Posts RSSThe Millennial Generation – Can They Be Trusted?
By Lorraine Cregar | May 8th, 2008
Differences in the way Millennials and other generations communicate and receive information are not the only differences companies will need to address in a very short time.
In a podcast, Barbara Keats, associate professor of management at the W.P. Carey School of Business, discusses the Millennials’ belief systems.
Keats said that, given their propensity for “frequent validation, quick rewards and permission to shape the rules to fit their lives,” academics and employers “are wondering if millennials have determined that cutting corners and cheating is an acceptable way of getting ahead” and “taking it to a new level.”
Given some recent examples of fraud and plagiarism in the U.S. – the 45 students dismissed from the University of Virginia for cheating in 2002 and allegations that three sections of Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel bore similiarites to one written by Sophie Kinsella – should give companies pause.
It also should cause companies to strengthen their ethics policies. And if they don’t yet have one, companies must begin establishing ethics policies or rules of behavior. Many professional organizations have codes of ethics in place to ensure their members abide by a level of integrity that protects the association and the profession. In the same way, companies can protect themselves and their other employees from the actions of one bad apple.
The Millennial Generation – A New Breed of Employee
By Lorraine Cregar | May 5th, 2008
The 80 million Baby Boomers are approaching one of life’s major milestones – retirement. And many companies are preparing for the brain drain that will cause. Ready to step in are the 46 million or so Gen Xers.
But there’s a new generation on the horizon – affectionately called the Millennials. Born between 1982 and 2000, they are 76 million strong and now are beginning to graduate from college and flood the job market.
Millennials have been described as tech savvy. In a 2007 book by Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa, a survey 7,705 U.S. college students showed:
97% own a computer
76% use instant messaging
15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week
34% use Web sites as their primary source of news
28% own a blog and 44% read blogs
49% download music using peer-to-peer file sharing
75% have a Facebook account
Given the generational differences between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials – and don’t forget the Gen Xers – employers will be challenged to integrate these generations into their workplaces as the old and new worlds collide. So what will that mean for communicating to them?
Likely it will mean increasing message multiplicity by combining more traditional methods – company newsletters, e-mails, and memos – with more modern methods, like blogs, RSS feeds and text messages to their cell phones. It also might mean developing ways to personalize each and every message to a Millennial recipient.
This would mean implementing technologies to gather data on their own employees’ habits and usage to create individual user profiles. With their propensity for sharing details about themselves through things like Facebook, MySpace, and receiving banking updates on their cell phones, one might assume this to be an acceptable endeavor on the part of companies. However, these are waters that haven’t yet been thoroughly tested.
Lesson #4: Maintain the Link between Business Processes and Organization Design
By Stephen Rock | May 4th, 2008
Best practice says business process and organization design are linked. This reorganization team’s charter was to focus on organization design and filling jobs. Senior management viewed business process as something that would “figure itself out pretty quickly.” Because business process and organization design weren’t linked, the organization was designed without understanding how it would work.
As the new organization was rolled out, business process did not “figure itself out.” Here is an example: Mary used to perform roles A and B. After the reorganization, she performed roles A and B, plus an additional role, C – but only for business unit #1. She had no idea who to give A and B work to for business units #2 and #3 – and this work fell apart for those units. Mary also was struggling with the new work in role C. She could not get help from her new boss because her new boss was relocating from the home city of unit #2 to the city of unit #1. To make matters worse, the person who used to perform role C was let go in the reorganization. Mary’s productivity was in a perfect storm, and her storm was just one of hundreds.
The team’s recommendation: “We strenuously recommend respecting the critical link between business process and organization design throughout the change effort.”
Lesson #3: Ensure Visible Senior Manager Alignment and Commitment
By Stephen Rock | May 1st, 2008
During the course of the reorganization, the president, HR head and Finance head conducted a number of “alignment” sessions with the organization’s top two levels. These sessions were meant to explain the rationale for the change and define the roles of those executives in moving the reorganization forward. Nonetheless, mixed messages were common when those executives spoke to their functions. Just as bad, employees told us repeatedly that senior managers were absent or silent during the most stressful periods of change.
Obvious shortcomings in the vision were, no doubt, a primary driver of the mixed messages. Unfortunately, poor leadership, political maneuvering and an unwillingness to confront unproductive behaviors created far more turmoil in the workforce than was necessary.
In the end, the team knew they had few options in addressing unhelpful behaviors from such senior executives. All the same tactics (those alignment sessions) would need to be employed, with one important addition. At the project’s initiation, the team would measure senior executive support by surveying their functions. Scores would be publicly provided to senior management “in the spirit of transparency.” Of course, transparency was only part of the rationale. Creating a sense of competition and peer pressure would become the safety net to ensure appropriate performance.
Reorganization Team Lesson Learned #2: Choose the Approach Thoughtfully and Communicate the Why
By Stephen Rock | April 30th, 2008
There is a continuum along which organizational changes can be planned. On one end are top-down approaches with planning done by small groups behind closed doors. The organization implements what it is told to implement. At the other end is including as many employees as possible in designing pieces of the new organization, and then tasking those same people with implementing the changes they designed. The former is exclusive, the latter is inclusive.
This company took a more inclusive route as it mirrored their culture. Directors and senior managers designed their organizations, level by level, and were then responsible for implementing the design. This choice was intended to take advantage of line managers’ more intimate knowledge of their areas and people, while at the same time building their buy-in to the change process.
The approach’s down side was employees feeling it was taking too long. Impatience led to paralysis.
The team had underestimated and under-communicated the impacts. At the same time management was dealing with business issues (their day jobs) and counseling their teams through the unsettling period of change (which encroached on their daily job performance), they had an additional burden of intensive reorganizational work upon them (a night job).
In short, the team miscalculated the burden on line management. By being inclusive, they passed a burden on to people ill-prepared to accept the challenge.
On the flip side, a more exclusive approach would have taken just as long, and perhaps longer. (All the kinks associated with any reorganization still needed to get worked out.) But, since employees would have had less visibility to the process and less day-to-day involvement with the work, it may have felt shorter.
In the end, the team concluded, “in the future we must carefully weigh the pros and cons of a range of approaches, choose the one that suits us best, build a fully fleshed-out plan, and then aggressively and continually communicate the methodology and its benefits to all employees.”
In other words, there is no correct answer – but whatever choice you make, set people’s expectations accordingly.
Reorganization Team Lesson Learned #1 – Crystallize the Vision and Case for Change
By Stephen Rock | April 29th, 2008
Recently, we worked on a reorganization of a business with several thousand employees. The company was splitting itself into smaller organizational units. Our team didn’t set the business strategy or the change plan. But we were the arms and legs to help the project team get the work done.
At the end of the project, the team documented their learnings and some will be shared over the next couple posts. We share them for a simple reason – it is highly likely that other reorganization teams will face similar challenges. The challenges themselves aren’t “secrets;” what created the challenges, where the challenges occurred and how they were addressed are. In any case, here are some real live challenges to plan for as you work on a reorganization.
#1 – Crystallize the Vision and Case for Change
While there were several important themes supporting the reorganization (like “accountability” and “customer focus”), these themes didn’t effectively crystallize into a clear and compelling picture of the envisioned future. Because the vision wasn’t clear, the team struggled throughout the project with several issues:
- Decision making became more complex since there were no clear “stakes in the ground” on which to base priorities. Everything was an ad hoc decision. Nothing was principle based.
- The team was left in a reactive and responsive mode vs. being proactive with a clearly defined strategic goal.
- The team was unable to effectively communicate an appropriate understanding of management’s vision of the future. (The team wasn’t quite sure themselves). When the team did communicate, there were conflicting messages:
- “This is not a cost-driven exercise,” and “Design an organization that reflects some level of reduction,” or,
- “Business process management and execution is critical to our long-term success,” and “We can design our processes after we set the organization;” or,
- “Do it right,” vs. “Do it fast.”
The team’s #1 lesson: “When considering large-scale change, nothing should be more important than crafting an iron-clad and understandable case for change and an engaging vision for the outcome of the change. This includes creating specific examples of how employees would experience the change as enhancing their work lives. Use focus groups to test the vision for how understandable and engaging it is.”
55+ Year-Old People Will Be More Inclined to Work
By Stephen Rock | April 27th, 2008
In our last post, we wrote about the large demographic shifts underway in the U.S. Baby Boomers are queuing up for the exits. That post was about the labor pool’s age groups. In other words, who will be available to work.
This post discusses the shifts in who will be working by age group – in other words, the level of participation in the labor market. In November 2007, The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their Labor Force Projections to 2016.
Over the ten years between 2006 and 2016,
- There will be an average annual decline of 0.1% in the overall labor force participation rate.
- There will be an average annual decline of 0.6% in the 16-24 year old labor force participation rate. This decline is a continuation of a long-standing trend in lower levels of participation among teens and young adults. In short, analysts believe this group is spending more time in school.
- There will be an average annual increase of 0.1% in the 25-54 year old labor force participation rate. Increases in this group are projected to come from women spending more time in the workforce.
- There will be an average annual increase of 1.2% in the 55+ year old labor force participation rate. This increase is being driven by older people being healthier than in years’ past, longer expected life spans requiring additional savings to fund retirement, increasing costs of medical care, and increases in the Social Security retirement age.
In upcoming posts we will write about the implications of those changes and how organizations are acting in the near term to address the implications.
Where Will All the Workers Come From?
By Stephen Rock | April 24th, 2008
Our clients are worried about the coming “tsunami” of workforce retirements. Baby Boomers are queuing up for the exits, and with their departures they take invaluable knowledge about how to perform work effectively and efficiently. The people entering the workforce operate under a new behavioral model. Large-scale disruptive change is in the air.
In this post we will write about the projections for the workforce of the future. In upcoming posts we will write about the implications of those changes and how organizations are acting in the near term to address the implications.
In November 2007, The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their Labor Force Projections to 2016 with the sub-headline, “more workers in their golden years.” The phrase is an understatement.
In the ten years between 2006 and 2016,
- The 16-24 year old workforce will shrink 0.7% per year or nearly 7% over the ten-year period.
- The 25-54 year old workforce will expand 0.2% per year – or 2.4% over the ten-year period.
- The 55 and older workforce will expand 3.9% per year – or more than 46% over the ten-year period.
Resistance to Change
By Stephen Rock | April 18th, 2008
A recent comment on this blog regarding resistance to change led me to try to prove an intuition about the subject. (Meyers Briggs’ intuitives can look like geniuses frequently, but can also look like idiots when those intuitions are wrong!)
According to SHRM’s 2007 study on Change Management, about 70% of major organizational changes encounter employee resistance. The comment stated that typical levels of employee resistance run around 15%. Is there a way to reconcile the two? In short yes. They aren’t mutually exclusive. 70% of reorganizations can encounter resistance – but the resistance can come from only a small number of people.
A 2005 benchmarking study of 411 companies by Prosci identified where resistance to change was most commonly cited. Middle management won the prize by a long shot.
Their study provides common sense insight on why managers resist change:
- Loss of power and control
- Overloaded with current responsibilities
- Lacked awareness of the need for change
- Lacked the required skills
- Fear, uncertainty and doubt
The managers’ reasons are far different from the reasons why front line employees resist change:
- Not aware of the business need for change
- Layoffs were announced or feared
- Unsure if they had necessary skills for success
- Comfort with the current state
- Believed they were being asked to do more with less, or more for the same pay
Thinking back over the many initiatives I have been involved with, the front-line employee concerns were more easily handled. Provide information in a professional and compassionate way as it is available and you will earn trust, respect and engagement in the change process. The middle manager, however, has always been more difficult to address. Frequently their concerns are well-founded. They are going to lose power or they are going to become more overloaded.
As you work with them to gain their participation in the change, however, it is best to remember the leverage they represent. Getting one middle manager on your side means a whole lot of their people will follow him or her. It is a whole lot harder to convince the employees of a middle manager to not follow their leader’s resistance than it is to get the leader on your side.
Dilbertizing Change
By Lorraine Cregar | April 17th, 2008
I found a recent Business Week article about what happens after the corporate layoffs to be a good example of why Dilbert continues to be such a popular comic.
The article discussed, in a rather glib tone, how interior designers are persuading executives “to do something—anything—with the space where employees used to be” after their downsizing efforts.
Now, I’m all for ensuring the remaining employees stay engaged and recognize the need for extra special care during this time. Heck, I’ve been there. And I’m all for recycling – whether it be paper, plastic bottles or office furniture. But seriously…recommending the newly empty space should be used for quiet rooms, massage chairs and plasma TVs seems a little insensitive. Would employees left behind really find it appropriate that their colleague of 15 years has been replaced by the new plasma screen in the hallway?
Perhaps it depends on what stage of coping the remaining employees might be in at the time these initiatives begin. Anyone familiar with the Kubler-Ross grief cycle understands there are seven stages a person goes through during any type of traumatic change, whether it be the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job. The stages are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance.
More power to the interior designers who can improve our work environments through creative uses of space, lighting and furniture. But timing is everything. Making these types of changes while employees are in the shock, anger, denial or bargaining stages would most definitely cause negative consequences.
But perhaps it might make sense if done during the accepting stage, especially if the employees are given a voice and participatory role in the reconfiguration of their workspace. This ownership would involve them in shaping a new future, and not in Dilbertizing their situation.
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