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How Gen Y & Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda
Your oldest and youngest talent cohorts demand many of the same things in a workplace—and have the numbers to get their way.
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More important, Boomers and Gen
Ys are together redefining what constitutes a great place to work. As we
will show, they tend to share many attitudes and behaviors that set them
apart from other generations. These shared preferences constitute a new
center of gravity for human resources management.
Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change
Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it's not Gen Y that's getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.
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Forrester's analysis is that despite their different view of technology, Gen Y, Millennials, or whatever you want to call those 29 and under, don't yet have the clout within organizations to make real change.
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Even if Gen Y was significantly better at using social software, it wouldn't matter at this point. Obviously younger employees will increase their stature within organizations as the years pass. But the idea of Millennials at the vanguard of innovation in the enterprise is a myth
Young workers push employers for wider Web access
Ryan Tracy thought he'd entered the Dark Ages when he graduated college and arrived in the working world.
His employer blocked access to Facebook, Gmail and other popular Internet sites. He had no wireless access for his laptop and often ran to a nearby cafe on work time so he could use its Wi-Fi connection to send large files.
Sure, the barriers did what his employer intended: They stopped him and his colleagues from using work time to goof around online. But Tracy says the rules also got in the way of legitimate work he needed to do as a scientific analyst for a health care services company.
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That's what Joe Dwyer decided to do when he started Chicago-based Brill Street & Co., a jobs site for young professionals. He lets his employees use social networking and has found that, while they might spend time chatting up their friends, sometimes they're asking those same friends for advice for a work problem or looking for useful contacts.
"So what seems unproductive can be very productive," Dwyer says.
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But that also means many companies are still figuring out their online policies and how to deal with the blurring lines between work and personal time — including social networking, even with the boss.
Will social media kill off the intranet in years to come?
The majority of our readers believe the impact of Facebook-style social networks with elements of file and photo sharing, microblogging or status updates, phlogging (phone blogging), vlogging (video blogging), and instant messaging to name a few applications, will mean the end of the traditional intranet as we know it, but equally see the intranet evolve to incorporate large pockets of social networking.
But the reason we need to change the way we communicate is not just due to technological advancements, the principal driver is human evolution.
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As Russell Pearson, communicator and intranet specialist says, there is now a need to realign to meet employee, not application or department needs.
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Pearson, however goes further and believes that the advent of Google Wave, a new communications and collaboration platform that is currently in early testing, as well as social networks being accessible on each other’s platforms, will “accelerate the process of embedding online conversations”.
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The Clash Of Ages: How Technology Divides Workers
If you're a boss, what do you do about employees who love to tweet, text and social network throughout the day? It's a question companies are grappling with as the generation gap threatens to create a communications divide.
A Practical Guide to Implementing Web 2.0 (aka Social Networking Tools) in Your Organization
A lot of organizations are struggling with what to do with a host of costly, high-maintenance technologies that they have introduced in the last decade, hoping these technologies would produce (a) improved internal productivity, and (b) better relationships with customers. They have achieved neither objective. So they're stuck with some very large and expensive lemons, three in particular:
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Real-Time
Conversation: IM + Google Wave -
Virtual
Presence: Screensharing
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It’s all about the attitude: Boomers and Gen Y on technology
In other areas, however, attitudes towards technology diverge based on age. The younger workers from Gen Y tend to be more liberal than Baby Boomers on Internet usage during work hours. Around 62% of Gen Y admitted to accessing social networking sites from work whereas only 14% of Boomers did so. As for browsing Internet bulletin boards and forums, it’s 47% for Gen Y versus 27% for Boomers. Lastly, 44% of Gen Y confess to going to mutimedia sharing websites like Youtube against just 24% of Boomers.
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” Perhaps it’s not surprising that over two-thirds (68%) of Boomers decry the proliferation of PDAs and mobile phones as a contributor to the decline in workplace manners, while only less than half (46%) of Gen Y workers agree with this assessment.
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It seems that the key here is the perception of productivity. A mere 17% of Boomers say that using laptops or PDAs during in-person meetings is efficient, versus 35% for Gen Y. Blogging about work-related issues is tolerable for just 28% of Boomers, in contrast to 41% of Gen Y who are fine with it. Almost half of Gen Y workers (47%) see nothing wrong with befriending a client on a social networking site, but only 24% of Boomers feel the same way. When it comes to befriending their colleagues on these sites, 76% of Gen Y are all for it while only 38% of Boomers think that it’s appropriate.
The Future of Enterprise Computing and Collaboration by Alan Cohen
Check out the YouTube video "Alan Cohen, Cisco VP Enterprise Solutions, on Enterprise Strategy" where you will see an interview with Alan Cohen himself, Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, that lasts for a bit over four minutes and which touches base on a number of different topics related to the future of Enterprise Computing and Collaboration, as he has written over at the blog Collaboration - The Workplace: A New World of Communications and Collaboration. Plenty of very interesting and juicy insights on where we are heading with all of this social networking in the business world.
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moving away from the traditional concept of the physical office, where we are now more mobile than ever (With a great set of choices in mobile devices to chose from!); where our work spaces are defined by who we are and how we get connected regardless of the place and the time; where we, knowledge workers, get to define and establish our own "offices" no matter our location or environment to carry out our own tasks.
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And right in between is us, Gen Xers, acting as bridges between both groups and becoming the glue that will help connect both strategists and doers within the corporate environment trying to drive innovation, knowledge sharing and collaboration into a new wave of open, public and more transparent interactions!
Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation
If your company hopes to attract the most creative and energetic members of Gen F, it will need to understand these Internet-derived expectations, and then reinvent its management practices accordingly. Sure, it’s a buyer’s market for talent right now, but that won’t always be the case—and in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.
Four Generations In The Workplace by Sacha Chua @IBM - DogEar 犬の耳
f you've ever heard, thought, or felt any of these things, your team may have multi-generational issues. Find out how to adapt to four generations in the workplace!
Strategic heading by G. Oliver Young
if we replaced every employee tomorrow with a Gen Yer the average enterprise still would not be able to use Enterprise 2.0 to its full effect.”
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How many managers are truly equipped to manage to social, collaborative workers? We’re not particularly good at managing to team goals today. How would the average enterprise incent and compensate workers in a truly social enterprise?
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Without social processes even the most game employees will struggle taking full advantage of Enterprise 2.0, and retrofitting will take some time.
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Finally, Gen X Takes Over - Tammy Erickson
Will these new roles suit the times? I think perhaps they will. Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, coauthors of Generations, posit that each generation makes a unique bequest to those that follow -- and generally seeks to correct the excesses of the previous generation. They argue that the Boomer excess is ideology -- and that the Generation X reaction to that excess involves an emphasis on pragmatism and effectiveness.
This generational priority will give X'ers a strong advantage in remaking organizations to reflect twenty-first-century realities: the need for transparency, accountability, real-time performance, lack of ideology, top-of-market effectiveness, and cash value.
Fear Factor in the Workplace - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com
What really disturbs surviving employees about downsizings is that they cannot control or rationalize the events. If I have a co-worker who frequently arrives late and does low quality work, I can rationalize her layoff by saying to myself, “She didn’t carry her weight and deserved to be let go.” If, instead, my co-worker seems to work as hard and as well as I do and then, through no fault of her own, happens to be the victim of a “reduction in force,” I cannot rationalize that. More important, I fear that I cannot control my situation: in the first scenario, I have a sense of control over my fate by continuing to do high-quality work. In the second scenario, working hard or working well doesn’t seem to help me retain my job.
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: If six people are left covering the work of 10, no one has time to think up new and better approaches to work. Invariably, people work harder and not smarter after a downsizing.
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Adding to the problem is that people take fewer risks and become less creative. Creativity requires trial and error, and no one knows what happens to those who experiment with a new approach and then fail
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Can Millennials Really Change the Workplace? - Tom Davenport
Now I am fairly secure in my membership in Generation Jones--I still have lots of pleated pants, for example--and I find the accusations that "I just don't get it" amusing. But the comments did make me think about the fate of the millennials as they move into the workforce. Will they bend to the whims of the workplace, or will the workplace bend to suit them?
Nouvelle génération, nouvelle relation
La relation entre les jeunes employés et leur employeur n'est plus la même. L'arrivée de la génération Y bouleverse les façons de faire des entreprises.
The Double Meaning of "Feedback"
"Feedback" is one of those loaded, double-meaning words in today's workplace - words that connote very different things to members of different generations.
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If you're a Boomer, consider what you expect to happen when you have a "feedback session" with your boss. In all likelihood, the purpose of this exchange would be to assess your performance, to render a judgment. Because Boomers love to win, your hopes may be high for a prize - but still it's not exactly the sort of thing one wants to go through on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis - once or twice a year is plenty, thank you very much.
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If you're a member of Generation X, the meaning of "feedback" is similar - it relates to an assessment or judgment. But the hoped-for outcomes may be a bit different. More money is great, but so is a longer leash -- more freedom to operate in your own preferred way.
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Launch of the Enterprise Social Network Strategy report: what senior executives REALLY think about social networks inside the organization - Trends in the Living Networks
The majority of large Australian companies are trialing social networks within their organisations and senior executives believe that, rather than being a waste of employee time, there is substantial value to be harvested from connecting with Web 2.0, a report released today says.
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Our trial of social networks is going exceptionally well – there is very positive feedback from employees. They see it as a personal touch that improves their enjoyment of the work environment.”
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“What if I have one of my best performers spending an hour a day on Facebook - do I really want to stop them?”
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JP Rangaswami on Sharing Acitivity in Businesses - The Social Enterprise
JP Rangaswami of BT Design went a little bit further in that direction, by outlining how social tools can usefully become part of our working practices - and even build on some of the existing ones.
Social tools enavble the communities within businesses to emerge. There are fewer figures of authority and it's more a peer space than the traditional heirarchial business.
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Young people today are going to come into the workplace used to pervasive. mobile communications and they're not going to be impressed with the static, lock-down worsktations we have now.
"They're pre-trained not to think as stupidly as previous generations," said JP. -
"If we make everything we say a data object, and we can share and move it around," he says. "It becomes valuable."
Why the Financial Crisis is (Mostly) Good News for Gen Y - Tammy Erickson
And here's the irony. Despite a slowdown in immediate career opportunities, the current financial crisis is likely to reinforce the overall happy, fortuitous economic life of Generation Y.
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And unlike Boomers, who are racing to build up a nest egg before retirement hits and in many cases trying to make up for a life of limited savings, Y's have no such time pressure. The key job challenge for Y's in this job market will be to find the challenging opportunities for learning that they crave. In many ways, their greater financial flexibility may give them an advantage over older generations for some of the interesting opportunities.
Content Matters
“You have to think about your employees as your most important and valuable asset.”
Business analytics / business intelligence leader SAS is an incredible success story that owes its success to many factors, not the least of which is its employees:
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Employee tools at SAS:
• SAS Wide Web (intranet in multiple languages)
• Using SharePoint 2007 (MOSS)
• Employee Blogs
• Employee Wikis
• SAS Video portal (executive updates, podcasts, webcasts, town hall meetings)
• Two sound stages at SAS working every day -
Four Critical Dimensions (Insight into change):
1- Human Capital
2- Knowledge Processes
3- Culture
4- Infrastructure - 1 more annotations...
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