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The Perfect Career Storm


By Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D. E. L. Goldberg & Associates Menlo Park, CA 650-854-0854 edie@elgoldberg.com

June 2010

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The Perfect Career Storm


Several demographic, psychographic, and economic factors are shifting how we think of careers today. This paper will outline the various trends converging to dramatically change how employees define career success and what they want or need from their work life. As Human Resource professionals, we need to understand the implications for businesses of an impending talent shortage and how to help manage this storm successfully. Also, HR needs to be the expert when it comes to how the role of changing family structures and other demographic and workforce trends are changing employees career expectations as well as how employee expectations have shifted over generations. Once we fully understand the changing environment, we will review current career models and outline how human resources can help organizations change the way they help employees to manage their careers. The Impending Talent Shortage Hundreds of articles have been warning us for years about the impending talent crisis. As the Baby Boomer generation of approximately 76 million people begins to retire, there will not be enough people in the next generation of only 46 million Gen Xers to fill their shoes. In 2011 the first of the Baby Boomers will reach the traditional retirement age of 65. This will trigger the beginning of the talent shortage. The recent economic crisis and continuing global economic instability are buffering and delaying the talent shortage crisis, which will hit organizations bottom line. Given the recent economic crisis, no one is concerned that Boomers will be retiring anytime soon. First companies have been downsizing significantly and many would welcome voluntary retirements. Second, the concern of a mass exodus of the most senior leaders in todays organizations has been tempered by the significant drop in financial wealth caused by the recent drop in the stock market. Many boomers feel the need to continue working because their nest eggs have shrunk. Finally, a third reason to think that this talent shortage is not just around the corner is that is that life spans have continued to increase overtime. Therefore, many boomers, who still feel in their prime at 65, may want to continue to work beyond the normal retirement age. Some baby boomers will continue to work out of necessity. Others will feel that they have put in their dues, and, although they may want to continue to work, it will be in a different way. Some may want to phase into retirement by working part-time, others will reinvent themselves by doing something new such as starting a business or changing careers. There has also been a rise of retired people consulting on a part-time basis as a means of keeping busy and staying active. Aging boomers are now starting to ask for the same kind of flexible work arrangements as Gen X & Y employees. They want flexibility in terms of when they work, where they work, and how much they work. They are also interested in more meaningful work being able to make a difference in some way (Walker & Lewis, (2009). Even with some of the boomers staying in the workplace longer, there will not be enough new entrants to meet staffing needs. Our knowledge economy demands high-level skills and expertise from employees. Just look to our universities and you will see that we are not producing enough scientists, engineers, and doctors to meet predicted workforce needs (Dychtwald, Erickson & Morision, 2006). The fact that colleges and universities are being hard hit by the current economic crisis does not bode well for our ability to develop the talent the U. S. economy will need to be competitive. With a shrinking 1

workforce and significant skill gaps forecasted, this is just the tip of the iceberg when we begin to look at the impact this will have on careers over the next decade. But one thing we know for sure is that we need to understand the needs of retirement-eligible Boomers to keep them engaged in the workplace.

A Global, Diverse, Virtual Workforce The workforce is more diverse today than it has ever been in the past. There is diversity by generations, gender, ethnicity, and geography/culture. Lets begin with a consideration of the generations in the workforce today. Baby boomers, Gen Xers and the very first of Generation Y are all in the workforce at the same time. Each of these generations brings along its own set of values based on life experiences. Organizations are in a unique position of having to juggle the needs of different generations to attract and retain talent. There are more women in the workplace today than ever before. In fact, women make up 48% of the workforce today (Dychtwald, Erickson & Morision, 2006). A great deal of research by the Catalyst group has looked into the unique needs of women as they try to juggle the demands of work and family that are often imposed upon them. Reading through the literature on why women seem to opt out of the workforce at some point in their career leads to some interesting conclusions. Mostly, that women are not opting out, they are in fact writing their own deal and going into non-traditional work environments that provide them with more control over their time. In fact, women lead the way in terms of entrepreneurs who are starting their own business. Being a business owner is by no means dropping out. It is simply finding a different way to weave together womens work and personal lives. As minority birthrates continue to soar and the birthrates of Caucasians continue to decline, over the next 40 years Caucasians will become the minority in the workforce. Clearly each demographic group brings its own experiences, values, and needs. The changing ethnic demographic shift has been less a topic of discussion in the literature, but will certainly receive more attention as these predicted shifts begin to become reality in the workplace. In addition to demographic diversity, todays talent pool is truly global in nature. Some organizations are outsourcing to geographies that provide more competitive rates for services. Other organizations, such as Cisco Systems, are setting up new operations centers in other parts of the world (e.g., Bangalore) to take advantage of local talent and propel its growth strategies. For global companies, teams are often formed of individuals from different parts of the world. So we are increasingly trying to be fair to everyone on the team by having conference calls at all hours to the day (and night) to rotate which groups get to hold meetings during their normal business day. This actually brings up an important issue, the normal business day used to be 9-5. Because of global teams the ideal of a normal business day has been greatly expanded and employees are working at all different times. As organizations expand globally they will also need to consider the cultural differences of the geographies in which they operate. Given the technology advances of the past 10 years, plus the geographic dispersion of teams, work is happening virtually on a more regular basis. Employees are able to work from anywhere at any time to meet the needs of the organization. Sun Microsystems was the poster child or the virtual company as it saved significant dollars in bricks and mortar space by letting their employees work virtually and provided hoteling space for employees when they needed to work on site. Employees were happier because they did not have to commute to work, and the company won numerous awards for its 2

innovative practices for empowering the technology enabled workforce. Although the company did not survive over time, its practices were nonetheless innovative and certainly provided a role model for other companies who have followed in Suns footsteps. As organizations are becoming more virtual than ever, partly because of their global make-up, we are simultaneously learning to balance the needs of different generations, more women in the workforce, and different ethnic groups as the work demographics continue to shift. Changing Family Structures The traditional career was born in an era when men were the primary breadwinners of the family and women stayed at home to take care of the household and family. In fact, in the 1950s 63% of households still maintained this traditional family structure (Benko & Weisberg, 2007). Male employees from a traditional family structure could focus all of their energy and time into work because someone else was paying attention to the needs of the family and maintaining a household. This has helped shape the expectations we have in the workplace of how dedicated employees should be to their careers if they want to advance to high-level positions in the organization. In fact, executivesboth men and women-- at the highest levels of organizations today devote a significant amount of their time to work related activities. However, today this family model is less and less common. In fact, in todays workplace only 17% of households still reflect the traditional structure. With the rise of single parent homes and dual-career couples, the needs of employees have shifted dramatically. Thus the level of worker dedication that has been traditionally expected in order to get ahead is practically impossible for employees today who have to juggle both work and life on a regular basis. Whether it is about managing ones personal affairs, engaging in leisure activities, volunteer activities, raising children, or managing elder care, our personal lives are placing a great deal of time demands on us. New Expectations in the Workplace In the knowledge worker economy, workers feel their expertise makes them better decision makers about their work and careers. As a result they want to exert more control over their career and are less willing to yield to the advice of their manager or mentor. From a careers perspective, this means they are very willing to be self-directed and take initiative for their own careers, acting more as free agents than lifetime employees. As a consequence of this generations desire to be in control of their own careers, when asked what they will be doing in 5+ years a majority of them report that they will be self-employed (K. Wheeler, 2009 personal communication). The desire to work more autonomously is new for the workplace. In the past, employees have sought the comfort, camaraderie, and safety of working for a big firm. Given the invention of the personal computer and ever increasing bandwidth, younger generation employees are able to find camaraderie in a more virtual world. Comfort and safety are just not words people often use to describe work today. Seeing multiple rounds of layoffs has resulted in employee dedication to their own career vs. their company. As a result, company loyalty has been replaced by employees who are savvy about their marketability, and they are regularly making stay/leave decisions based on changing factors in their work and personal lives. While today they may be perfectly happy in their role, as life circumstances change they may seek 3

out alternative job situations if they think their organization is not willing to offer them the flexibility or the deal that suits their current life needs. If your organization is not providing the flexibility and control that employees are demanding, you may have less ability to attract and retain the best and brightest. Generation X & Y employees have expressed values that are very pro-family and both men and women indicate that career decisions must consider family first. Thus, for the first time ever it is not unusual for mid-career employees to turn down a promotion because it would require more hours, more travel or relocation, thereby taking away from family time or personal time. Employees are choosing quality of life over career advancement. Contemporary Career Models There are several contemporary career models that reflect the changes in expectations being expressed by todays employees. The Protean career was defined by Hall (Hall, 1996, Briscoe & Hall, 2006) as a highly individualized career that is self-directed by the individual and guided by their own personal values and subjective measures of success. This places the individual, not the company, in control of career management and development decisions. This aligns with the trend for organizations to view employees as career self-reliant. In 1996 Arthur and Rousseau introduced the concept of the Boundaryless career, which is defined as being independent of a traditional organizational arrangement and being beyond the boundary of any one employer. While the concept of the Boundaryless career is distinct from the Protean career it is complimentary in nature, rather than conflicting. These individuals believe they are self-directed and that they are their own career. They have skills which are transferable to any environment. Their unique set of skills and experiences are what make up their career and not any specific association with a particular company. Thus, they do not see their company as the boundary of their career, but rather their career has no organizational boundary. Although there has been some concern on the part of employers about employees with a Boundaryless career mindset because they have assumed that these individuals are not committed to the organization, research has shown that this is not in fact the case. Briscoe & Finkelstein (2009) have found that employees with a Boundaryless career orientation did not have significantly different levels of organizational commitment than other employees. The two most recent career models speak to the tradeoffs that people continuously make as their life circumstances evolve over time. The Kaleidoscope Career Model (Mainiero, L. A., & Sullivan, S., 2005) draws the analogy of careers to looking through a kaleidoscope; As we turn the knobs based on personal needs, the picture changes for us. They propose that individuals are constantly adjusting and making career decisions based on three different factors that come in and out of focus for them at different stages of their career: authenticity, being true to oneself; balance, the equilibrium between work and non-work demands on ones time; and challenge, defined as stimulating work and career advancement. Recent research in generational differences (Sullivan, Forret, Carraher & Mainiero, 2009) found that Xers reported higher needs for authenticity and balance than Boomers, where as there were no significant differences in these two generations needs for challenge. Although less of a career model per se, recent work on Mass Career Customization (Benko, C. & Weisberg, A., 2007) suggests that organizations would best serve the needs of their employees if, rather than offering flexible work arrangements which has not been a rousing success, they offered mass career customization along four variables: pace, workload, schedule/location, level. The idea is that 4

unlike Flexible Work Arrangements which were administered as requested, everyone would have an opportunity to transparently dial up or dial down on their job along these four factors as their life needs changed. The authors proposed that peoples careers would look more like sin waves, climbing and falling over time as personal circumstances changed requiring different levels of ability to contribute at work. The authors of this concept suggest that if we openly discuss career needs on an annual basis (and discuss the implications of changes upfront on pay, benefits, time to promotion, etc.) and employers were willing to customize roles to fit individuals needs, then employees would be more likely to stay with an employer as their life changed as opposed to looking for a new job that would be more accommodating.

Defining Career Success Results from employee surveys commonly report that satisfaction with career development is one of the lowest rated items in the survey. This is a wake-up call for organizations because lots of research is now pointing to the fact that continuous learning and personal growth is one of the most important factors in employee engagement and retention (Towers Watson, 2010 Global Workforce Study, Sirota Survey Intelligence, 2010; The New Employee/Employer Equation Survey, June 2004, Harris Interactive). Traditionally employees have defined career success in terms of very objective measures of success: pay, title, and promotions (or climbing the corporate ladder). However, todays organizations have significantly different shapes than the hierarchical organizations of the past. With new generations entering the workforce that have different sets of values, we need to begin to define career success in new ways. No longer will employees be able to only look up for a promotion, but people will need to look laterally for new growth experiences. The new career does not have an endpoint, but rather should be considered a journey of continuous growth and learning. Rather than talking about the career ladder we are more likely to being to talk in terms of the career web, where the next steps to build ones career are more likely to be lateral or adjacent moves. Moving forward career success is more likely to be defined by a combination of objective and subjective measures of success. While pay, title and promotions will still play a role in how employees define success, we have already begun to see a shift in employees beginning to use other subjective measures to gauge their success such as: gaining increases in levels of responsibility, new experiences, building new capabilities, finding meaningful work, enjoying work, having time for family and personal time (for community activities, education, and leisure), recognition, and respect at work and in my professional community. As HR professionals, we need to tap into these new, more subjective, measures of career success to attract and retain both older workers on the cusp of retirement and Gen X and Gen Y employees. Given how savvy todays employees are about their own marketability, organizations need to constantly prove to their employees that there are compelling reasons to stay.

Six Key Things Organizations Can Do to Facilitate Career Success Over the past two decades organizations have encouraged their employees to be career self-reliant; Theyve been telling employees to take charge of their own careers and not rely on the organization to provide guidance. While this worked to some extent with the Protean and Boundaryless employee who needs to be in charge of his/her own career as they move across companies, the changing landscape for careers and new expectations of employees in the workplace require greater collaboration. While I do believe that employees must take charge, the organization needs to help facilitate the process by providing clarity and opportunity. In this new world, I do believe there are six key things that organizations can do to help facilitate career success: 1. Clearly communicate the strategy and direction of the organization In order to ensure an employees career goals are aligned with the companys goals, the company needs to be open about its strategy and future directions. If the company plans on pursuing new opportunities which would make some skill sets obsolete, employees should know this up front and decide for themselves if it is time to move on or if they want to be on the forefront of developing new skills to help explore new opportunities. Employees cant be in charge of their career and make good career decisions (e.g., which is the best role to take to develop themselves for the future) if they dont understand where the organization is going. 2. Help employees learn about new opportunities within your existing organization Many employees find it easier to leave their current organization to get new experiences and build their portfolio of skills than to take a new role in a different function within the current organization. In fact, it is common for managers to horde good talent for their own personal needs than to look at what is best for the individual and the organization. Senior management can help change this behavior by encouraging and facilitating internal transfers. Some organizations even help employees broker relationships with people in other functions/divisions to help them explore new opportunities within the organization. If employees value growth and learning, then we must find new ways for them to learn the business within the organization. Taking a lateral move into a different function can help build a breadth of knowledge of the organization that will help individuals build leadership skills. If you have a good employee, it is much cheaper to get that person a new job internally than it would be to completely replace him. Therefore, it is incumbent on managers to understand employees career goals and help them find new opportunities that will build skills to help them achieve their objectives even if it means moving to another part of the organization. While employees need to define what they want from their careers, it is up to the organization (and thats usually their manager) to help guide the individual to new developmental opportunities. Managers need to get better at looking beyond their own group for growth opportunities for their direct reports. We need to stop reinforcing the idea that career growth means an upward promotion and start discussing the importance of lateral moves for development and progression.

3. Proactively manage the opportunities available for high-potential employees Most people learn through experience, so getting access to development opportunities is key for retaining top talent and keeping them engaged. However, more often than not access to new opportunities is either dependent on being in the right place at the right time, or being connected and hearing about the opportunity before others. When we leave it up to managers to find development opportunities for their employees our results are often hit or miss. When considering your most valuable employees it is important to be more purposeful in their development and to plan for key experiences that will help to develop the skills they need to become good managers or leaders. Some companies have taken the approach of creating a talent council where the most high-potential employees are discussed and their development needs indentified. Then this council works to identify upcoming openings or special assignments that will help to build the skills or experiences needed for personal growth. 4. Help employees customize their own career provide flexible work structures Careers will look different in the future for a majority of employees. With all of the aforementioned changes in demographics and values there are new needs in the workplace and if we want to be attractive to the best talent in the market we need to find a way to be flexible. Companies such as Deloitte Consulting LLP, Ernst & Young, and SAS (Benko & Weisberg, 2007) have found a way through allowing all employees to craft their own deal and make tradeoffs in terms of hours worked, pace of advancement, travel requirements, telecommuting, and type of role. Employees have different cycles in their lives and the employers who are most able to attract them are those that will allow employees to ramp up or ramp down during their career depending on different events going on in their personal lives. This allows the individual to integrate themselves with their work as opposed to choose work or family. For some organizations this may mean redesigning some roles to allow for individuals to be successful as they define success. But one important factor to keep in mind is that when tradeoffs are made the implications of those tradeoffs for all aspects of employment must be made clear so that there are no surprises. For example, does an employees who wants to work 80% because of elder care needs get full benefits or are the benefits also reduced? While many organizations have offered flexible work arrangements overtime this has generally been done on a one-off basis and is set at one point in time and often not readdressed unless the employee brings it up. Mass Career Customization, described previously, integrates an annual career discussion with the individuals personal needs and allows them to change any aspect of their work as their life situation changes. It is expected that changes will occur over time. At times an employee may need to back off and at other times they may want to ramp up their contribution to make up for times when they had to slow down. If organizations were better at customizing careers for individuals we would not see the type of mass exodus of women leaders that has historically been true. These women are not leaving the workplace because they dont want to work; they are leaving because it is impossible to manage their workloads from their personal and work lives. Although women may have been the proverbial canary in a coal mine we are now seeing these new expectations being held by all employees men and women alike. 7

This concept makes it incumbent on managers to become career coaches so that they understand the needs and desires of their employees and that they help their employees achieve personalized career success. Although the employee should be self-directed and articulate what they need, the manager is the vehicle for crafting or finding a role that would enable individual success. 5. Clearly articulate expectations at different levels Employees often get frustrated when they dont know how to get ahead and they dont understand how to develop themselves for the future. By being clear about performance expectations for the future, and at different levels of the organization, employees will be able to more accurately self-assess if they have what it takes to move ahead in the organization. Many organizations have employees rate themselves and managers rate their employees as part of a performance management or career management conversation. Sometimes employees may have an inaccurate perception of their ability to advance in the organization, and having clear expectations will help managers with that very difficult conversation.

6. Managers are the key source for developmental experiences Most organizations are stuck in the model of offering a laundry list of training courses for employees and believing that this suffices for the organizations responsibility in career management. But if you open up any article or text book on adult learning, it will say that 70% of our learning should come from on-the-job developmental experiences, 20% should come from learning from others, and only 10% from taking courses/reading books (McCall, Eichinger & Lombardo (2007). Managers have not fully realized the critical role they play in crafting development opportunities for their employees. To get things done, we tend to ask people to do things they already know how to do. This is particularly true today when we have to do more with less and expediency is very helpful. But if our managers are not proactively thinking about special assignments or roles for team members with potential for advancement, then how will employees be able to continuously learn and grow? Given the changing demographics, family structures, and personal values organizations must reexamine what success looks like and help todays employees achieve their individual success. We have provided six ways to help organizations manage the career storm, now it is up to you to develop new programs and policies that will provide smooth sailing into the future.

___________________________________________________________________________ Edie Goldberg is the principal of E.L. Goldberg & Associates in Menlo Park, California. She focuses her practice on designing HR processes and programs to attract, engage, develop and retain employees. Before starting her own company, Goldberg worked for Towers Perrin as the global leader in career management, succession planning, and learning and development. She earned her Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Albany, State University of New York. She is a member of the Board of Directors for both HR People & Strategy (HRPS), and the California HR Strategy Forum.

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