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There are generalizations about all generations but be very careful not to accept negative stereotypes, because those in the Silent or Traditional generation are not necessarily inept at programming the VCR, and all Millennials are not short on work ethic. Accurate insights into each other based on individual traits will be far more useful than limiting assumptions based on age.

That said, there always has and always will be differences between the youngest generation in the workforce and older generations, and that’s a good thing. Young people of every generation have a fresh perspective, a youthful energy and a burning desire to accomplish something worthwhile. If your organization treats them with respect and engages their enthusiasm, they will bring that attitude to work and accomplish something worthwhile for you.

Millennials will tend to have a lop-sided skill set when it comes to professional life; they aren’t alone. Our research at TTI shows that most young people graduate from college with little in the way of crucial professional skills such as decision making, problem solving and conflict management abilities. But older generations have skill deficits too, and often they don’t realize this until they are promoted into a position that requires skills they haven’t mastered yet or haven’t used in a long time. Comprehensive TTI job matching identifies which skills a person has some mastery in and which skills they need help building. And the TTI process provides their manager with a guide for professional development that is unique to each employee’s needs at every stage of their career.

Older generations have an outlook tempered by past experience allowing them to help younger workers avoid potential pitfalls before mistakes become real problems. They also have the battle-tested skills to realistically anticipate what it will take to move a business initiative from being just a great idea to becoming your company’s game-changing competitive advantage. But it can be all too easy for seasoned business people to let past experience limit what they think can be done. Millennials and Gen Xers can help them see new possibilities.

Young people may be idealistic about the extent and speed of change that’s possible in your organization, but then again, they may be the very change agents who make it happen! They aren’t limited by the way things have always been done and many are technologically advanced. Those that are tech savvy will be great candidates for mutual mentoring relationships with older workers who need to update their knowledge of social media and technical skills. Imagine this scenario: Jim, a recent college graduate, needs to upgrade his presentation skills in order to move from a help desk position to a sales position. Karen, a baby boomer with a strong sales career, needs to get up-to-speed quickly on new software to stay current in her role. Karen can help Jim hone his presentation skills, and Jim can coach her on mastering the new software. With his help, Karen can better integrate technology into her sales presentations, and Jim will be ready to hit the ground running after practicing his presentations with her. The key is for both parties to recognize the value that the other brings to the table.

Sounds ideal, right? But imagine if Jim and Karen have very different communication styles. Karen may favor quick decision-making and a rapid pace, while Jim may prefer to establish a steady pattern and a relationship with others over time. For their mutual mentoring relationship to be successful, they need an accurate understanding of each other’s way of getting things done and communicating, and they can get that information about each other very easily with the TTI process.

The preferences of younger workers can improve communication and connection within your company and with customers. A great example of Gen X and Millennial-inspired business change is using social media to share consumer opinions about products and service experiences. Facebook and Twitter have become vital ways for businesses to respond quickly to customers and demonstrate to the world that the company cares about them. Millennials drove this change because they like to connect with others to share their experiences, and they like to use social media for consumer reviews. The youngest generation also prefers to get feedback on their own on-the-job performance in the form of frequent, small course corrections, not just once or twice a year in a formal review. This change is also gaining momentum as a best practice.

Are you curious about what other new business practices are headed your way? When it comes to being prepared for change, part of your strategy should be to listen to your Gen Xs and Gen Ys. Change is inevitable, and the priorities and concerns these two generations express will drive much of the change that’s coming. Many of the preferences of Millennials will boost productivity and engagement and often are preferences shared by Boomers and Gen Xers.

For example, younger generations have a real commitment to work/life balance. After hearing their Boomer parents complain about growing up without Dad ever attending a soccer game, they’re not going to do that to their own kids. They are fine with taking care of business through email or text at all hours, but they are resolute about wanting the flexibility to get work done without neglecting their personal lives, too.

When you think about their circumstances, it makes sense. Unlike older generations, who often had a wife at home to take care of family necessities, couples today are probably both employed. This means that someone has to take time off from work to take the kids to the dentist or attend the school play. They must shift focus from work to home as situations evolve; and if we want to retain them, we need to make it possible for them to do it while continuing to be productive at work.

Using technology to enable life balance and provide flexible work options makes sense. There is a shift underway in the business world, from defining work as time spent at the office to measuring performance by the results produced. Using mobile technology and flexible scheduling makes it possible to shift the focus toward results.

The flexible work options Millennials and Gen Xers want will support organizations in building bench strength. Companies that offer flexible work options will encourage Baby Boomers and Silent Generation workers to stick around long enough to cultivate the next group of rising stars. Many of them will use this flexibility to ease into retirement gradually, which will give the organization time to transfer their knowledge and engage them to help cultivate the next group of leaders. Think of the possibilities when the valuable knowledge of long-term employees can be easily passed to newer ones.

As time goes by and older generations do retire, the pool of available workers will be Gen X and Millennials who tend to have a dual-centric (i.e, work/life balance), rather than a work-centric focus. In order to attract the best and brightest candidates, employers will have to compete by offering the best employment proposition possible. Being branded as an employer who makes it possible to thrive both personally and professionally may shift from being a competitive advantage to being a necessity. To make the most of the talent you have:

Don’t dismiss older generations: The Silent Generation grew up with face-to-face staff meetings that encouraged the development of relationships. There is something to be said about seeing a person while talking to them versus chatting over instant-messaging. Body language and voice intonation are lost in newer forms of communication, meaning that newer isn’t always better.

Provide variety and engaging development experiences for younger workers: Stretch assignments and cross training keep them interested and build their career prospects while enhancing their value to your organization. Help them develop a career path and give personalized development plans that encourage them to stay engaged with your company as they grow. Use TTI job benchmarks to give clear expectations and match them to the right job for success.

Make good use of Millennials’ strong team orientation and global, networking mindset: If you’re not using informal learning networks and information sharing tools yet, younger workers can show you how they do it. For the generation that grew up with massive multi-player online video games, team work is second nature.

Give everyone the tools to engage in meaningful, mutual mentoring efforts: Be sure that everyone’s contributions are heard and respected and help them share their strengths. When both parties understand how the other likes to receive communication, make decisions, pace their work and what motivates them to action, it smooths the way for collaboration. Use TTI assessments and team training to blend generations successfully.

Established ways of doing business will continue to change as global markets expand and technology accelerates. TTI research shows that the primary skills to thrive with change are flexibility, resiliency, personal accountability and a willingness to keep learning. These are the most important characteristics for being successful. That’s true for every generation.

The Menninger Institute of Kansas City conducted a study not long ago to determine what qualities would be most important for success and happiness in the twenty-first century. They concluded after extensive research, that the most important single quality that you can develop, in a time of rapid change, is flexibility.

The Speed of Change
Today, perhaps the most important factor affecting your life is the speed of change. We are living in an age where change is taking place at a faster rate than ever before in human history. And if anything, the rate is increasing, year by year. Change today is not only faster, but it is also discontinuous, not following a straight line but starting, stopping, and moving in unpredictable directions. Change is coming at us from all sides and in so many different ways that it is often impossible to anticipate what might happen next.

A Major Cause of Stress
Change causes enormous stress for people who are fixed or rigid in their beliefs about how things “should be.” They fall in love with what they are doing, with their current methods and processes, and are unwilling to change, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Don’t let this happen to you.
Be Open to New Information

To remain flexible, you must constantly be open, alert to new ideas, information, and knowledge that can help you or hurt you in your business or in the achievement of your goals. One new idea can be enough to make or lose you a fortune. One idea can start you on the road to riches or knock you off of it.

The Tide of New Technology
The second factor driving change is the rapid growth and development of new technology. Every new piece of scientific or technical knowledge leads to an advance in technology aimed at helping people and companies get things done faster, better, cheaper, or easier. And the speed of technological change is increasing every day.

Playing Leapfrog
Being in business is like playing an endless game of leapfrog. You look for a way to leapfrog over your competitor and serve your customers, better, faster, and cheaper. Your competitor then leapfrogs over you with a new or better product or service. You quickly regroup and leap over your competitor with a new innovation or improvement. Your competitor then leaps over you, and the game goes on without end.

Action Exercise
Be willing to admit, in each area of your life where you experience stress or resistance, that you could be wrong or that you have made a mistake. Resolve today to cut your losses wherever possible.

By Brian Tracy – From The Wendling Group Newsletter Jan 20, 2011

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of what we used to know even two years ago isn’t necessarily true in today’s changed business climate. How many outdated ideas do you have about the employment world? Read each question in bold to decide if you think it’s true or false before reading the answer below.

1. Employees always leave managers, not jobs.
Wrong. Employees leave jobs even when they like and respect their manager because the fit between their talents, interests and skills isn’t good enough to give them quality of life on the job. In fact, struggling in a job where you spend Sunday night dreading going to work on Monday morning is a dead giveaway of a poor job fit. All jobs have a unique profile of distinct skills, attitudes and behaviors that are required for best performance, just as people have their own unique profile, too. When a person is matched to a job that requires the combination of behaviors, skills and attitudes that come naturally to them, achieving superior performance isn’t a struggle, it’s a challenge they can win.

2. Our superior performing employees may secretly be waiting for the economy to open up more jobs, so they can find another job with more money and opportunity than we can offer them right now.
In the present economy with budgets so tight that raises and incentives have been cut almost across the board, employee surveys show that this is absolutely true. But it doesn’t mean you can’t deepen your superior performers’ bond to your company. Savvy employers are investing in professional development that helps them develop talent from within. By doing this, they help current employees improve their performance now, while preparing them for upcoming leadership roles. People understand that budgets are tight right now, but when they see their company’s willingness to develop their skills, they recognize it as a vote of confidence in their potential and their value to the organization. Nothing says “We’ll give you a raise when we can” like investing in an employee’s career development now.

3. If my company asks me to take an assessment, it must mean they think I’m not good enough to do my job and they want an excuse to fire me.
If you said that nothing could be further from the truth, you’re right. Just as employees are slow to leave a good job right now, employers are realizing that it’s much more cost effective to mine the talent they already have rather than to start from scratch with someone new. Using assessment reports is a strategy that smart companies are using to build bench strength so they are ready when business picks up. If your employer has asked you to take an assessment, congratulations! You’ve been identified as an employee with high potential to become a superior performer or next-generation manager.

4. Behavioral and values assessments are NOT like personality tests.
If you agree with this statement, you’re right. Behavior and values assessments are statistically validated ways to see what a person’s natural style is for communicating on the job, how they like to manage their workflow, how they respond to a changing work environment, and what aspects of the job can make it deeply satisfying beyond the paycheck. Using assessment reports to identify a person’s strengths is a great way to make sure the company is deploying an employee in the right job to play to their strengths and develop more.

5. Managing other people to achieve peak performance is only possible if you’re a really accomplished, experienced manager with a long track record of success, or a manager with too much time on your hands.
If you recognized this thought as so outdated that it’s last millennium, you’re right. In the age of research validated job benchmarks and assessments, it’s possible to pinpoint exactly what a person’s workplace strengths and weaknesses are. Smart companies are using the latest technology, available online, to not only generate an assessment they can review with the employee, but to ‘prescribe’ professional development modules that the employee can use anywhere they have access to the internet. Managers can review performance goals and contribute suggestions online, too, without having to micromanage either performance or professional development.

A Positive Moment from the Wendling Group – Newsletter October 14, 2010

The current recession has had a major impact on management’s decisions. It starts with concerns for survival. Now management is confronted with both good and bad information. Some still talk about a double dip recession, while others see light at the end of the tunnel.

No one can truly predict when the current economic conditions will rebound and return to normalcy. However, businesses MUST create a plan to implement soon upon recovery. Without this plan they could get left behind.

The best way to develop a plan is to identify all the key jobs that impact your bottom line. Once these positions have been identified, you need to identify the key accountabilities of each job. Using each key accountability as your focus, discuss the following:
1. What knowledge does one need to accomplish the key accountability?
2. What specific skills (both hard and soft skills) are required for superior performance of this key accountability?
3. What are the intrinsic rewards people engaged in this job will receive upon successful completion? True motivation is experienced when the intrinsic rewards match a person’s motivations.
4. What experiences are required for superior performance of this key accountability? Most managers place too much value on experience. If experience always led to superior performance, all experienced people would be superior performers.
5. What behavior is required to carry out the key accountability successfully?

Repeat this process for each of the key accountabilities.

After answering the five questions, you are now ready to evaluate your talent. Each employee needs to be objectively compared to the discovery. From this process, you can identify the talent required to take your organization to the next level. Don’t be left behind. Have the plan ready to implement as soon as your numbers indicate your business is on the upswing. Advertising, screening and hiring new staff are simplified by your plan.

TTI People Energizing People Newsletter Nov 15, 2011

The jobs are out there. Companies just can’t find the workers to fill them. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that 3.2 million jobs remained vacant as of the end of July, even as 14 million Americans were jobless.

This paradox was highlighted in an article posted in the recent issue of Central Penn Business Journal. The article includes several interviews with local business executives whose growth is stymied by a lack of qualified workers, not a struggling economy. One owner, whose tool-and-die company doubled in size in the last three years, says he posts jobs in the newspaper and online job banks to no avail. Other executives echoed the challenge especially those leading manufacturing firms in heavy industry, food processing, and trucking.

More and more stories seem to be cropping up, especially in the small business sector. Despite large organizations like Bank of America announcing massive layoffs, a new survey reveals a compelling message for employers who might be feeling a bit complacent in adapting a new environment for recruiting and retaining qualified workers: high unemployment does not equate with ease of hiring.

Here’s 6 signs that the war for talent is heating up:

•77 percent of companies surveyed expect hiring competition to increase;
•One-third of the companies expect significantly more competition for talent;
•47 percent currently recruit from competitors; another 14 percent plan to start;
•57 percent of employers are concerned with competitors recruiting their employees;
•58 percent use recruiting passive candidates as their leading strategy for competing against other employers; (54 percent use benefits; 47 percent use flexible hours; 30 percent use higher compensation.)
•One-third of employers expect new employees to stay 2 years or less; 79 percent expect them to stay 3 to 5 years or less.

“Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions.
Copyright 2010 Ira S Wolfe.”

Today’s marketplace is demanding superior service, products and delivery channels, and in order to meet such demands, you must have superior performing employees. The question then becomes how can you identify superior performers for your organization?

As business professionals, we know that employees bring a variety of traits to the workplace including skills, motivators, behavior, experience and education. During the interview process, we attempt to uncover these traits in an effort to hire the best. But as we’ve learned with customer experience getting the best results comes from a well-executed strategy, not a hunch or a gut feeling. Unfortunately, most hiring practices are no more than just that.

TTI’s job matching process removes the guesswork and builds a framework for a well-executed hiring process that leads to superior performance.

Not hiring? Then ask yourself this, “Have you ever hired someone that didn’t meet your expectations?” If so, have you ever wondered what went wrong? Understanding the job matching process can help you redesign your current team in order to get maximum performance out of each and every individual.

TTI Performance Systems Newsletter Aug 23, 2011

Cluttered desks, disorganized email folders, and lost files seem to be taken for granted in the workplace. But all that time searching for lost information and playing phone tag adds up to a lot of costly, unproductive time.

For example:
• The average American spends almost 4 minutes searching for lost keys, television remote controls, mobile telephones, and other items every time one of the little suckers sprouts legs and walks off.
• Four minutes may not sound like a long time, but the minutes add up. If a person misplaces his wallet once every week, he would spend 3.5 hours each year trying to hunt the darn thing down.
• Americans who consider themselves as “extremely organized” spend as little as 1 minute and 18 seconds finding misplaced items while adults who say they are not organized at all take up to 8.5 minutes to locate a missing item.
• In the average small business, each staff member spends at least 3 to 5 hours per week looking for information. At an hourly rate of $12 per hour that adds up to over $2,800 per employee per annum. Even worse, can you afford to hire and retain employees who spend 15 percent of their work week looking for misplaced information?
Even with widespread computer usage, 70% of all documentation remains paper based. The average useable life-span of a document is only 30 to 90 days. Often they are never accessed again after this time. Office space is at a premium though – and the more files you have the more space required which leaves less space for additional staff members to grow your business and/or higher rent for storage space.

Disorganization might be ignored if it wasn’t for the big price tag hidden beneath the piles. If you cannot answer a client’s request immediately, the cost is staggering and frightening! Did you know that telephone tag costs could cost you more than $6,500 per employee in unproductive time even if that employee spends only one hour on the phone daily.

And possibly the most expensive is the 25% of all clients who are lost due to poor response to requests. If you have 1,000 clients, then you’re losing on average 250 clients a year, at a costs ranging from $25,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Organization is an essential competency. With more demands being placed on limited resources in nearly every organization today, time wasted finding and re- finding information costs lots of money. With cutbacks, resignations and retirements, critical information is walking out the door every day. Adding screening tests for organizational skills could improve productivity and add dollars to the bottom line.

“Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions.
Copyright 2010 Ira S Wolfe.”

When you think of your company and how it’s doing today, you have a picture in your mind of what you want it to look like tomorrow. Whether that picture shows additional employees, a bigger building or more efficient systems, one thing is constant; it is something better than what exists. Making that progression towards bigger and better things can be easier and happen faster if your employees are efficient and engaged with the vision. When you see a winning team, most, if not all members are A players. While many people know what the NBA All-Stars are, many don’t know that there is something called an All-NBA team. There are no bench-warmers on the All-NBA teams. If you are unfamiliar, the All-NBA league is made up of three teams each have five members. Two forwards, one center and two guards that are the top players in the NBA. The theory is if these teams played they would win against any other combination of five players based on their individual talents. What does this mean in relation to your organization? The best way to progress to the top of the business food chain is with the highest performing employees available.

Top performers, or A players, have so much to offer that it’s a wonder how countless organizations settle for Bs or even Cs. Because of the ability for an A player to self manage and problem solve, top performers relieve supervisors from having to micro-manage, allowing them to progress in their position and be more productive as a supervisor.  Top performers are also more efficient at their job, requiring fewer employees for maximum output. This high level of efficiency with fewer employees on payroll allows funds to be freed up and spent elsewhere. The immediate benefits associated with high performing employees alone are enough reason to begin making the transition away from C players.

One way to ensure your organization is hiring top performers is to use pre-employment assessments as part of a job matching system to establish whether or not the potential employee is a good fit with the job. A good fit generally leads to high performance! Employees who are already a part of the team will continue to grow with your organization and develop new skills which may progress them into matching a different job. As a result of this, it is important to create a line of succession and prepare your employees with a career path. Not only will they have a promotion to work towards, but they can also begin to cultivate their leadership skills. This starts to pave a secure path for the organization’s future, allowing all staff to feel confident about the progression planned by management.

When creating ways to progress a company, developing top performers might have been on the top of your list – and if it wasn’t, it should be now. What most likely has not come to mind is the happiness of employees. It is essential to keep your employees pleased with your business and each other. Having an employee relations committee that coordinates a once a month luncheon, event or health and wellness initiative can help employees connect on another level other than business. The more pleased your employees are with your company, the more that reflects on your brand, and the more positive publicity the more opportunity your company has to grow. Happy and engaged A players attract other A players!

Are you ready to grow your organization to the top by ensuring employees are a perfect fit with their job? Read TTI’s white paper on job matching for resources on developing poor performing employees into top performing employees.  Send us an e-mail and we will send you a copy of it.

info@hiremax.com

May 16, 2011 TTI Performance Systems

Nearly 3 years ago, I wrote about Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) butting up against a Gray Ceiling, an artificial gate standing in between today’s job and a promotion.  That article of course occurred in the depths of the recession and many employers could care less. If a 30-something was unhappy, employers said, “don’t let the door hit your backside on the way out.”

For companies that are thinking long term, that nonchalant attitude about succession planning is coming back to bite employers.

According to new findings from consulting firm Deloitte, only 28% of Gen Xers plan to stay in their current jobs. That’s serious stuff because bosses who aren’t focused on how to keep Gen Xers happy will inevitably find that somebody else is. The risk of losing these experienced 30 to 45 year olds is huge. Hiring is picking up and eventually the aging boomer will retire.  When the coach turns to his bench for replacement workers, it might be empty.  

Gen Xers aren’t the only workers looking for greener pastures.  Thirty-five percent of Baby Boomers expect to remain in their jobs, around the same as Millennials (age 31 and under), at 37%.

The point of the survey was to give some guidance to employers who care about retaining valued workers. The top advice bullet point: Lay out a clear career path for workers. Across generations, 57% of employees think their bosses do a poor job at presenting a ladder for career advancement and offering job challenges.  That’s exactly the same percentage of business executives in 2009 who said their leadership pipeline was the same or weaker than it was two years prior. 

Retaining these ready-for-prime-time workers won’t be easy either – at least not with the same tactics employed to keep Baby Boomers hanging around for a few more years.  According to the survey, half the boomers rated a promotion as the most effective way to get them to stay put. But that’s a catch-22.  By promoting the Baby Boomers, the Gray Ceiling is only fortified, prompting Gen Xers to look even harder for new opportunities. Forty-three percent of Boomers could be kept happy with a little support and appreciation from their supervisors. 

But to complicate retention efforts, neither members of Generation X or Millennials rated appreciation by higher-ups as top reasons to stay in a job. When it comes to ranking the top turnover triggers, surveyed Baby Boomers rated “lack of trust in leadership” at the top of their list at 32%, while both Generation X and Millennial employees placed “lack of career progress” first at 38% and 30% respectively. The findings also revealed that surveyed men rate “lack of compensation increases” at the top of their top turnover trigger list at 27% (compared to 14% of women), while women placed  excessive workload” first at 31% (compared to 15% of men).

This survey once again confirms how little effort companies have committed to building a talent pipeline and succession plan. Only 6% of employees surveyed rate their companies’ overall HR and talent efforts as “world-class,” while more than four in ten (43%) called them “fair” or “poor.” Not surprisingly, employees who describe their companies’ talent programs as “world-class” or “very good” are nearly twice (42% to 23%) as committed to remaining at their jobs than employees who work at companies with “fair” or “poor” talent efforts.

View the Deloitte survey results Talent Edge 2020.

“Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions.   Copyright 2010 Ira S Wolfe.”