Generation X & Y Myths

While there are generational differences in workers today, I find too many people claiming way more differences that there really are. Jennifer Deal has an excellent book out "Retiring the Generational GAP" that deals with many of the myths. Here are some of the core principles she shares:

1. All Generations have similiar values: They just express them differently!
2. Everyone wants Respect: They define it based on the context.
3. Trust Matters to everyone!
4. People want (expect) leaders who are credible and trustworthy (See Principle #3).
5. No matter how old or young, organizational politics is a challenge.
6. No one really likes change! (Yes all of us.. some of like making others change though)
7. Loyalty depends on the context, not on the generation! "Promote me... then I'll be loyal!"
8. If you do the right things... it is as easy to retain young employees as your old ones!
9. Everyone wants to learn!
   
10. Almost everyone wants a coach.

And one more telling fact that kills the myth of the Gen X culture:

Between the ages of 31-35.. early Xers change jobs less often than the early boomers! Between the ages of 20-25, late Xers change job about as often as boomers.. In 2o years we will know more, but the truth is there is far less to be made about the Gen X culture being less loyal or commited to work!

Tom Rath's Gallop Findings

Tom Rath (2006) reported in his book Vital Friends: The People You Can't Afford to Live Without that there are eight vital roles that friends play in helping employees succeed:

• Builders (those who motivate you to achieve more)
• Champions (those loyalists who stand up for you)
• Collaborators (those with similar interests)
• Companion (those classic friends who you call
  first with your news)
• Connectors (those who introduce you to others)
• Energizers (those who give you a boost when
  you’re down)
• Mind-openers (those who expand your horizons)
• Navigators (those who you go to for advice)

In 2007, he spoke to the crowd at ASTD about the findings that each of us are more likely to stay in our jobs and with our organizations if we have more than 5 friends at work. So what does this all mean to the workplace leader. Here in the USA where our workplace culture asks us to be task oriented and not relationship oriented, to be objective or rather not subjective, to focus on return on investment and competition.. maybe we are missing a major lesson. Competition, return on investment, and being good at our tasks are critical to success, but creating a culture where employees can build and foster friendships may be the different in having a sustainable engaged workforce. Using the eight types of friends listed above, ask yourself what your are doing to create a workplace culture that encourages these types of relationships. Look at everything.. for example:

Does your system of giving raises and bonuses encourage or discourage employees to take on these roles?
Does the funding priorities set by you create opportunities for these friendships to emerge?

It is very revealing.. For example, leaders are pushing training more and more to distant mediums to save costs these days... I'm not convinced we can develop the friendships we need without some time face to face...

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Gen X vs. Gen Y - Hype

In an earlier post, I raised issues with Gen X and Gen Y stereotyping and taking the hype beyond what the data really says. I was happy today to see that the Society for Human Development has put out a publication on Generational Differences that goes even further than my warning. The publication, which is based on a seven year study by the Center for Creative Leadership, lays out the following on Gen Y:

• Employees of different generations actually actually want a lot of the same things from their work.
• Global demographics, education levels, living costs, economic issues, and labor market conditions may have the strongest influence on the way different generations view work.
• Other findings.. regardless of age,
  
• Resistance to change is more about what you stand to lose or gain.
• Loyalty to the employer is more about your place in the company hierarchy than your age.
• most employees seem to what security and a balance work and personal lives.

My hat is off to Jennifer Deal who is the study's lead author!

Is your work meaningful?

The need or drive to seek pleasure (Freud)

and the relentless pursuit of power (Adler)

were really just attempts to cover up,

but not necessarily fill, a

“void of meaning”

that existed in the lives of these individuals.

-Alex Pattakos on Viktor Frankl’s principle on the “search for meaning”

BIG QUESTION: Top Reasons People Consider Leaving Their Jobs?

If it is not succession planning.. it is retention that seems to be getting the most attention among HR and T&D experts these days. Leaders know that a huge workforce is retiring and that there will not be as many workers to replace them. Human capital may be more valuable than oil in 15 years....

A colleague of mine and I are working on some research related to retention. We know from previous research that most of us have thought about leaving our current job at least once or twice. Of course, we often do not act on these thoughts, but the thoughts themselves tell us something about retention.

You can help out a great deal by either responding to this blog with a comment, or sending me a private e-mail. Please feel free to respond to the blog in an anonymous post. It should not take you long to answer just one question.

The last time something happened that made you think your current job is not the one you want to be in... what was it that made you think about leaving that job?


Please share this post with as many people as you can.. I would love to get as many people as possible to respond.. If I get a good response, I hope to post a summary of the best of the posts and the most dominate themes..

Emotional Attachement = Customer Engagement

Hot off the presses.. Human Sigma is HOT.. A must read for anyone who is interested in customer or employee engagement. John Fleming lays out for us all a great model for evaluating our efforts at customer satisfaction that is logical and research based. I love it and plan to use it to complement my already robust customer service programs. The model lays out four levels of Emotional Attachment.. the kind of attachment that has been proven to positively impact the financial statement. The model looks at these four dimensions:

• Confidence: What are you doing to create customer trust in your services? Would your customers say you always deliver on your spoken and unspoken promises?
  
• Integrity: Do you treat your customers fairly? When something goes wrong, do you apologize for the problem? How fair are you in resolving the problem?
  
• Pride: Do your customers have a positive sense of association and identification with you? Are they proud to be your customer? Does their association with you mean something to them personally? Does it define their own self-concept of who they are?
• Passion: Would your customers consider life not worth living without you? Ok.. that is a bit much, but the concept is the same... Are you indispensable? Would they drive across town for you? How much passion do they have for you?

I will use a easy example to bring these home.. Think of the last time you flew somewhere on an airplane, where things didn't quite go as well as you hoped.. close your eyes and imagine yourself waiting to get on the flight...

Confidence: How sure were you that the flight would leave on time? Were you confident that you would get where you were going on-time and with your baggage?

Integrity: Now whatever went wrong has happened.. they have been delayed, or your bags are gone.. etc..Do you think they treated you fairly? Did they demonstrate respect for you?

Pride: After the flight.. did you go around bragging on how you traveled.. I mean, did you become a poster child for the airline?

Passion: Now suppose you are going to fly again next week.. how important is it for you to fly on this same airline.. if they can only offer you bad connections or cost more, would you still fly on them?

Most likely, you answered no to all of these questions. It is sad, but I think the deck is stacked against airlines. They don't help themselves much, but they have little chance of overcoming the confidence dimension. Some have risen above.. take Southwest.. you could argue that they do most of these well. I have run into a few Southwest Air Passion Freaks in my days.. Better examples might be Apple or Nordstroms.

There is another piece of this pie as well.. It also links up to employee engagement:
Confidence is about knowing what to expect.. Integrity is about respect and recognition, Pride is about belonging and inclusion (FIRO), and Passion is about connecting to some future goal.. The result is employee engagement.. which equals retention. Incidentally, these concepts also overlap with concepts in Lencioni's new book on misery! :)

Why Employees Leave!

Leigh Branham has put together a great book on The 7 Hidden Reason Employees Leave!
I recommend it and have found it very useful. What I like best is he targets things many of us could fix, but we just don't have them on our radar. My favorite is Reason 1 - The Job or workplace was not what was expected. Here are some tough questions you might ask yourself:

1. Do you conduct realistic job previews with every job candidate?
2. Do you make a significant percentage of your hires from a pool of temps, adjuncts, or part-time workers who already know your workplace?
3. Do you use employee referrals and hire a significant percentage of these referred potentials?
4. Do you have realistic job descriptions with a short list of the most critical competencies?
5. Do you allow candidate's future coworkers to participate in job interviews?
6. DO you make a significant percentage of hires from a pool of current employees?
7. Do you build into the interviewing process a way for candidates to gain a "sample" of the on-the-job duties.
8. Do you survey or interview new hires to find out how to minimize new hire surprises in the future?

That last question is clear that it is not just what has caused someone to leave you in the past... An even more important question you should be asking is what is causing your current employees to think about leaving?

Employee Retention - Hiring the Right Fit

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) just published some data that sheds some understanding on employee retention. The first question is "who is ready to work?" Their findings are that the five most important skills for a new employee are:

• Professionalism
  
• Teamwork
• Oral Communication
• Ethics and Social Responsibility
• Reading Comprehension

You might note that knowledge of a specific field of study did not make the top 5.

The second question relates to retention directly. SHRM asked employees what were the most important things that influence their job satisfaction. The findings in rank order are:

1. Benefits
2. Compensation or Pay
3. Job Security
4. Flexibility to balance life and work issues
   
5. Communication between employees and senior management
6. Feeling safe in the work environment (up 14% since 2002)
7. Management recognition of employee job performance
8. Relationship with immediate supervisor (HR Directors rank this 1st)
   
9. Autonomy and independence
10. Opportunities to use skills and abilities.
    

The implication is that while the literature has documented that having a positive employee relationship with their supervisor is critical to employee staying on the job, concerns over benefits and good medical care may be actually creating dissatisfaction. The lesson to organizations is to ensure that they do not allow their benefits packages to diminish to a level where they become de-motivators for employees. I was blessed to get to tour the UPS facility in Louisville Ky last month. I was impressed with the mechanics of this huge system of getting all these packages to where they needed to go. But what impressed me the most was UPS's benefit packages.. how they took care of even part-time employees. Well Done UPS! Your employees know what Big Brown Can Do for Them!