"A shortage of gen-x workers" is exactly the case at my facility. I'm 45, which is the valley in the bimodal age distribution. People are either in their 60's or 20's, and those two generations do not get along.
American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
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Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Unless they're saying they literally can't find qualified GenX workers at any price--That would be a real shortage Pretty sure they mean they have plenty of 60 years who have been working there for 40 years and plenty of 20 year olds who just started but not a lot of 40 year old with 20 years experience to keep the transfer of knowledge smooth. which unless some one has a time machine is a thing you can't find at li…
This reminds me of agile. Look at the short term, do what you need to achieve those objectives. Oh, the long term matters now. Ooops, I'll add get some "20-years experience guys" to the next sprint.
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Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel it's a cycle of mistrust. Companies don't want to spend as much time training junior workers or apprentices because they often leave shortly after achieving proficiency. But this lack of perceived loyalty comes from a rational viewpoint. After the shift in business culture in the 80s, where workers were laid off in bulk even if the company was in good financial health, workers woke up to the new reality. (To b…
I read in the newspaper that Boeing has a skills gap with their machinists. The skilled older ones are retiring, and the younger ones aren't experienced enough. There are few in the middle. What happened? When they had layoffs, the machinist union rules specified the ones with the least number of years of service got laid off first. This left Boeing with a very unbalanced workforce.
Yep, same with my aerospace employer. Massive layoffs in the early 90's, and the young ones were let go due to union seniority. Now there is a sharp bimodal age distribution from the mass hiring to replace the retirees.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#14> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
>Unless they're saying they literally can't find qualified GenX workers at any price--That would be a real shortage Pretty sure they mean they have plenty of 60 years who have been working there for 40 years and plenty of 20 year olds who just started but not a lot of 40 year old with 20 years experience to keep the transfer of knowledge smooth. which unless some one has a time machine is a thing you can't find at li…
Exactly, I'm the rare 45 YO in sea of 20 and 60 YO, and those two groups do not get along.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#15> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
I feel it's a cycle of mistrust. Companies don't want to spend as much time training junior workers or apprentices because they often leave shortly after achieving proficiency. But this lack of perceived loyalty comes from a rational viewpoint. After the shift in business culture in the 80s, where workers were laid off in bulk even if the company was in good financial health, workers woke up to the new reality. (To b…
It's easy to keep people after training, just pay them more and avoid toxic environments. Companies don't do this because they make bank underpaying people and burning them out.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#16Most of the really experienced people at companies I have worked for where surprised when I asked about what they did and why. They somehow assumed someone else was supposed to be training me. They were the only ones who knew answers to particular questions I had. They were shocked and sometimes didn't believe me that I asked everyone but them first. I don't blame these experienced workers for not sharing their knowledge, someone should have told them, though, that they are expected to do it, there are no systems in place at most places. Most companies seem to believe that knowledge transfer just happens magically,or should.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#17I wonder how much of this has to do with the dot bomb in 2001. It washed a lot of my generation (GenX) out our technology.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#18> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
I feel it's a cycle of mistrust. Companies don't want to spend as much time training junior workers or apprentices because they often leave shortly after achieving proficiency. But this lack of perceived loyalty comes from a rational viewpoint. After the shift in business culture in the 80s, where workers were laid off in bulk even if the company was in good financial health, workers woke up to the new reality. (To b…
There is also some outright "pickyness" coming from the younger generations against work that's seen as manual and unsophisticated, at least I perceived this in the architecture school I went to for a number of years. I remember very clearly many professors lamenting the fact that with each passing year the student body grew more reliant on technology and computer-assisted crafting and grew less interested in manual handicraft.
It's going to sound cliche but younger folks are more attracted to work that looks attractive. Everyone wants to be able to tell others at a party that he works a respectable job for a well-known company. The media doesn't idolize craftsmen and truck drivers as much as tech whizzes, so something drops under the radar.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#19> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
With so many people under-employed or out of work...
The concept of "under-employed or out of work" is pretty meaningless if you don't mention the price you're willing to take for that work. Unless they're saying they literally can't find work at any price-That would be a real shortage. Otherwise, maybe you need to just accept a little less money to find work nowadays.
The price argument works both ways.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#20> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
With so many people under-employed or out of work... The concept of "under-employed or out of work" is pretty meaningless if you don't mention the price you're willing to take for that work. Unless they're saying they literally can't find work at any price-That would be a real shortage. Otherwise, maybe you need to just accept a little less money to find work nowadays. The price argument works both ways.
I actually agree with you to an extent. We need to start talking about this in terms of a market that can't efficiently set a price--not in terms of a "shortage of workers".