(From Forbes) -- Recently, my organization facilitated a roundtable session with fifteen young professionals. Their main concern was how to advance in a multi-generational workplace. Several of these young professionals felt that they didn’t belong or fit in their workplace; they were uncertain about who to trust and didn’t respect the manner in which they were being led. These young professionals were eager to learn the best ways their generation could take control, influence their workplace culture and start performing at the highest levels. They wanted to get noticed, create impact and at the same time discover how to start generating more income and accelerate their advancement.

This three hour roundtable was intense, but we successfully identified what these young professionals were really looking for: how to most effectively teach their baby boomer bosses how they seek to be led. As one young professional said, “if my boss understands how I am wired to work, I will not only teach the organization’s old guard how to lead my generation, but my performance will help contribute to the organization’s success. I will make them more relevant.” This confident perspective changed the conversation and helped to define the following top five ways young professionals want to be led by their baby boomer bosses.

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Tags: young professionals, human capital, leadership, Millennials, Generation Y, talent management

Categories: News

(From Forbes.com) -- This week, I am honored to attend and speak the World Economic Forum at Davos as part of the first Global Shaper delegation, a group of 70 millennial leaders from around the world to help leaders ‘think younger’ about today’s global challenges and the future of work. As I prepare for my panel on Leadership Across Generations, I wonder, how aligned is the vision of work for today’s world leaders with the vision for me and my Generation Y peers?

The recession has also influenced the way young people view work. Millennials who couldn’t get a college education or suffered after the recession have been forced to start in new ways, building online businesses or becoming freelancers. They know that pension and 401K plans won’t operate the same way anymore. They know that getting a job is about being innovative and working across fields.

What I’m noticing is that most corporate structures are out of sync with the lifestyle desires of Generation Y. Companies need to rethink the way their employees work, making major changes that will accommodate the unique work desires of Gen Y. What’s in it for companies? They will increase employee performance by reducing turnover and have happier, more productive Gen Y employees. A BPW Foundation’s Gen Y study published in April 2011 also noted that by 2025, Generation Y will make up roughly 75% of the world’s workforce. With this many millenials making up the majority of the workforce by 2025 — only 13 years away — employers can’t afford not to take notice.

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Tags: Gen Y, Millennials, Generation Y, workplace

Categories: News

(From PC Advisor) -- You know the typical labels associated with Gen Y, or people between the ages of 18 and 29: They are more tech-savvy than other generations, are achievement-oriented and, some would say, are an entitled group that's infiltrating the workforce.

A new study released today takes a closer look at this generation and its employment trends-with statistics culled from the social network that defines Gen Y: Facebook.

Millennial Branding together with Identified.com, studied 4 million Gen Y Facebook profiles to obtain better insight into how members of this generation operate professionally-a topic of increasing importance as they are projected to make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025.

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Tags: Gen Y, Millennials, Generation Y, workforce demographics

Categories: News

(From Forbes) -- I have a deep interest in Gen-Y workplace research and ideas, which is why I reached out to Lauren Rikleen. Lauren runs the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, which is designed to create a more dynamic, inclusive, and strategically aligned workplace. She is also the Executive in Residence at the Boston College Center for Work & Family and has just released an executive briefing called “Creating Tomorrow’s Leaders: the Expanding Roles of Millennials in the Workplace.” She is also the author of Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law. In this interview, she talks about generational differences in the workplace, what millennials really want from companies, and profiles the millennial leader.

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Tags: Millennials, Generation Y, workplace

Categories: News

(From The Kansas City Star) -- The co-workers of 20-somethings are less than amazed with the younger generation's work ethic, according to a poll released Monday.

The poll of 637 working Americans was conducted on behalf of Workplace Options, a Raleigh, N.C.-based consulting firm. The results showed that 77 percent of workers believed the millennial generation have a different attitude towards workplace responsibility than other age groups. Millennials are primarily people born in the 1980s and early 1990s, who started coming of age around the new millennium.

Furthermore, 68 percent of respondents said they think millennial workers are less motivated to take on responsibility and produce quality work, and 46 percent said they think millennials are less engaged at work than others.

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Tags: Millennials, Generation Y, work ethic, generations in the workplace

Categories: News

(From Software Advice) -- When I was a kid, I went back and forth between wanting to become a Marine or a doctor. Although on my more adventurous days, I was set to become a rock star or professional wrestler like the ones on TV (I thought they were real). Clearly, my career aspirations were all over the place – but what never even crossed my mind was becoming a manufacturer. After nearly a year of covering the manufacturing software market for Software Advice, I’ve started to wonder why.

In my view, it seems like the twenty-something and younger crowd would sooner build farms on Zynga’s Farmville or plan the next great civilization on Sim City rather than actually make it happen. This doesn’t speak to everyone in my age group, but I certainly don’t have many peers dying to break into the manufacturing industry. We’re a generation that’s obsessed with being cool, and honestly manufacturing doesn’t seem very cool.

There is a caveat, of course, in that the manufacturing of ideas is still highly valued. Everyone is racing to make the next iPhone app or create the next online money mill like GroupOn. But these ideas aren’t really producing a product in the traditional sense. Instead they’re manufacturing a smart service.

It got me thinking – can we make manufacturing cool again? That is, what will it take to make young people seriously consider a career in manufacturing? I believe in order to make manufacturing an appealing career again we’ll need to:

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Tags: Millennials, Generation Y, manufacturing

Categories: News

(From The Wall Street Journal) -- The status-update era is changing the annual performance review.

With many younger workers used to instant feedback—from text messages to Facebook and Twitter updates—annual reviews seem too few and far between. So companies are adopting quarterly, weekly or even daily feedback sessions.

Not surprisingly, Facebook Inc. exemplifies the trend. The social network's 2,000 employees are encouraged to solicit and give small nuggets of feedback regularly, after meetings, presentations and projects. "You don't have to schedule time with someone. It's a 45-second conversation—'How did that go? What could be done better?" says Lori Goler, the Palo Alto, Calif., social-networking company's vice president of human resources. More formal reviews happen twice a year.

For most companies, employee reviews are still an annual rite of passage. Some 51% of companies conduct formal performance reviews annually, while 41% of firms do semi-annual appraisals, according to a 2011 survey of 500 companies by the Corporate Executive Board Co., a research and advisory firm.

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Tags: human performance improvement, employee performance review, performance management, Generation Y, Millennials

Categories: News

(From PRWEB) -- Jazzing up the workplace. That’s what many organisations are doing in order to recruit and retain the future engines of their workforce -- the ‘twenty somethings’ or Gen Y. Taking the lead are multinationals with an offering of interesting perks, such as the in-house gym at software company SAS; Google’s on-site laundry and massages; and Marriott International’s training podcasts.

Besides the creative sweeteners, however, what else awaits Gen Y at the workplace?

1.    Cultural diversity

Visit a bank or a manufacturing plant or a hospital and you would find people from at least half-a-dozen nationalities working side by side. Thanks to globalisation, the first challenge facing Gen Y is a cosmopolitan workforce.

2.    Generational gap

With increased life expectancy and growing trend towards delayed retirement, employees belonging to as many as four different generations – traditionalists (born prior to 1946), baby boomers (1946 – 1964), Generation X (1965-1981) and Generation Y (1982-2000) – have to coexist at the workplace.

3.    Different attitudes

The third challenge stems from the first two: people from different cultures and generations bearing starkly different attitudes about work, success, work-life balance, values and technology.

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Tags: Generation Y, Millennials, diversified workforce, Singapore

Categories: International | News

(From foxbusiness.com) -- Over the past several years one of the hot topics among mangers and human resource professionals has been generational differences at work. A lot of the chatter has focused on the integration of GenY into a workplace dominated by Boomers and GenXers.

To get some unique insights into the myths and realities of generational differences at work, I spoke with Dr. Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the book Generation Me. In order to gain some insight into generational differences in the workplace, Twenge and her colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of Management where they analyzed a comprehensive data set consisting of ratings of workplace values by high school seniors in 1976 (Baby Boomers), 1991 (Generation X), and 2006 (referred to as GenMe in the study and also known as Generation Y, or Millennials).

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Tags: Generation Y, Millennials, Generation X, generations in the workplace, Dr. Jean Twenge, Generation Me

Categories: News

When it comes to the workplace, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y populations may be more similar than previously thought, according to a Conference Board of Canada study released Monday.

The study, entitled "Winning the Generation Wars: Making the Most of Generational Differences and Similarities in the Workplace," suggests ways to beat negative and inaccurate stereotypes that can dominate the office environment and hinder team performance.

"This research shows each generation includes workers with similar personality types, workplace motivations, and social behaviours. Workers from all three generations want respect, flexibility, fairness, and the opportunity to do interesting and rewarding work," Tim Krywulak, senior research associate on the study, said.

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Tags: canada, workplace, generations, baby boomers, generation x, generation y, diversity

Categories: International | News | Research