If 100 people tell you that you are sick you may need to lie down.
The Human Resources zeitgeist currently de jour is that an understanding of generational dynamics will better position your organisation to meet the Workforce Planning challenges of the future, especially in the area of recruitment and retention.
Generational dynamics are overdone as a metric to gauge your current workforce.
I’ll take that statement even further.
Organisations that use generational dynamics to position themselves against their competitors would be better served by developing Workforce Planning frameworks only after inspecting the entrails of a recently slaughtered lamb. Recruitment strategies could then be developed using the zodiac as a guiding principal (we are in manufacturing so hiring Taurian employees is crucial, given they are much better than Aries who are a bit flaky, right?) and retention strategies developed after reading tea-leaves.
So what are generational dynamics (nee cohorts)?
Generational dynamics can been defined as a group of individuals within the same population and cultural definition who experience the events within the same time interval. Within modernity the intervals can be broken into the following eras (although there is no absolute consensus on these dates thus the conflict between Gen Y & Gen Z dates):
Baby Boomers (1945 – 1965)
Generation X (1966 – 1980)
Generation Y (1981 – 1995)
Generation Z (1990 – 2010)
Generation Alpha (from 2010)
How could anyone argue that someone born in 1981 and another born in 1990 have exactly the same patterns of behaviour? Demographic profiling at this macro level is using a broadsword to cut tomatoes yet if you listen to the online chatter and even peer reviewed university papers you would think they are crucial to workforce planning.
Dr. David Solnet (University of Queensland) just wrapped up a 3-year study into the
Hospitality Industry which found that most Gen Y workers, who make up 30% of the overall Queensland workforce, mainly want “job security, flexible hours, and relaxed rules about mobile phone use at work”. I’d first argue that the core of that group have no interest in pursuing a career in hospitality and that the main items under scrutiny are of interest to all the other generational cohorts.
If you are genuine about identifying the right workforce for your business and industry then I would strongly advise that you reject the simplicity of generational dynamics alone and start to invest some intellectual capital into understanding the working life-stage and working-life intentions of your workforce from new-entry to transition stages from both an business and an industry perspective. Generational dynamics may be used to assist in high-level workforce development, data coaching or when considering the work environment but they are not a very useful Workforce Planning tool.
Two leaders in this area are Julie Sloan from Workforce Planning Australia and the Sloan Centre for Aging and Work (USA). I had the opportunity to be personally mentored by Julie Sloan in 2010 and I spent a considerable amount of time on the road last year at several skills development and workforce planning conferences where Julie covered this topic. Julie presented on the recent HR.com Workforce Planning & Analytics webinar series (which should now be available) and if you get an opportunity you should listen to her views on the subject (being that they are possibly less passionate than my own).
To sum up, there is a consensus view that generational dynamics are important to understanding your new-entry to mid-career workforce. I would argue that this silo view is little better than inspecting tea-leaves. To really see your workforce in the full light you need to understand the ‘prism of age’ because working life stages and working life intensions are multi-dimensional. They are not static and easily boxed.
I commenced my article with the saying ‘if 100 people tell you that you are sick you may need to lie down’.
Let me end with another saying which I take from the Renaissance period.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
