A Mighty Sucking Wind – Generational Differences
Dan was searching. Still unsure as to his destiny in life he bounced from idea to idea, job to job. His redeeming quality was that he was quite polite and an accomplished artist. At the time, an application development company was looking for a good artist with great computer animation and programming skills. Dan had no knowledge of either, but he had potential. Shortly after going to work, his attitude changed and his sense of self-worth increased. Intelligence, drive and raw talent took Dan to a high position in the company. People admired his drawing skills and his animation work was worthy of someone who had been working for years.
It was alarming when he resigned. In fact it was quite disruptive to the company. They had given Dan access to the best mentors in the company in areas of programming, animation and artistic abilities. Clients who relied on his unique style were disappointed and finding a replacement could have been costly. How is a company to handle succession planning with short tenure of its up-and-coming talent? Fortunately, the company had a pool of great talent. I know because it was my company. Dan went on to better himself by attending a top commercial design university.
As I read some of the blogs lately, more and more people are saying that the Millennials are jumping from job to job. Companies are pouring resources, money and time into this age group yet they seem to take it for granted. JT O’ Donnel, www.jtodonnell.com, in a recent article talks about the need for Millennials need to stay put. She suggests that there are other alternatives for companies to find an alternate workforce is very real. One of the areas, in our country anyway, most affected by global talent shift is that of training. Consider five years ago, the average online training module was costing companies $50,000 for a one hour course. Today that cost has dropped to under $5,000. Reason is much of the training development has moved to
Obviously this is not the first time an entering generation has job hopped. In the 80’s Lockheed Martin, a large defense contractor, was having a problem with graduating engineers leaving them. Turnover was 100 percent or more per year. The reason was that Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Cisco and other large technology firms were hiring engineers at an alarming rate with one year’s experience at double the salary. This problem was overcome but not before training dollars and a large amount of time were spent recruiting older workers and offshore workers. If the Millennials wish to have respect they should consider the future of their generation without the need to jump from job to job. All of us in this country will benefit and when your generation sits atop the corporate ladder you won’t be doing it from an armchair in
Mick Grady
http://genprofile.blogspot.com/
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