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.

If the answer is YES, I hope you read our recent blog at Harvard Business entitled Are You Ready For Five Generations Of Workers? We stirred up quite a dialogue about how companies will adapt to having five generations in the workplace in the year 2020.

Here is what we see in our crystal ball leading up to 2020 – five generations and they include:

Traditionalists, born prior to 1946
Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964
Gen X, born between 1965 and 1976
Millennials, born between 1977 and 1997
Gen 2020, born after 1997

Note: While there several reasonable cut off dates used to define the generations, we choose these as they are widely accepted and currently used in a variety of sources such Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott.

The chart below shows Baby Boomers will cede the majority of the workforce by 2015 to the Millennials. Due to their smaller size, Gen X will not have the majority spot in the workplace — and some employers may well focus development and promotion opportunities on Millennials.

—

So now I pose the question: How will having multiple generations in the workplace affect you and your learning or HR department?

Some thoughts to consider:

Recruiting New Talent: Are you sourcing the next generation of talent where they live? Rather than career fairs and job boards, does your company have a social networking strategy with a presence on Facebook a YouTube channel and a presence on Twitter?

Social Networking With Alumni: Once mainly used by professional service firms and law firms, now JP Morgan and Lockheed Martin are developing elaborate alumni social networks as a way to attract the “boomerang” employees who already know the firm and can make an instant contribution.

Mentoring: Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen 2020s will increasingly want to develop their careers in the same social and personal ways they live their lives. Expect an increased demand for mentoring and coaching as we head into 2020.

Learning & Development: Look for learning & development to become “social, personal, immediate and highly relevant to an individual’s job.” This will translate into leveraging new technologies such as corporate social networks, alternate reality games and greater use of mobile devices.

So what’s your take on dealing with multiple generations in the workplace? How will your department, your role and your skills need to change?

[tags]Five Generations at Work, Millennials, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Gen 2020, Learning & Development, Mentoring, Alumni Networks[/tags]

I came across an interesting research report I want to share with all of you. According to Pew Research, just over half of all working adults ages 50 to 64 say they may delay their retirement – but here is the surprise: another 16% say they never expect to stop working.

See box below:

Pew calls these folks the Threshold Generation, meaning those who are perpetually on the threshold of exiting the workforce. Even those Thresholders who do plan to retire some day say they will keep working, on average, until they are age 66 — four years older than the age at which current retirees report that they stopped working. This is certainly contributing to the shifts in workforce demographics as the participation rate of those ages 65 and older has increased from 12.9% in 2000 to 16.8% in 2008.

What’s driving this commitment to continue working? The Pew Research survey finds it may not be how much you earn but how much you lost in the investment market meltdown that determines whether you are re-thinking your retirement plans, with those that have lost 40% or more of their portfolio being firmly in the Threshold Generation.

If you are the head of HR or Corporate Learning and members of the Threshold Generation are employed at your firm, here are some questions for you:

• Is your organization prepared to have an increasingly aging workforce?
• Do these Threshold Generation members have the skills their employers need to win in the marketplace? If not, are they committed to building new skills in areas such as social media literacy?
• How are these organizations preparing for managing a multiple generation workplace?

Share your thoughts here, in the comments section, via email, or send me a note on Twitter.

[tags]Threshold Generation, Multiple Generations At Work, Pew Research[/tags]

The growth of mobile devices continues; it is now estimated there are more than 3 billion mobile subscribers and this number is estimated to rise to over 4 billion by 2010. In particular, the size and growth of the Smartphone market is expanding rapidly and will exceed the laptop market for the next five years, according to a report by market research company In-Stat.

What will be the impact of this on corporate learning? Are you ready to leave your laptop home?

The recent survey of 125 heads of Human Resource and Corporate Learning conducted by New Learning Playbook blog and Human Capital Institute revealed several relevant findings:

• While 33% of organizations have a mobile learning pilot currently underway, 70% of organizations surveyed are investigating the use of mobile learning in the next 12-18 months.
• Typical areas of usage include product training, sales training and compliance training, but the overwhelming use is for on-going performance support.
• There are some issues that need to be addressed, these include diversity of hardware and software, screen size, security and a host of instructional design issues.

However, the bottom line, as profiled in this survey respondent’s view of potential of mobile learning:

“The real power of mobile learning is around the interactivity and the ability to create learning campaigns rather than learning events. And of course it is fun as well.”
-Head of Learning, Finland

So what are your views on mobile learning? Share your thoughts with me and stay tuned for the date and time of a webcast on this topic.