There are a lot of things I look forward to during the holiday season; time spent with family, (lots) of great food, gift giving and an ever evolving mix of new and old traditions. Outside of the traditional holiday elements, one of the other things I’ve come to look forward to during the holiday season is the New York Times Magazine’s “Annual Year in Ideas” (http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/ ). This eclectic mix of innovations and insights from the worlds of science, culture, politics and business makes for an invariably fascinating read. This year’s addition was published last weekend and I’ve been engrossed in it ever since.
Two items caught my eye from a workforce measurement and management perspective: “The Myth of the Deficient Older Employee” and “Random Promotions”. Each references scientific studies done to better understand the impact that different elements in building and managing a workforce have on the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. In each case there are specific HR concepts that can be applied to better understand the phenomena identified and provide insights into the appropriate strategic responses.
The first study, conducted by Gary Charness from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Marie Claire Villeval at the University of Lyon, was published in the American Economic Review. In it, the researchers developed a slate of decision making tests to measure risk taking, competitiveness and cooperation, and pitted a group of 50 and older participants against a group younger than 30. The “senior” group outperformed the “juniors” in the areas of risk taking and cooperation, and only slightly underperformed them in competitiveness.
The most interesting finding though, and the one with the most significant implications for workforce strategy, was that mixed groups (composed of both seniors and juniors), performed better than homogenous groups. This is significant from the standpoint of both strategic workforce planning and corporate culture, as organizations seek to find the right balance of employees at various age ranges to maximize the productivity and contribution of the workforce. Specifically, many of the organizations that I work with speak of the culture clash between generations, usually between Baby Boomers approaching retirement and Generation Y/Millenials who are increasingly asserting themselves and their expectations around work in their companies.
While most companies I work with see this culture clash as a problem to be mitigated, this study would seem to indicate that, in fact, this mix of attitudes and approaches to employment can serve to make their organizations more, not less, effective and efficient. For those interested in learning where their organizations stand, a couple of useful measures are Generation Ratio Silents & Boomers/Generation XY and Generation Ratio Excluding Generation Y/Generation Y. The first provides the ratio of older workers, generally defined, to younger workers, while the second compares the size of the population of the youngest workers to the rest of the organization’s population. More details on each of these metrics can be found in Infohrm’s “The Metrics Standard” (http://www.infohrm.com/services/bookshop_items.aspx ).
I’ll describe the second study cited in The 2009 Annual Year in Ideas in a subsequent post.
Tags: aging workforce, Peter Principal, Promotions, The 2009 Annual Year in Ideas, Workforce Mobility