Last spring, I attended a presentation by Dr. Linda Duxbury, one of the leading experts on generations in the workplace and workplace health. She is a professor with Carleton University and has delivered over 200 talks to private and public sector workplaces.

The presentation centered on dealing with a multi-generational workplace, and how simple demographics affect the labour outlook for our organizations. Dr. Duxbury says we have four generations in the workplace:

• Veterans: born in 1946 or earlier
• Boomers: 1947 to 1964
• Gen X: 1965 to 1972
• Nexus: 1973 to 1990

* I used Dr. Duxbury´s generation ranges for consistency; not all experts in this area agree on the exact ranges.

The labour market is becoming a job seekers´ market in many areas of North America. The reality is that many of our more dedicated employees are, incidentally, our older ones - those who will be eligible to retire in droves in the next decade.

Our less dedicated employees are younger ones who have different needs and are more likely to treat our organizations as a place where they can gain some skills and training, beef up the résumé, and move on to greener pastures.

The thing is, we need those younger employees desperately, because projected labour shortages are going to heat the competition to the boiling point. We realize that we can´t change the attributes of this generation, so we will have to adapt our organizations in order to be able to attract and retain them.

So, how do you identify these people and figure out where your risk is? And how does this relate to HRIS?

We are constantly told that the real power of HR data lies behind the ability to use it in a strategic manner. The need to extract and report on HR data forces organizations to put their thinking cap on ... so we can determine where the labour shortfalls are going to be.

We track all kinds of data, like an employee´s hire date, their birthdate, their birth year, their projected retirement date, whether they have a pension plan, and so on. These itty bitty pieces of data can help us determine what kind of turnover we might expect in the years ahead. Or at least, give us a head start!

The question is how can we strategically report on the data we have, to get some meaning from it?

The first thing you need to do grab a massive data dump of your employees, their employment statuses, and every little bit of information you have on them. I use a calendar year (i.e. 2005) but you may wish to use a fiscal year, if it´s different. Three "dumps" would be helpful:

1. A listing of all active employees during the time period (i.e. January 1, 2005 to December 1, 2005)
2. A listing of all employees who terminated during that time period.
3. A listing of all new hires during that time period.

Then, you need to use some sort of reporting tool to manipulate the data. I find Microsoft Excel is useful enough. I dump the data into Excel, use birthdates to calculate birth year, then identify their generation according to their birth year (using Dr. Duxbury´s legend above).

Excel is great because of its capacity to do pivot tables, bar charts, and graphs. These are helpful in explaining data to other people (like myself) who are not bit-heads.

A mistake would be to provide a data dump in Excel with no graphs or formatting. It looks meaningless, it looks like there is no intelligence to your HRIS, and your organization will get nothing tangible from the data.

The thing I like about Excel´s pivot tables is that you can double-click on area of the pivot table, and it will "drill down" further into the report.

When I did some generational reports, I developed a few which are meaningful to our organization. The following examples of reports show some excellent data we can work with to draw some educated guesses about our workforce.

Report # 1: Workforce Composition profile:

This kind of profile would show active employees by generation. A pie chart will help show in which generation the majority of your employees lie, and you can show numbers and/or percentages.

This report was generated in Excel and is a basic pie chart.

Report # 2: Employee Status by Department

This report shows the status of employees by department for the time period you specified when you extracted the initial employee data. This report was generated using an Excel pivot table.

For example:

This report would show you that:

• Accounting has 7 active employees; 2 on leave, and 2 terminated during the reporting period
• 4 are probably pretty close to retirement so you know you will have 4 positions to replace (depending on retirement data for those employees).
• Your Gen X employees are taking leaves of absence (possibly maternity leaves) which you have to backfill as well.
• You lost 2 Nexus generation employees and there are only 2 remaining.
• Some of your conclusions may be:

1. You may have a retention problem with Nexus employees
2. You probably need to start succession planning for your Veterans now
3. You will want to see how you can keep your younger employees and ensure that you will not lose a lot of organizational knowledge in a very short period of time.
4. If those Nexus employees are in backfilling a maternity leave, you may wish to consider making those positions permanent so you can keep the Nexus employees for longer.

Report # 3: Length of Service by Generation

This would be based on the Hire date that you would have in the system for active employees.

The interesting thing about this kind of report is that it tells you basically how your workforce is comprised. You may learn how little experience your younger workers may have; where your loyal employees lie; how many upcoming vacancies you have based on the numbers of the older generation. It may help you identify which areas you need to improve upon in order to guarantee a sustained workforce.

Again, this report was generated using an Excel pivot table.

Report # 4: Job Descriptions by Generation 

This would be based on the job descriptions that you would have in the system for active employees.

This kind of report would tell you which job areas you might risk facing shortfalls for, depending on the attributes of the particular generation. This may help with succession planning. Again, this report was generated using an Excel pivot table.

Report # 5: Terminations by Department 

This report would use the data you had for employee terminations for the time period of your initial data extract, and it would be based on the termination date that you would have in the system for terminated employees.

This kind of report would tell you which generations are leaving and in which area. This may help you form some kind of retention strategy. Again, this report was generated using an Excel pivot table.

Report #6: Terminations by Reason 

This would be based on the termination date that you would have in the system for terminated employees.

This kind of report would tell you which generations are leaving and why. This may help you form some kind of retention strategy or incentives to keep employees. Some reasons (i.e. relocation) obviously cannot be helped, especially if a spouse is moving, but when employees are clearly unsatisfied with their job, the job duties may deserve a second look. Again, this report was generated using an Excel pivot table.

Report #7: Terminations by Job Description

This would be based on the termination date that you would have in the system for terminated employees.

This kind of report would tell you which generations are leaving and in which job area. This may help you decide if you could make the positions more attractive, perhaps by changing job descriptions and/or responsibilities, adjusting compensation strategies, or providing developmental opportunities to keep current staff more engaged in their jobs.

Conclusion

Depending on what you track in your system, your HR data is literally a treasure trove of information. The future of our workforce is clear. With the start of the baby boomers retiring from the workforce, if you are not reporting on this type of information now, it would be an excellent time to start!

Resources:

Linda Duxbury´s Generation Presentation: http://www.smartlink.net.au/library/duxbury/duxbury1.pdf

Excel Pivot Tables:

Google "excel pivot table" and you will find tons of useful "how-to´s"

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