. This can result in a frustrating situation for both parties — but by learning to truly understand Millennials, hiring managers can create a smoother workplace environment for the multiple generations currently working within it, as well as improve one-on-one relationships with their valuable Millennial workers.

Pre-recession to the present

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GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: Authored by Lisa Orrell. Orrell is known globally as The Generation Relations Expert. She is the author of the top-selling books Millennials Incorporated and Millennials into Leadership. In the first of a three-part series, Orrell discusses not only how to better manage and retain your Millennial talent, but also how to groom them to be effective leaders.

Why do companies – large and small – spend so much time worrying about how to retain Millennials (a.k.a. Gen Y)?  It’s basically a matter of math.

According to the Employment Policy Foundation (EPF), our country is at the beginning of a labor shortage of approximately 35 million skilled and educated workers, which is estimated to continue over the next two decades – especially now that Baby Boomers are starting to retire at an estimated rate of 1 every 8 seconds.

Out of necessity, Millennials – many of whom may only have one to three years of career experience – are moving into management roles much sooner (and younger!) than the generations before them did – and are expected to perform in these roles successfully.

While it’s entirely possible to groom this next generation of professionals to be effective leaders, you must first be able to retain them (otherwise, grooming them for leadership won’t even matter!). For the first of this three-part series, I’d like to share six effective tips to help employers and managers effectively retain Millennial talent.

6 Ways to Retain Your Gen Y Employees:

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Recognize This: The “young ones” soon become the leaders. GenY will forever change management – for the better.

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The jury is still out with me regarding generational differences.  Some people say the generations are significantly different; some people don’t.  I understand there has been a lot of research done to categorize groups of people based upon when they were born.  The idea is,  this research may offer insights to help marketers, managers, government leaders, etc. understand societal needs of the future.

But I can’t help but think one of the key reasons that generations are different is because of the kind of world they live in and what things they have exposure to.  For example, I’m old enough to remember what my job was like without email.  And, I admit…I remember those brick cell phones.

People entering the workforce today don’t recall any of those things.  They have a different frame of reference and that changes their perspective.  In a good way, I might add.

If you want to gain some insight about the generation currently entering the workforce, check out the Beloit College website Mindset Moment.  The site lists the “mindset” for the students currently entering college.  It’s really interesting – here are a couple of tidbits about the Class of 2014:

Most don’t know how to write cursive.

The cliché “Go West” – doesn’t refer to California.  It means China.

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American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. case ends in settlement

The NLRB has released the following press release announcing the settlement.   Thanks to my friend Seth Borden over at Labor Relations Today for letting me know about this right away!

Settlement reached in case involving discharge for Facebook comments
A settlement has been reached in a case involving the discharge of a Connecticut ambulance service
employee for posting negative comments about a supervisor on her Facebook page.
The NLRB’s Hartford regional office issued a complaint against American Medical Response of
Connecticut, Inc., on October 27, 2010, alleging that the discharge violated federal labor law
because the employee was engaged in protected activity when she posted the comments about her
supervisor, and responded to further comments from her co-workers. Under the National Labor
Relations Act, employees may discuss the terms and conditions of their employment with coworkers
and others.

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Recognize This: Increasing recognition in the workplace isn’t a solution for Gen Y employees. It’s a solution for ALL employees.

Admittedly, I know little about American Football, and even less about college football. But I was deeply intrigued by a recent post of Kris Dunn’s (the HR Capitalist) on the “Oregon Funk” of the Oregon University football team.

Apparently, Nike designs and provides a different uniform for every game. Some like them, some hate them. Or, as Kris puts it:

“Traditionalists hate the Oregon uniforms and the Oregon basketball court. I’m guessing the kids they recruit LOVE IT ALL.

“And at the end of the day, that’s really all that matters, isn’t it? The vibe helps them acquire talent in their demographic.”

This made me think of the ongoing discussion of Gen Y in the workplace and whether their perceived need for constant recognition and feedback is a good or a bad thing. Dan Pink’s take is:

“The problem isn’t that the Millennial are wrong. The problem is that they’re right. The workplace is one of the most feedback deprived places in modern life.”

Tying the two together, Gen Y are the new generation in the workplace. They are bringing to light a long-term problem in the workplace we’ve all come to accept as “just the way things are.” Bottom line: more recognition doesn’t benefit just Gen Y. It benefits us all.

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Recognize This: The management needs of modern employees have changed. Can you manage the way your employees need to be most engaged, productive and successful?

Back to the “generations at work” battle. I’m on record with my belief that GenY is no different, really, than any other generation in what they want out of work – validation that their effort is worthwhile (in that it contributes to the success of others, the company or the community) and a desire to prove themselves, grow and develop in their chosen careers.

However, I do think that the generation debate shows a deep seated change that is occurring all around us in how information flows, ideas are shared, networks are created, influence happens, and like it or not, it’s tending to be members of GenY and GenX who are leading the charge. Not only will this impact how companies make decisions and engage (with employees, with customers and with suppliers), but it’s also charging the very way our society works. Information flow is now so dynamic and networks so widely dispersed, someday we’ll see a government being changed as a consequence of a Facebook campaign.

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“We need to look around our environment and say, ‘Is our environment encouraging the best talent possible? Are we choosing the right generational mix of people?’” Meagan Johnson says about the responsibilities managers have today.

Johnson and her father, Larry, are multigenerational workforce experts who recently spoke with me about their new book, Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters–Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work, and the challenge of managing multigenerational workforces.  One of the unique challenges managers face today, they told me, is learning to work with and manage a new generation of workers they refer to as “Linksters.” Read the rest of this entry »

I know what you’re thinking: “Linkster? I hardly even know her! What’s a Linkster?” Linksters, also known as The Facebook Generation, are members of the population who were born after 1995, according to Larry and Meagan Johnson, authors of the new book Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters–Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work. I recently spoke over the phone with the father-daughter workplace expert team and founders of the Johnson Training Group, to discuss how companies can help manage multi-generational workforces.

What gave you the idea to write this book?

Meagan: Back when I graduated from Arizona State in ’93, I got a job with Quaker Oats, and I absolutely hated it. I hated the way boss managed me, I hated what I considered stupid rules, and I thought the reward system and bonus system was archaic. I was complaining to my parents about it when my dad said, “Hey, you should be grateful. When I was your age, I would’ve removed my left arm to have this great job, and a company car and make more money than my peers.” I think that was what planted the original seed of the book.  I started speaking about generational differences in the workplace, and, finally, the idea of the book came into fruition: Our own experiences with the generational gap and our own perceptions about what the worklife world should look like.

You talk specifically about this generation you call “Linksters,” which refer to teenagers still living at home, working part-time.  Where did the term Linksters come from?

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I’m overwhelmed by the generalities about Generation Y in the HR-related press and blogs. They’re entitled. They expect to start at the top. They need a gold star every two minutes to know they’re doing good work.

What do I see in GenY? A group of young employees who want the same things from work and behave in very much the way I did when I was their age. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll likely admit the same. Sure they want to be at the top. That’s where the action is. They know they have to work hard to get there, though. But if you’re not giving them the “gold stars” – meaningful feedback on their work and praise when they do it well – how will they know they’re doing the right thing? But their drive does create one big challenge for business today – creating opportunities for them to grow into greater responsibility and contribution quickly, and remaining true to the company values at the same time.

That’s right – company values are very important to GenY. In fact, recent BlessingWhite research showed the top 5 characteristics recent grads want from their employers (quoting):

1. Company values, mission and culture

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That internship application from the guy with 15 years of management experience? Don’t send it to the shredder just yet – it might not be a fluke. It may simply just be part of a growing workforce trend in which older workers are competing with their college-aged counterparts for open positions.

According to a new survey released today by CareerBuilder, 23 percent of employers are seeing experienced workers (those with more than 10 years of professional experience) and mature workers (workers aged 50 or older) apply for internship positions at their organizations. (The results are consistent with a 2009 survey that indicated that more mature workers were considering internships as a way to break into a new industry.)

Of the more than 2,500 employers surveyed, more than one quarter (27 percent) said they plan to hire interns during the remainder of 2010 to help support workloads, the majority of whom plan to offer paid internships – with hourly pay ranging from $10 or more per hour (for 55 percent of employers) to $25 or more per hour (for 5 percent of employers). You can see more statistics from the press release here.

The Atypical Intern: Consider It
If you’re among the 23 percent of employers seeing more experienced workers apply for your positions, do yourself a favor and take them seriously. Today’s workers – regardless of age and experience level – view internships as a way to explore new opportunities, according to Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, while the companies that hire them can leverage these workers’ years of professional experience, strong work ethic and extensive skill set to benefit their bottom line.

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