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Every year in May or June, some 8,000 to 12,000
learning and performance professionals and leaders from all over the
world meet at the ASTD Conference & Exposition in different
major cities in the USA. Every time there are always new things to
learn and discuss, better ways to do things, bigger results to
achieve, new challenges and issues to address.
This year, one main concern
was the entry of the millenials or netgens or those born from 1977
to 1997 in the workplace. They provide different challenges for
organizational leaders because they have different value system,
needs, aspirations and work styles. They are round pegs we can’t
simply try to fit into the square holes (read policies, procedures,
leadership styles, work ethics, systems, processes, lifestyle that
we the baby boomers and generation x are used to. They are different
from you and me. I know firsthand because I have two netgen sons.
Notice that there are more and more 32 year olds and younger in your
own workplace.
Tony Bingham, ASTD
president, quoted Rob Cross and Robert Thomas who said,
“Organizations are increasingly dealing with newcomers. In the US,
more than 25 percent of all workers have been with their company
less than a year, and more than 33 percent, less than two years.
American workers, on the average, change jobs ten times between ages
18 and 37. As a result, speeding up the network development (social
connections) of new hires through more effective on-boarding has
become a critical means of driving performance.
“The first and most
obvious challenge with newcomers is to jump-start their
productivity. New hires are often a net drain on an
organization—drawing salary, incurring training and orientation
expenses, and consuming coworkers’ time without providing much
in return.
“A study by Mellon
Financial Corporation found that productivity lost due to the
learning curve for new-hires-and-transfers is between 1 and 2.5
percent of total revenues. On average, the time for new hires to
achieve an acceptable level of productivity ranges from eight weeks
for clerical jobs to 20 weeks for professionals to more than 26
weeks for executives.
“In today’s fast-paced,
competitive economy, organizations obviously cannot afford this kind
of productivity lag.”
Tony Bingham continued,
“And it doesn’t do an organization much good if we have great
systems for on-boarding, yet we fall down on retention.”
So how can we leverage
social media for on-boarding and retention this tremendous
force—the netgens? Informal learning through social networks.
Tony mentioned that in the
April 2009 issue of CLO Magazine, Jay Cross talks about connections,
He says, “Connections are everything. If your learning plans
don’t embrace the power of networks, go back to the drawing board.
Learning occurs through conversations, collaboration, knowledge
transfer, and other network phenomena. Learning leaders will seek
out ways to increase personal network connections.” One example
Jay used was the creation of “easily accessible water coolers,
both virtual and real.”
From these discussions, we
have a greater understanding of the impact of this new generation—millenials
or netgens—in the workplace and also in the greater society.
Let’s have a final discussion next column.
Find Moje in Twitter and
Facebook using her email addy, innovationcamp@yahoo.com. She has a
compilation of her columns at www.learningandinnovation.com.)
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