Author: Mark Larson

There won’t be a skilled-worker shortage as baby boomers retire, a recent study says, but there will be a lack of talent if there isn’t more collaboration between workforce generations than currently exists.

Atlanta-based Randstad USA’s annual 2008 World of Work survey found that the four generations now in the U.S. workforce—Generation X, Generation Y, baby boomers and “matures” (those born 1900 to 1945)—rarely interact with one another.

That lack of communication, the study found, is keeping key institutional job knowledge held by the boomer generation from filtering down to younger workers.

The isolation among workforce generations is credited to a lack of recognition of the others’ skills or work ethic. According to the Census Bureau, the Gen Y’ers in today’s workforce—born 1980 to 1988—total 79.8 million, which outnumber the baby boomers, or those who were born 1946 to 1964. Those boomers, which total 78.5 million people, are considered the keepers of the institutional job knowledge in companies across the nation.

Randstad conducted the U.S. survey in December and January among 3,494 adults, 1,295 of whom were employers and 2,199 were employees. Employees came from businesses with at least five staffers. Employers sampled were involved in human resources strategies at their companies for at least six months.

Given this scenario, businesses are faced with cultivating more interaction among generations in their workforce, says Eric Buntin, managing director of marketing and operations for Randstad.

“The starting point is for employers to acknowledge and communicate to employees that there is a lack of interaction in the workforce,” he says.

Once the employer puts the issue out in the open, says Buntin, the next move is to shuffle its employee deck to blend the generations.

“They need to find ways to create functional work teams to bring employees together,” he says.

That doesn’t mean mentoring of younger workers by older workers, says Buntin, but rather collaboration on jobs that makes older and younger workers feel as if they’re both contributing to business goals on new products or handling service issues.

Such collaborative projects, the study suggests, give value to employees’ efforts and cultivate respect and trust between worker generations.

The study found that although boomers have a lot of knowledge and experience to share with Gen Y workers, 51 percent of them and 66 percent of matures reported little or no interaction with their Gen Y colleagues. And the three younger generations reported little or no interaction with matures on the job.

Other key findings include:

• Gen Y’s reputation as an overly demanding workplace generation no longer applies; since 2006, they have become more realistic about job expectations.

  
  

• Gen Y has the lowest expectations among the four generations for “soft” workplace benefits of satisfying work, pleasant work environment, liking the people they work with, challenging work and flexible hours.

  
  

• Gen Y describes co-workers of their own generation as positive socially but not necessarily competent.

  
  

• With strong social skills, Gen X has the most potential to bridge the knowledge gap between boomers and Gen Y’ers.

  
  

Stereotype barriers
    “Stereotyping is real,” Buntin says. “If Gen X’ers think their baby boomer colleagues are less flexible—even if they’re not—they believe it.”

And although a company may be aware of the need to quell stereotyping and its associated downsides, it’s easier said than done, Buntin says.

“The current pressure for productivity—the pressure for people to do more with less creates that barrier,” he says. “Employers need to be aware that people just don’t have time to interact.”

Karol Rose, chief marketing officer for Flexpaths, an online provider of flexible work programs, says the key to getting generations to share knowledge is to focus on things they have in common.

“You need to give them common ground so they can begin to understand each other,” she says, citing job sharing as one example. “The challenge is managing people. The way we transfer knowledge is very different than it was 20 years ago. “

But infusing cultural changes for more worker collaboration isn’t done overnight in most companies, Rose says.

“Organizations are like a big ship,” she says. “They don’t turn easily. But this is a time when they have to become more nimble and proactive, not reactive.”

Fostering an attitude of learning from others in a company is a big step, Rose says, in that it can break down barriers to interaction.

She says managers these days have to know how to attract and retain talent, and a key to that is creating a customized work environment for the workers that enables them to perform at optimum levels.

“People are trying to manage their careers and their lives,” Rose says. “They can’t do it without flexibility. It’s challenging for organizations, managers and for employees. They don’t understand what’s possible.”

Randstad’s Buntin figures things will get worse before they get better.

“The knowledge gap will come, and structurally it will create problems,” he says. “It’s that type of pressure that will force changes, just like globalization forced up productivity.”

The routine hiring and retention of employees over the age of 50 has attracted national attention for two affiliated central Florida hospitals.

Leesburg Regional Medical Center and nearby sister unit the Villages Regional Hospital were recently named as winners of the 2007 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Breakthrough Awards for employing older workers. And for the second year running, the two Florida hospitals, both several miles northwest of Orlando, have been named by AARP as among the country’s best 50 employers of workers over 50.

“We looked to recognize social-purpose employers who were valuing workers 50 and older as part of their labor force,” says Phyllis Segal, a vice president at San Francisco-based think tank Civic Ventures. The organization focuses on plugging in the talents and experience of older adults. Segal directed the Breakthrough Awards program, which cited 10 organizations.

That recognition, adds Segal, includes recruitment and retention of older workers. They’re in the baby boomer generation, and many are interested in an “encore” career that combines meaningful work and helps their communities, she says, while allowing them flexible hours and benefits.

“Leesburg [Regional Medical Center, along with the Villages Regional Hospital] is one of the prime examples of that,” Segal says. “They are at the cutting edge of what will become a future where older adults are contributing in significant ways to the success of employers like Leesburg in serving its community.”

Lori Parham, Florida director of AARP, says Leesburg and the Villages made the list for using a variety of strategies showing the value of older workers, such as offering flexible work schedules and using a senior placement agency to recruit hospital staff.

“The Villages is in a large, growing retirement community in central Florida in a state looking at serious shortages in health care workers,” Parham says.

The hiring of skilled older workers, primarily nurses, she says, makes the two health care facilities “shining examples” of how the shortages can be remedied. “They bring years of experience to the table in a state that has a very big need.”

The 50-and-up crowd, she adds, is a large pool of talent for employers to tap.

“This is the perfect place to look for workers who would be happy to be in a workforce but ask for some flexibility,” she says. Shorter workweeks, seasonal work arrangements and benefits for full- and part-time schedules are conditions older workers typically need, Parham says.

Darlene Stone, vice president of human resources for Leesburg and the Villages, says 38 percent of the 2,600 employees at both facilities are over 50, with the oldest employee nearly 85.

“Florida is predominantly known as a place where everyone wants to come to retire,” Stone says. “And the Villages Hospital is right in the middle of a retirement community.”

With an older population surrounding both hospitals, which are 12 miles apart, “We had to be very creative” in recruiting and retaining older staffers, Stone says.

Older workers aren’t going to go for 12-hour shifts, as is common in the industry. They’re more effective working two six-hour shifts, she says.

“We do not set a mandatory retirement age,” Stone says. “We embrace them as a valuable part of the workforce.”

Among the jobs held by older workers at the two Florida hospitals are nurses, couriers and other staff positions.

“Some are in their second, third or fourth career with us,” she says. “Some have gone back for refresher courses. Some work Monday through Friday. Some work weekends only. Staffing is a puzzle with pieces. We figure out ways to make the pieces fit together.”

Stone says the idea of taking on an older workforce first came up about eight years ago, when planning started for the Villages hospital’s construction. Before it opened six years ago, 450 job openings had to be filled.

“That’s a challenge,” Stone says. Once older workers were recognized as a deep local labor pool, the organization pitched hospital jobs to retirees in the area.

“We’d say, ‘Hey, you can still work. We’ve got awesome benefits. You can work part time. We have excellent health insurance,’ ” Stone says.

Because of all the perks, retention of the older workforce isn’t a problem, she says. While some leave to try work at other hospitals, they often come back after experiencing less accommodating employers.

And older workers are less likely than younger generations to leave an employer that treats them well, Stone says.

“Gen X’ers and Gen Y’s don’t believe in loyalty,” she says. “They’ll leave for 5 cents more and tend to turn over more than mature workers.”

Recruitment of older workers is done very aggressively at both hospitals, she says. When would-be staffers apply for a job, they are typically interviewed that same day, and if they qualify, are often offered a job before they leave. Pay is based on years of experience—the same for applicants of all ages.

“If I let them go,” says Stone, “they’re going to go work for someone else.”

But it’s not like the hospitals take anyone who walks in the door.

“We do thorough background checks,” she says. The difference from other employers, however, is this: “We just do it faster.”

The hardest openings to fill, Stone says, are nursing positions, along with physical, occupational and speech therapists. Radiology lab posts are another staffing challenge.

Combined, the hospitals have managed to keep their average number of openings to less than 5 percent, or under 130.

Performance evaluations of older workers are no different than for any other employees, Stone says.

“If there are performance issues, we look at what’s causing it and we look at how we can help solve the problem,” she says.

If poor eyesight is a hindrance, bigger computer display screens are offered, with text in larger type for easier reading.

But physical frailties aren’t common.

“Our retirees are very, very active,” Stone says. “They play softball, polo and they want to remain active in the employment world.”

Bullying in the workplace is angering enough people these days to be fueling a nationwide grass-roots legislative effort to force companies to draft and enforce policies aimed at stopping it.

Requiring such policies, according to those pushing the legislation, isn’t an attempt to spawn lawsuits, but an effort to force companies to deal with the problem.

Bullying is blamed for unnecessarily creating high costs of turnover, insurance claims and thwarted productivity. In his book The No Asshole Rule, author Robert Sutton reports one company estimating annual losses of $160,000 in turnover, overtime and other costs created by handling problems caused by one star salesman’s tantrums and insulting behavior.

One employer attorney, however, says laws already on the books to prevent employer discrimination based on sex, race or religion are now being interpreted in broadened contexts, and offer enough legal coverage to obviate the need for anti-bullying rules.

Nevertheless, anti-bullying rumbles are breaking out in state legislatures. Since 2003, 13 states—California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—have introduced 28 versions of the so-called “Anti-Bullying Workplace Bill,” says Bullybusters.org, a Web site tracking the legislation.

Bullying, according to the bill’s original language, is defined as repeated “health-harming mistreatment” of one or more employees, through verbal abuse, threats, “humiliating or offensive behavior or actions,” or sabotage that prevents work from getting done.

In Hawaii, a Senate resolution urges—but doesn’t require—employers to set up anti-bullying policies for managers and employees. The resolution notes that the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety recognizes workplace bullying, defined as “the repeated intimidation, slandering, social isolation or humiliation by one or more persons against another,” as a form of workplace violence.

Gary Namie, director of the Bellingham, Washington-based Workplace Bullying Institute, says the original anti-workplace-bullying legislative language has been changed in various ways by states introducing it. Some call for studies to determine the prevalence of workplace bullying, and others dilute the legal power of the original legislation. The goal of the legislation is to “outlaw any abusive work environment that is health-hazardous,” he says.

“The real goal of the [proposed] law is not lawsuits,” Namie says, “but an anti-bullying policy that is enforced. It takes a law to compel [employers] to act. If the law is on the books, employers that have not bothered to correct bullying are going to be liable.”

So far, the legislation introduced in the 13 states has yet to result in any new anti-bullying laws.

“That tells me the arguments against it are very strong,” says Garry Mathiason, a San Francisco-based employer attorney with the firm Littler Mendelson.

Mathiason has no shortage of arguments against anti-bullying laws. High on his list is the difficulty in defining harassment. He sees a problem in defining whether a frustrated boss raising his voice at an employee who continues coming to work late is harassment—i.e., bullying—or good management.

“How do you distinguish between the two?” he says.

And corporate anti-bullying policies, he adds, “would make every disciplinary situation open for debate. Employers would be required to investigate, and when there are emotions, things are remembered differently. People can view actions as harassment when in fact it is nothing more than getting the job done.”

While anti-bullying policies can be adopted by companies, notes Mathiason, there is no guarantee they’ll be enforced. Meanwhile, he says, he’s already seen hundreds of cases of employers disciplining employees with behavior problems.

“I’m satisfied with where the law currently is and how it’s evolving, but I would not favor an anti-bullying statute,” Mathiason says.

He cites an example of a National Education Association case two years ago involving a verbally abusive boss who offended all employees indiscriminately as “an equal opportunity harasser,” regarding religion and gender, and not any select individual or group.

“But this case looks at it a little differently,” says Mathiason, noting that it examined which group the boss offended the most to show discrimination. “This is where I see the courts trying to push the line for some broadening of existing law.” If bullying, or harassing, is defined by the courts as a form of discrimination, he argues, existing law already forbids it.

Employer attorney Jim Hall of Los Angeles-based firm Barlow, Kobata and Denis agrees.

“I don’t see, for a human resources policy, a big difference between bullying versus any other form of harassment,” he says. “It’s subject to general anti-harassment policy.”

With a policy in place forbidding harassment over race, sex, age or religion, adds Hall, “The employer should treat bullying as a species of harassment and deal with it on that basis.”

But he stresses that companies need to stop bullies from working for them. “They should be concerned, because today’s bully could be tomorrow’s mass murderer,” Hall says.

Every time there’s a workplace shooting in the news, says Hall, he gets calls from concerned employers wanting to know how to fire an employee who has made threats.

In those cases, he says, most companies’ anti-harassment policies cover what action to take when threats are involved. If the policies don’t cover threats, he says, they probably should. That’s because as far as he’s seen, harassment claims aren’t showing any signs of going away.

Nothing new, but a problem
Bullying in the workplace is nothing new, Namie says. But he figures it has increased “because of pressure for investor-driven goals” put on companies. “They’re squeezing more production out of fewer folks.”

Increased bullying in the workplace takes a toll on bottom lines, he says, through employee turnover, absenteeism, disability insurance claims and possible litigation. “The No. 1 impact is the cost to employers,” he says.

Other byproducts of bullying, he says, are eroded morale and a tarnished reputation to the company as “the worst place to work.”

A no-bullying policy, Namie says, will bring visibility to abusive conduct, and employers will have to deal with it. And that’s good for both the employer and its employees, Namie argues.

Employer attorney Mathiason sees workplace stress contributing to workforce bullying cases. “There is intense economic competition worldwide,” he says. “There are increases in productivity demands, tighter schedules and lower ratios of managers to employees.”

He says that employers are already dealing with bullies for another big reason. There’s a demographic shift in the workplace in which baby boomers are retiring, and there aren’t enough qualified replacements to fill the gap.

“We’re entering into a deep and extreme skill shortage,” says Mathiason, quoting an estimate that by 2010 there will be 10 million skilled-job vacancies. In that context, he adds, “An environment that does not respect individuals is going to be very unwelcome by employers trying to attract and retain talent.”

Dealing with it
When a bullying case arises in a workplace, says Barbara Reeves, an Irvine, California-based mediator and arbitrator, she says the problem should be mediated as early as possible to prevent either side from digging in for a protracted fight. A mediator will allow an employee’s grievance to be heard by a neutral third party, which is a procedure that she recommends employers have in place to solve the problem before it escalates.

Another approach is to have a complaint hot line for employees connecting to an outside organization, she says. That organization then notifies the company’s human resources department to set up mediation.

Reeves is closely monitoring the legislative progress of anti-bullying measures. The Canadian province of Quebec already has laws in place on the subject, she says.

Quebec outlaws “vexatious behavior” that affects an employee’s “dignity or psychological or physical integrity.”

Among types of behavior leading to bullying complaints, Reeves says, are bosses criticizing an employee’s performance in front of other workers, dirty looks or intentionally ignoring a specific employee. In short, Reeves says, “These are things we are taught not to do. It’s analogous to the schoolyard bully: someone who has power who gets a charge out of using it by yelling at people.”

The newest generations entering the workforce, Reeves adds, “don’t want to put up with it.” They’re seen as more likely to complain than older generations.

But Reeves also thinks drafting new laws making merely rude behavior illegal “is kind of a nightmare. I’d hate to have to legislate a code of civility.”

Meanwhile, Atlanta-based workplace consultant Stephen M. Paskoff figures employers need to deal with bullying—even if it isn’t illegal now—to keep it from becoming a costly problem.

Paskoff—who has been a workplace consultant to Nike, Mayo Clinic, Coca-Cola and other corporations and wrote the book Teaching Bigshots to Behave—is seeing more frequent cases of workplace bullying these days.

“I think it arises because the behavior is not recognized as expressly illegal,” he says, “so it tends to get ignored until someone’s behavior hits the front pages.”

And employers tend to ignore bullying—particularly if it is someone who is a great producer, Paskoff says.

But even if the bully is a strong performer, the problem is that the behavior loses clients and costs the company business, Paskoff says. Or, in a health care setting, it can cost a life.

An article on bullying in the medical profession, published in February in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, cited an example of a surgeon with a reputation for “disruptive behavior” dealing with a new anesthesiologist: “After the tumor had been removed, the surgeon slipped into his disruptive pattern and verbally abused the anesthesiologist so aggressively that, in her distraction, she neglected to turn off the nitroprusside drip. The patient died.”

Paskoff has found that companies tend to ignore behaviors like bullying that aren’t explicitly illegal. “Employment lawyers look at it through the lens of ‘Is it legal or not?’ ” he says. “That’s how lawyers are trained. But that legal view is missing the whole point. It could be legal, but highly unsavory.”

He’s found that in-house attorneys tend to understand the implications of ignoring the problem better than outside lawyers do because they get an up-close look at the business consequences of bullying.

Putting an anti-bullying policy in place partly deals with the problem, Paskoff says. But he stresses it’s just as important to have an organizational standard of how all employees are to be treated.

“It’s very regrettable if companies don’t address bullying,” Paskoff says. “If they don’t, laws will jump in and be burdensome.”

American and overseas workers, realizing they’ll probably live to ripe old ages, agree they need to save more money to pay for their retirement. Now, they want government to help them by imposing required retirement savings during their working years.

    Workers surveyed globally chose that as the best way to get needed retirement funds over three other ideas: increasing the retirement age, raising taxes or reducing pensions.

    Such is one of the several stark findings of a newly released study by London-based bank HSBC titled “The Future of Retirement: What the World Wants.” The study surveyed 21,000 people and 6,000 companies in 20 countries.

    The study generally found a global desire by workers to have a productive and self-sufficient retirement, but that business has been slow to help them realize those wishes.

    Forty-three percent of workers surveyed globally said they want to fund their own retirement through savings or by working part time during retirement. But the study also found a contradiction in responses from nearly half the surveyed global employers. While they claimed to value older workers, the study found no systems in place, such as flexible work hours, to attract or retain them.

    Over the long haul, say the study’s authors, such conditions can endanger continuity of a corporate culture and result in a companywide drain of experience and skills among its workforce.

    Fifty-one percent of U.S. employers surveyed in the study, for instance, said they saw no urgency to recruit older workers, while 33 percent of overseas companies responded likewise. Thirty-one percent of U.S. employers responded with “no need,” as did 30 percent of global employers.

    “It’s surprising,” says Geoffrey Brooks, New York City-based retirement services chief for HSBC Bank USA. “I expected employers would more actively try to keep older workers.”

    But employers, says Brooks, may be well advised to “walk the walk” to meet the needs of older workers. The reason, he says, is the radically changing face of global demographics. They show the huge baby boomer generation nearing retirement happening concurrently with reduction in global fertility rates. The long-term effect, he says, is a shortage of younger workers coming into the workplace to replace experienced workers ready to retire.

    “They’re not feeling that pain yet,” Brooks says. But over the next three to five years, when a much larger chunk of the boomer generation has retired, he predicts employers will be forced to accommodate older workers.

    Meanwhile, the HSBC study revealed for the first time global agreement among workers on their need for government help in forcing them to save for retirement, Brooks says.

    The expectations of longer lives, along with limitations of current retirement savings plans are the biggest factors. Private-sector pensions are being phased out in the United States and United Kingdom, and have become essentially for public-sector workers only.

    Private employment retirement plans such as 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts are noncompulsory savings plans in the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. government takes Social Security from workers’ checks to enable their receipt of retirement payments, but the system seems to generate only supplemental funding.

    Sarah Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing in England, says the HSBC study shows workers are now aware of their longevity, and of the need for lining up adequate retirement funds. Opting for compulsory savings, she adds, is the workers’ admission that they aren’t very good at saving money.

    Politicians in Europe have been reluctant to introduce such savings law, fearing a backlash, she says. “But now, one-third of the population is saying, ‘We need help.’ So we’re saying don’t be scared to push (retirement) savings.”

    Like Brooks, Harper stresses that the demographics of the world are undergoing a fundamental and profound shift. But, she says, the biggest factor isn’t the aging boomer workforce. It’s because worldwide, women are having fewer babies, or opting against motherhood outright, as they pursue careers.

    That has triggered a global population shift of more people over age 60 than there are under age 15. This unprecedented trend began 10 to 15 years ago, she says, as women worldwide saw and pursued more workplace options.

    “That shift,” Harper says, “is here to stay.”