Stop Worrying About Today and Focus on Tomorrow

If you’ve been following recent statistics on millennials in the workplace, you’ll know that as of today there are more millennials working across North America than there are Baby Boomers. In fact, by 2020 it is predicted that nearly 40% of the North American workforce will be millennials.

What does this mean to you?

Well, of course the impact (or lack thereof) will depend on the composition of generations across your organization today. But regardless, an exit of baby boomers from the workforce will have long reaching impacts.

• A loss of talent and experience that will be hard to capture.
• Changing demands on the structure and means of communication organizationally.
• More demand for introducing technology to support efficiency.
• Less demand for structured work hours.

My guess is you are already dealing with, or at least thinking about, the influences of these changes on your business – if you aren’t, now is the time to start.

But what about the other impacts this shift will have?

• What is the changing demographic of your key customer accounts?
• How will your seemingly younger customers or clients prefer to buy?
• How will your sales team connect with customers using new communication technology?
• How will you educate employees to deal with multiple generations outside your business?

Let me give you an example of how this might play out, at the simplest of levels.

Over the past few months I’ve been asking CEOs what policies they have around the use of texting in their workplace. The responses have ranged from, “no texting allowed,” to embracing texting on a customer-by-customer basis.

The answers are typically internally focused (what do we want our employees to do), versus externally focused (what do our customers prefer and future employee candidates prefer); Considerate of today (what market are we in) versus tomorrow (what market do we want to be in).

There’s no doubt that the next decade will see some of the most dramatic shifts in workplace structure and culture. The way to ensure you are prepared to take advantage of this shift is to create a compelling vision and strong actions in support of its attainment.

If you are looking for help in making this happen, grab a copy of my strategic action planner.

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© Shawn Casemore 2016. All rights reserved.