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The Changing Labor Landscape

I’m right on the cusp of Gen-X and Gen-Y. I don’t really identify myself with either and quite frankly think that the terms have been over-used and certainly over-marketedto us, but not by us. I’m on the younger side of my office. I’d guess that the average age is about 35. So most of the folks in the office are “Gen-Xers”. We haven’t experienced an influx of early 20s employees yet. But, I recently had an employee’s father call me to tell me he had missed his flight and wasn’t going to be in to work today. Now I know that this person has a cellphone. And I know that they knew my number. No call, except for the parent.

I thought this unusual until i read Scenes from the Culture Clash from FastCompany magazine. It brought to my attention the changing labor landscape. Multiple generations working in the same office and soon, fighting for the same jobs. How will that affect morale, corporate hierarchy, job titles, etc? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

  • Miguel

    I was going to post a link to that article after reading your first few sentences. Yay subscription!

    My situation is the opposite. I’m 23 working in a company run by a 24 year old. The oldest person in our office is 27.

    During our last round of interviews, we had a few older (35+) people apply and they seemed turned off by the fact that we were all so young. We’ve been in business for 5 years and have been profitibale since the start, yet people still question whether we know what we’re doing.

    It seemed to me it was partly a concern of a lack of experience…and partly a pride issue. When you are married with children and your boss is 5 years older than your daughter…it seems to be to be a problem for some.

  • http://blog.cafeevoke.com Jason

    I think the opportunities are great! What better than to have old business expirence with new business blood and ideas? I do agree that there might be a clash at the beginning but lets embrace this.

    I think it is important to make sure all employees are treated on the same level. Young ones (which I would be included in) need to have the same guidelines as the older ones. They should not be able to hide behind the fact that they are young.

    On the flip side, I think it is important to use the young employees and give them the challenge of coming up with ideas to help better the company, not hide them behind the mail room door to “gain expirence.”

    I think there is alot of room for this clash of generations and I think the companies that will embrace it will be the ones that will succeed.

    …be bold

  • Mindy

    I think it’s good to have a variety of ages and personalities in any company, but come on! Someone who has their parent call in sick/late for them? I just think that some things that are standards for employees should stay the same for all employees. This would be unacceptable from some of the 40 year old employees (barring extenuating circumstances) and should be unacceptable from a 20-something employee as well, don’t you think?