Archive for August, 2008

The graying of America’s workforce is an oft-reported megatrend that is yet to shake up the workplace or economy. Will 2008 be the year that mass numbers of Baby Boomers dust off their golf clubs?

There’s a lot of speculation about the repercussions of this shift. In theory a lot of good jobs will become available as younger workers try to fill the gaps left behind by retiring boomers. From what I have seen, however, boomers don’t always shut down their careers at 62.

We recognize the signs. A young employee shows up late at work or for meetings, misses assignments or takes sick days when they’re on top of their game.

As a boss your first instinct is to rattle their cage. But what will that accomplish?

Employers fret about holding onto Gen Y workers who may be less inclined than previous generations to stick around through thick and thin.  Given the cost of recruiting young talent, employers are understandably concerned about return on investment - keeping an employee long enough for them to develop into strong contributors.

Still, loyalty isn’t part of the “deal” any more between employers and employees, so it’s no surprise that, according to a new study by Taleo, an HR software company, 41% of those who are no longer working for their first employer out of college left in less than two years. That doesn’t strike me as an epidemic - a lot of first jobs simply aren’t good fits.

Taleo teamed with Harris Interactive to conduct a survey of 2,045 adults ages 18 and older, a series of questions about their first jobs and first employers.

“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.  Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths.  My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement, is “Engagement requires thinking.”  In my experience, many employee engagement approaches are still one-way communication efforts on steroids that fail to tap into the ability of employees to think and act differently.  At a time when study after study confirms that only about 20% of employees are engaged in their current work, it’s hard not to conclude that something’s not working!  Maybe “having a best friend at work” isn’t the determining factor.  Why are so many employees simply checked out at the place where they spend 40% of their waking lives…at work?

Let’s start with a key premise that’s often missed in engagement efforts - that we want to solve problems ourselves.  From Sudoku to mystery novels to crosswords, we all love the challenge of solving a puzzle.  Obviously, we could just turn to the back of the book and get the answer or read the final page.  But what’s engaging about that?  We want the intellectual and emotional experience of finding a sense of achievement in our own thinking.  When people get a chance to solve their own puzzles, they own the result.  And owners think, act, and engage differently from non-owners.  They’re vested, they’re passionate, they won’t take no for an answer, and they’re willing to put in more effort than is required.

Everyone knows a bully. It’s the schoolyard tyrant who swoops in on a target, pushing him around while spewing threats and belittling him in front of others. But childhood isn’t where it stops - it’s also on display in the workplace.”Workplace bullying” is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of a person through verbal abuse, behavior that’s threatening, humiliating or intimidating, and/or sabotage that prevents work from getting done, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

Recent research and a U.S. court case have spurred interest in the issue.

About 54 million people, or 37 percent of American workers, have been bullied at work, according to a September 2007 survey conducted by Zogby International on behalf of WBI. Bosses account for 72 percent of bullies, and women are targeted more frequently, according to the survey: 57 percent of those bullied are women. When the bully is a woman, 71 percent of the targets are women.

Firstborns feel family pressure to excel and science backs it up: birth order is an important driver of career choices. What is less well understood is the role of birth order and intelligence - at least in my family.

Birth order might sound a bit farfetched for a science or careers topic, like astrology, biorhythms or a fad pizza diet, but it’s not. A Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Services study published in this month’s Science shows that firstborns of either sex are, on average, 2.3 IQ points smarter than their younger sibs.

Those several IQ points make an enormous difference when it comes to getting into college and ultimately advancing in life, contends Dr. Frank Sulloway, author of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives. Sulloway, who commented on the study in the New York Times and in this month’s Science (fees, registration required), says, “There’s some evidence to suggest that first and later-borns go into different kinds of careers and have associated different motivations.”

If you pulled a B or C average in college, good luck getting an interview with Google or other intellectually rigorous global employers. But according to Alan C. Guarino, an author and recruiter, companies that overemphasize academic performance systematically overlook valuable talent.

“Success, defined as business achievement, comes to a wide range of people. For some, it has little correlation to their classroom successes,” writes Guarino in his new book, Smart is Not Enough!

Of course, the prevailing wisdom is that academic performance is a proxy for the ability to learn new skills, even though it’s no guarantee of future success. Are there a lot of underachieving former valedictorians in our midst? (A brief look at some of the research in this area shows mixed results with regard to linking academic performance, academic testing and future success.)

Corporate interviews have become endurance tests, a common way of simulating how candidates will respond if hired. Job candidates sitting on the hot seat can expect to hear the same questions posed four to seven times in a single afternoon. While job seekers are judged on every little detail, feeling pressure not to make mistakes, paradoxically, interviewers often believe they have latitude to come across as aloof, disorganized or rude.

But in a tightened labor market, candidates may experience a role reversal. Savvy employers may drop the fortress mentality - lowering a drawbridge across the moat of fire. For example, some firms may devote more of the interview process to “sell” candidates on the company. And some firms hit by the labor crunch are lowering skill-level or experience requirements for new hires, especially when it’s possible to shape raw talent in a matter of weeks or months.

Not surprisingly, job seekers have a litany of complaints about the interview process. According to a 2007 study of 3,725 job seekers, conducted in five global regions by Development Dimensions International (DDI), in conjunction with Monster, the biggest complaints interviewees make are these:

Interview Habits That Most Annoy Job Seekers

Source: Development Dimensions International, Inc.