Name: CEO Initiative 2019: A Conversation About Multigenerational Workplace Leadership
Uploaded: 2019-06-11
Duration: 15 min
Description: Author Lindsey Pollak discusses how we can leverage a workforce comprised of five generations and meets everyone’s needs.

[ APPLAUSE ] Good morning. Thank you so much, Adam. As you heard, I'm here today to talk about the inprecedented generational changes happening in the workforce, and share some ideas for how to approach them. I'll be focusing on the US market. And as you heard, we have to heart start with the M word. Millennials are officially the largest generation in the US workforce out of 2016. Millennials were born 1981. To 1996. Now Millennials are overtaking the Baby Boomers who were in charge of the workplace for roughly the past 50 years. So this is our tipping point. And it is probably not news to say, that many people have viewed this transition, in a somewhat, negative way. And it was a little bit of a chore for me to choose which, magazine cover shaming and stereotyping the Millennials would be most appropriate thank you Fortune Magazine for not having any candidates. But I try to pick the one that had the most stereotypes all in one. So what with the me me me generation, Millenials are lazy, entitled, narcissist who still live with their parents. Think it left out they want trophies for participation. But otherwise it covers anything. Do we have any Millenials in the room. Okay I'm so sorry that we do this to you. Now I will say as a Gen Xer that this is nothing new. Consider this quotation. I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today. We were the baby bus Gen Xers, born 1965 to 1980. People called us the Slackers. Where are my Gen Xer friends? The eyes remember we were the slackers. Even the baby boomers were the hippies the long hairs right? This could refer to the flappers of the 1920s. And yet this quotation is from the eighth century, BC has said was a contemporary of the poet Homer. We have literally been shaming younger generations for all of human history. I think it's time we stop. My thesis to all of you today is not to view generational change as a problem to overcome as a challenge to supersede But as the greatest opportunity of our workforce. I mentioned that millennials are now the largest generation in the workplace. By 2020 they will be 50 % of the workplace. By 2025 they will be 75 % of the US workplace. It is the nice thing to do, to understand and appreciate millennials, but we also have no choice. Millennials are the future. Millennials have been rising since the very The moment they entered the workplace. And I want to show you the transition that has taken place. From three generations, when I happened to workplace as a gen Xer in the 90s, it was a really simple story, we had people at the beginning of their careers The boomers were in the middle of their careers and the traditionalists silent, our greatest generation, were at the end of their careers. It was easy to understand, it made sense. Well, the millennials entered the workplace and sky rocketed it to the top And brought us to five unique generations that we can go back to that slide in the workplace. So the story is not just the massive skyrocketing of millennials to the top of the workplace. The other story is the expansion of the workplace in the older generations. Boomers have continued to work longer, gen Xers are planning to work longer. Traditionalists are working into their 70s and 80s and now gen Z's, born 1997 and later, are entering our workplace too. So from three generational cohorts to five in the past 25 years. To give you one current example of how this is playing out and will affect all of you as leaders, just think of the Democratic presidential primary, Pete Buttigieg is the first millennial to run for president. He's 37 years old. Bernie Sanders is 77 years old. He is a traditionalist We have two people four decades apart in age applying for the same job. How do you compare that in a realistic way? Another data point to show the mixing that's taking place is the 38 % of Americans today report to a boss who is younger than they are That changes the workplace dynamic. So the question is so what? We're all individuals you could argue that people to judge and Bernie Sanders have a lot in common. Why does age matter? Who could say that all millennials all 80 million Millennials are the same. They're not I'm not here to argue that you should change everything you do and decide that generational differences are now the be all and end all decision maker. They're one factor among many but when it comes to workforce planning, to retention, to recruitment, to engagement. The generational perspectives give you a sense of what people's experiences have been before they enter your enviroment. And what expectations they bring as employees. What technologies they will expect. What career paths they will expect. What skills they might need training in. So I pulled a few really specific data points, to show you what this might mean for you. I talked about the expansion on the older end of the work place. Many people don't realize that there are more Americans over the age of 85, In the workplace today than ever before in history, this is only going to grow as people are living longer as fewer companies offer pensions and people are making up for the money that they lost. In the recession 85 and older that's Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's Warren Buffett. That's Rupert Murdoch. Young people today are seeing people work and be vital into the very later years of their lives. Right, we focus a lot on the 18 and 20- year- old CEOs and what they bring to the work force. But, how many people are focusing on the 80 somethings and what they can bring? Now, going back to the beginning of the work place, let's look at teen employment. In 1978, when baby boomers and gen Xer's were teenagers, about 60 % of us worked in the summer. Today, only about 35 percent of Gen Zs work in the summer. Why? Most of them are getting education. They are doing enrichment programs. We have more people going to college to get associate's and bachelor's degrees and beyond. What this means for all of you is if you employ young people directly out of school. You may be the first employer they have ever had. So what we refer to is common sense showing up on time, reporting to a boss right. Ironing your uniform may not be common sense to a generation that has never ever worked in a workplace. I've been doing this work for 15 years. I have never had anyone say that the younger generations are less intelligent, In fact, they're more highly educated than ever, but they often lack the soft skills, those common sense skills, that we often learned in those high school jobs. As Voltaire said, common sense is not so common. Another factor about young people, and this is a stereotype proved a little bit true. For the first time in 130 years American 18 to 34 are more likely to live with their parents than in any other living situation. not just because they like their parents but because they have student loan debt so we can roll their eyes about this and laugh about this and say that you want to go home and do your laundry with mom and dad or you can look at a company like linkedin that found that over 80 % of their workplace were millennials and you know take your daughters and sons to work day It was kind of a ghost town at LinkedIn because nobody had kids. So, five years ago, LinkedIn implemented Bring Your Parents to Work Day. Because those are the supporters of their employees. Because when those young people go home at night, it's not a spouse saying, how was your day? Are you gonna stay in your job? It's the parents saying, hey, I really liked your boss. I think you should keep that job. Not for nothing is a business decision LinkedIn reports that they've signed up 4000 of those parents for LinkedIn profiles. Now they were visiting their children, and they became, I think next year. Bring your parents to the CEO initiative. Yeah. Okay. Good. So this is a factor that is a reality to young people. If you have a family picnic and you invite people to bring a spouse or kid, why can't you invite them to bring their parents, if that who chose to bring to the world. How many of you when you turn 16 were first in line at the DMV to get your driver's license. Absolutely. Well, there's been a 47 % decline in 16 year olds getting their driver's license. Young people are not getting their licenses today. Uber's a little piece well but that's only recent. The reason is we can now use technology to socialize. I can play Fortnite, I can Facetime. I don't have to leave my house to socialize, right? Why get a driver's license. So what this means is young people coming into your environment have literally clocked fewer hours talking to other humans eyeball to eyeball. Then previous generations. So when you think about training in this context, you might need to teach those 85 year olds how to use your new software system. But you're also going to need to train those junior people and how to have difficult conversations face to face. Your Gen Z will never have answered a telephone, i. e a landline. That was not for them. They've only ever answered a cell phone, where someone was calling for them. So if you want them to answer a telephone in your job, it doesn't mean that there not smart, that they don't know how, it means that they have never had to do that. Now put on your marketing head, don't call it how to answer the phone, I want you to call it executive communications skills for young leaders. That will go over a lot better. With your younger employees, but what we have to rethink what kind of training is possible. So to finish up I recently published a book called the remix and the idea of the remix come from music. A remixed song is when you take a classic and you don't say it wrong or bad or outdated or should retire But you mix in modern elements to make it new and unique and appealing to the next generation. A remix in the workplace is taking the best of previous generation's practices and mixing in new elements so that it is fresh and applicable to younger generation. And I interviewed a bunch of DJ's for the book and what they told me as a little secret of DJ Put this in your back pocket is if the dance floor is empty at a wedding or a party. You play a remix because the older people recognize the classic and come and dance and the younger people recognize the new version and they come and dance. So it's an inclusive strategy for everybody. So here's three examples. Can go back to that please. Three examples of remixes. The first comes from the industry of lifeguarding. So life guarding as you can imagine had a challenge given the lack of teenagers working because kids were not applying for life guarding jobs. So a community pool in Galveston, Texas looked into their swimming pools and say wow the people People swimming laps every day are mostly retirees, why don't we recruit them? So they started advertising to senior publications and job sites. And they started recruiting people 55 and over to be lifeguards in their pools, and it was a rousing success and it spread all across Texas. We're now in that state. The fastest growing group of lifeguards are in the 55 and over demographic Why does an investment banking analyst have to be in their 20s? Why does the CEO have to have worked for 40 years? Why can't we rethink the ages that we have always expected people to be, by the way, the leader of the Galveston pool so the added advantage, the secondary benefit of hiring 55 plus workers is that they could drive themselves to the pool every day. Number two employee benefits. One of the classic excellent best practice benefits that many companies offered to their employees is 401k. Matching. Great benefits super important. Well, Price Waterhouse Coopers looked at their numbers and found that their employees again 80 % of their employees like LinkedIn are under the age of 30. They said they're not contributing to their 401k. They're not using their match. Now you could be cynical and say, they're lazy, entitled, narcissists who expect trophies for participating in the 401 ( k ) plan. They must be bad workers. Or you could actually sit down with your millennials and say, why aren't you contributing? And the answer, of course, was, we'd love to contribute to our 401 ( k ) s, but we have to pay down our student loan debt first. So, Price Waterhouse Cooper said, let's take a classic matching. And let's remix it for this generation and now, they offer a choice of matching your 401K contribution or your student loan debt repayment. Now, four percent of the companies in the United States have followed suit and I think we'll see that rise. And finally, I've talked all about idea for your organizations, how about for all of you? Another trend that I am seeing in organizations that are remixing Is reverse mentoring. Mentoring is the classic an older person and an executive mentoring, advising, guiding a junior person that should never change. But today in this unprecedented multigenerational mix there is so much value to. To a senior leader getting advice and guidance and ideas from junior people. So one example is [ UNKNOWN ], the CEO of the Estee Lauder companies, he has a reverse mentor as do all the leaders in his executive team. And once a quarter, [ UNKNOWN ] and his millennial mentor go shopping together for makeup in New York City. He shows her his 40 year career at Proctor and Gamble and Estee Lauder and what he's learned in the classics of their business. And she shows him how she uses make up. Another executive I worked with said that I don't have time to do that. Once a week I just go up to the youngest person in my team and I say put a new app in my phone. I wanna use what you're using, I wanna use venue, I wanna use Snap chat the wiki added Tinder, it was very awkward, but other than that, [ LAUGH ] The very successful experiments, but no joke the previous speaker was referred to swiping right. These are things that you have to understand. My own Gen Z mentor taught me what it meant to slide into her DMC Anyone? Instant messaging her, [ COUGH ] direct messaging her on Instagram. She said, if you really want to get in touch with me, please don't go, god forbid you leave a voicemail. Just slide into my DMs and that's how we communicate. So a challenge I'd like to give to all of you, excuse me [ COUGH ] challenge I'd like to give to all of you is to engage a reverse mentor at your organization. One of the greatest values of work is the connections that we build, and so if you build connections that are genuine Across generations, you will not only be a more successful business person, I think that you will enjoy the journey a whole lot more. I want to thank you again for inviting me to speak and I know not all of you in the room are millennials, but I thought you might appreciate a trophy for participating. [ LAUGH ] In this workshop this morning. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you very much. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

CEO Initiative 2019: A Conversation About Multigenerational Workplace Leadership

A Conversation About Multigenerational Workplace Leadership

Leadership

Author Lindsey Pollak discusses how we can leverage a workforce comprised of five generations and meets everyone’s needs. 