What About the Newest Workers?

Aside from the fact that there are FEWER of them, "Tweeners" (part Baby Boomer, part Gen X) and Gen X folks are often about independence--they have seen their parents downsized, rightsized and outsized, and so their only security is their own career portfolios. As a generation these workers have tremendous skills, and they espouse a "work to live" philosophy .

Generation Y (or the Millennials) have yet different values from their Gen X co-workers, and expect to make valuable contributions to their organizations from the day they set foot in the door. As a generation, they are more highly skilled (at the completion of their educations) than any generation before them. They are a generation that has always been involved in multiple activities throughout their young lives; because of this,  they are very comfortable multi-taskers. Anything less these youngest workers find boring. They value immediate results, huge amounts of feedback and accomplishing things in order to move on--to the next level.

For different reasons, neither of the younger generations has a "Live to Work" mindset that the Baby Boomers have, and this values difference is a frequent source of annoyance and frustration.  It is only through consistent and frequent mentoring support that younger workers will be able to find their 'groove' and make the talented contributions to organizations that they are so capable of making. 

And it's actually a two-way mentoring environment that will encourage those younger workers to mentor  their co-workers...on being more flexible, resilient and welcoming of new ways to work!

Growing up in an atmosphere of technology and change, just dealing with the much steeper intellectual power curve has left the youngest workers with little time or need to develop the coping skills and confidence to take on challenges without help. Workplaces today are challenging for any worker, let alone those who have little or no experience with organization life. The more coaching and mentoring available to the youngest, newest workers, the more likely the environment will support collaboration and high expectations.

>> Integration and Engagement of the New and Existing Employees