There is a lot of talk about targeting the next generation of new talented, graduates called Gen Y or Millennials. And for good reason, they are supremely confident, well educated, know exactly what they want and how to get it. This is presenting some unique challenges for today’s businesses.
This past Friday we were asked to shed some light on the issue and presented at the annual Bright Futures conference, an excellent organisation that helps students and companies connect. A number of top employee brands were present including HP, KPMG, L’Oreal etc. Dr Graeme Codrington presented to both corporate companies and students on Being Talented and Winning the Talent Wars.
One of the key challenges that the companies were raising at the conference was how to attract young talent and alert them to job opportunities. One of our clients a Big 4 accountancy and consulting firm is doing innovative work in this area. They are promoting their employee brand by going to the spaces where young people are congregating such as FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube. Deloitte is interviewing and videotaping employees about how great it is to work at their company in a fun light hearted way and using the clips to promote job opportunities and attracting Millennial talent. Have a look at what Deloitte is doing on YouTube.
Barrie Bramley looks at the preoccupation many companies have with ‘talent’and the confusion it’s causing; as those who are grappling with it struggle to work out what to do with it? Barrie looks at the problem of scarce skills in the market place and the fact that when there’s a shortage of people with skills, you want to ensure that you ‘acquire’ the best people available. 
I am a huge fan of Eric Chester, an American author, speaker and consultant who focuses on understanding what he calls “Generation Why” (what a cool title!! I wish I had thought of that first). You can see his excellent work at 
“Never before has ‘HR’ (Human Resources) been so redundant within the corporation; yet paradoxically, never before has it been more critical.” In this article, Keith Coats offers a viewpoint on how companies can make the transition to the connection economy and arrive in tomorrow’s world with the requisite skills to not only survive but succeed and lead in the business world today.
Every now and again, TIME magazine has a seriously excellent, long and in depth, feature article that grabs my attention. I am not a subscriber, but always check TIME editions out on the newstand. These features are well researched and worth keeping.
A new generation of students - those born Internet-ready - is working it’s way throught the school system, and is about to hit the workplace, with all of its training rooms and courses. This “Millennial generation” (sometimes called “generation Y”) has a distinctive set of characterizing traits and unique learning interests that presents a serious challenge to existing educational institutions and methodologies.
Regular readers of this blog will know that many of the contributors are passionate cricket fans. (For our American readers, that’s the mysterious game that, in its purest form lasts five days and can end in an exciting draw!) Our fanaticism for the game is shared by at least 1 billion Indians. The world’s largest democracy has just had an unprecedented auction for international cricket stars, for the newly formed Indian Professional League. In the league, a number of Indian provincial teams get to “buy” international super stars to play with them. Each team can only have a maximum of 4 of these stars on the field at any time. They must also have four players under the age of 22 from India in the teams. The rest of the team is Indian. The bids in the auction will be paid to the player as a salary (I think I saw correctly that the Indian players in each team will be paid the same as the top paid international super star in their team). The contract is for three years.
Today the world wakes up to the most expensive oil ever. Those who believe in market dynamics of supply and demand will have an interesting time explaining this. The problem with oil is not that there isn’t enough oil around, but rather to do with where the available oil is to be found.
In the past six months, a slew of free online services has popped up to answer this question, offering widgets for budgeting, automatic bill pay, mobile alerts, and social networking. All are fighting to be the anti-Quicken. Although Intuit’s venerable personal-finance software commands 70% of the market, its $30 to $100 price tag, hundreds of features, and required hour or two a week of data entry are unlikely to appeal to a generation raised on Halo and diagnosed with ADD. Sure enough, Quicken’s 15 million users have an average age of 47. If personal finance for most folks is like personal hygiene–an unpleasant chore motivated by necessity–Quicken is Old Spice.
Here’s an article I’ve just finished reading, written by Nicolas van der Meer a 2nd year TOPP Trainee at Standard Bank)
Pfizer has recently launched a wonderful new initiative for their most talented staff: the outsourcing of the drudge work associated with most jobs. It’s quite a simple concept, really - top end, talented staff spend a fair proportion of their time doing admin or dreary work that does not best utilise their talents. If you could someone else to do that work for them, you’d free up your top talent, keep them focused (and excited) and get more out of them. Nice.
I get questions every month from businesspeople looking for something about the newest generation of workers. They’d like an updated version of Twentysomething or Beyond Generation X, books I wrote in 1991 and 1996. Along with Bruce Tulgan’s Managing Generation X, they’re the classics on managing and motivating young employees. The thing is, the young employees we were talking about in those three books are well established in the workplace today, and the next generation is showing up with a whole new perspective, a different set of values, a distinctive work ethic. They’re as different from Generation X as they can be. By and large, it’s the Gen-Xers who are managing them, and who are looking for help in understanding just what the Millennials are all about. Thus this article. I think you’ll find a fairly comprehensive treatment of Millennial employees.
Over the years I have been doing presentations about attracting and retaining talent, I have watched global lists of “Best Companies to Work For”. Very consistently, SAS Institute, a privately owned software company based in the USA, has been rated as one of the very best. 
The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum’s 2007 Performance and Talent Management Trend Survey was recently released. It polled more than 725 (primarily North American) HR and performance professionals, executives and talent management experts. The basic summary: everyone, everywhere is doing pretty badly on the issue of talent management.
A survey of more than 2,500 employers and managers by recruitment website 
Karin Wellman, co-founder and director of TomorrowTraining, asks, “Who is training your trainers?” Trainers and those in charge of the development of other staff members are often neglected as recipients of training and development themselves. Karin highlights this as a critical problem for businesses today, and suggests a solution.
Not many people think about maternity benefits when applying for a job, and yet organisations differ hugely in what they provide for parents. Some offer the bare legal minimum, others offer a year’s maternity leave on full pay. In an era of increased awareness of the importance of work-life integration, The Guardian argues, following a study of 250 organisations, that it is the smart organisations that take maternity benefits seriously who will attract and retain talented staff.
I heard on the news today that Sprint-Nextel, America’s third largest mobile phone service provider this week terminated the accounts of its 1,000 most annoying customers. It said in the notification to these clients that they were being terminated because they phoned the customer care centers too often - on average about once a day - often the same issues, and mainly with dumb ones (this isn’t what they actually said, but it’s what they meant). They have waived the termination fees, and given the people a month to change service provider. Read the 
Buppies - Black yuppies. Black young upwardly mobile professionals. Research shows that this is one of the fastest growing demographic groups in South Africa, but many companies and leaders have no idea how to manage them. Aloysias Maimane, a new member of the TomorrowToday team and a top South African presenter and facilitator, provides some insights into this important group.
I spend much of my time helping companies to create corporate cultures that will attract and retain talented young people. This involves looking at everything from terms and conditions of employment, remuneration policies and bonus schemes, to office layout, use of technology, management styles and team dynamics. One of my biggest frustrations is that very often those within an organisation who understand what needs to be done to get top talent to work there are overruled by those who are focused on saving money, efficiencies and creating “lean and mean” environments.