It’s a fact by the year 2020, there will be five generations working side by side with Millennials representing 50% of the workforce.

Working on a multi generational team is already commonplace among many organizations and an increasingly number of managers should prepare for this and yes embrace it.

Here are five suggestions to keep in mind when managing a multi-generation team:

1. Offer coaching and mentoring opportunities to GEN X: They are often referred to as the “lost generation,” as a result of being sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the impatient motivations of Millennials. Gen X’ers want to be recognized for their expertise while at the same time worry they may suffer from Prince Charles Syndrome: Being passed over with promotions and recognition going to Millennials There are several ways to engage and retain Generation X: mentoring, customized career planning, flexible work arrangements and having succession planning conversations early and often.

2.    Anticipate That Millennials will ask about social media access during a job interview and have an answer for this or risk losing a prospective new hire. Millennials to ask about social media access, choice in technology usage at work and flexible work arrangements. According to the Cisco Connected Technology World Survey of 2,800 college graduates and young professionals, One third of respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility, Two thirds of respondents will ask about a company’s social media policies during the job interview and 56% will not accept a job from a company that bans social media access from work or the will circumvent around this policy.

3.    Offer Boomers and Traditionalists the opportunity to share their expertise as coaches, mentors or faculty at corporate training programs. After all, Boomers are now referred to as Generation Ageless since Boomers are redefining what it means to age and grow old. In fact, The World Health Organization predicts that if a male is 60 years old and healthy he can continue to work in a full time job until the age of 74 and a female can continue until the age of 77 years old. As our older workers either want or need to stay in the workplace adopt a strategic view of how to use their skills and offer them continued training to keep their skills up to date as well as the opportunity to be faculty in a company’s corporate training programs.

4.    Consider customizing benefit packages for each generation. We live in a mass customized world of customized blue jeans, music and newspapers. Why not benefits? In their book, Workforce Of One, Susan Cantrell and David Smith argue that companies should adopt a “workforce of one” approach meaning applying customer segmentation practices to employees. Using this approach, can lead to a personalization of benefits. For example, rather than offer a standard package of health, wealth and paid time off for all employees, more companies should consider segmenting benefits by generation. So, a company might consider offering Millennials benefits in “life skills,” training in areas of financial literacy and learning a new language while benefits targeted to Boomers may focus on elder care or financial planning for retirement.

5.    Be proactive in creating a multi generational team. This means deliberately involve employees from a mix of generations, cultures, and gender on a project team. They will each approach the problem at hand with their unique mental map and this will make team projects that much richer. Consider this: By 2030 minorities will make up 42 percent of the U.S. population;

In the end, a multi-generational and multi-cultural team will help a company better prepare and understand the needs of a customer base, which increasingly will mirror your multi ethnic and multi generation employee population.

Share with us what your company is doing to manage a multi-generation workforce.

What does this mean for HR professionals?

Read the full article here>

Jeanne will be continuing this discussion on the saving patterns of Gen Y when she speaks at the coming TD Ameritrade Institutional 2012 conference, “Shaping The Future Together.” Jeanne is speaking about “Learn What Gen X and Gen Y Want in the Workplace.”

We will be checking our Twitter feed so send us your questions on this topic to #TDAI2012 and we’ll will write a future post on the dialogue and questions about Gen X and Gen Y.

So what does this mean for you in HR and talent management?
Read the full article here >

That’s our take … what’s yours? We want to hear from you – especially if you are a member of Gen X or a Millennial. Send us your comments, and we will continue the dialogue.

And the next surprise, users are not just Millennials born between 1977 and 1997? Actually, we are all using video sharing and this will have a profound impact on corporate training.

Below is a demographic portrait of users:

Who uses video‐sharing sites: % of internet users within each group who watch videos on a video‐sharing site

Who uses video sharing site?

Source: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, April 26 – May 22, 2011

The increase in video-sharing is 5‐percentage point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being videosharing in 2006 to 71 % in 2011.

Video‐sharing site usage over time: 2006 ‐ 2011: % of internet users in each group who visit video sharing sites (total and on a typical day)

Video‐sharing site usage over time: 2006 ‐ 2011
% of internet users in each group who visit video sharing sites (total and on a typical day)

Source: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, April 26 – May 22, 2011

The rise in use of video‐sharing sites is at least partly being driven by the growth in content on sites like YouTube and by user contributions, which then encourage site visits by contributors’ friends and others who pass around links about popular videos. The latest statistics from YouTube are compelling: 48 hours of content are uploaded every minute to the site and the range of contributions is striking. YouTube lists categories of content ranging from automobiles and gaming, to activism, web 2.0, education and politics to name just a few.

YouTube viewership has grown from 8 million views a day by the end of 2005, to over 3 billion views a day in 2011, according to the data from YouTube.

So if you are a learning, talent of human resource professional, what does this mean for you, your team and your company’s training, development and performance support efforts?
1)    Video sharing is happening across generations, meaning usage ranges from 92% of Millennials,80% of Gen Xer’s and 54% of Boomers.

2)    Our learning & development team members should routinely go to Youtube to search for relevant content to add as pre-work, in class or post work. For example, just doing a search on web 2.0 and education yeilds a wealth of content: An interesting video on web 2.0 and education is just one of many in this YouTube channel. See here. We are all bringing our video consumption expectations to the workplace. We expect to be entertained while learning and all in less than 5 minutes. This is having an impact on off-the-shelf learning programs as well as customized ones.

3) Companies will make new demands of learners and vendors to recognize the growth in video sharing. Ask yourself: how has your company adjusted to the explosion of video sharing? Are you re thinking the design of your learning programs, including user generated video into pre work and post work, demanding new requirements from your LMS vendors and even “training” your learners in how to be contributors of knowledge not just passive consumers of knowledge?

Let’s start a dialogue on this in our comments section to the blog.

• Internet Footprint Driving Away Employers?
  Social Intelligence Corp. scours one’s public online activity from the past seven years and reports it to prospective employers. Its CEO Max Drucker explains what specific data the company looks for, how often monitoring occurs, and what this means in terms of privacy concerns. Also joining the conversation is Electronic Privacy Information Center Senior Counsel John Verdi. Listen and Read

  Does YOUR organization check out potential employees’ backgrounds before hiring? What criteria do in include or exclude in that digital footprint search? Have you ever had your own digital footprint evaluated … what did you discover is out there?

• In Job Market, Are Gen Y’s Wants Out Of Reach?
  Over 40 million Americans are in their 20s, and they’re having a particularly tough time securing work. Their expectations may not match what their employers have to offer. Ryan Healy talks more about young job seekers’ challenges. He is the co-founder of a website aimed at helping young professionals network and share ideas. Listen and Read

  Do you find a gap between Millennials expectations of their work and your/the organization’s expectations of their work? What similarities and differences do you experience between your style of learning, communicating and working and that of your Millennial colleagues? Is your organization formally working on ways to attract, integrate and leverage Millennial workers?

Please share your responses below to these questions about social media and Millennial workers. If you are looking to engage these questions in your organization, Future Workplace offers keynote presentations, in-depth workshops and facilitated dialogues about these topics and more. Learn more about these topics and find out what leading organizations are doing now to address these challenges in The 2020 Workplace book by Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd.