WORK & FAMILY
RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENT: THE GENERATION DIVIDE
T
This article is based on a seminar given by Nancy Lewis, TThis arthis art
president of Progressive Tpprereside echniques, Inc. at the 2008
WWoomen of Color STEM
Conference.men
“Retaining employees is one of the biggest challenges
that organizations are facing today—along with the
generational divide,” said Nancy Lewis, president of Pro-
gressive Techniques. “You get them in the door but they
don’t stay. People leave because they don’t feel appreci-
ated.” High employee turnover means low productivity
and lost time, totalling “an estimated $5 trillion drain on
the economy,” Lewis said.
According to the 2009 US Hiring Forecast & Recruiting
Trends, nearly one-third of workers of more than 5,000
surveyed plans to change jobs within the next two years.
Twenty-six percent say they are dissatisfi ed with career
advancement opportunities in their current employment.
Eighteen percent are dissatisfi ed with their work/life
balance, and 47 percent will leave their current jobs for
positions with better pay and/or career advancement
opportunities.
Lewis, a trainer, consultant and author, works with
organizations that want to grow their people and with
people who want a more positive impact in their careers.
“One of the things I consistently hear as I travel around
Nancy Lewis
President
the country is that people see a career as a launching pad Progressive Techniques, Inc.
to where they want to go next,” Lewis said.
A recent study of more than 19,000 post-exit interviews
identifi ed several “hidden reasons” why employees added. Employers have a stake in helping people
resign: the job is not as expected; job doesn’t fi t talents maintain balance, because “if you don’t do that a lot
and interests; little or no feedback or coaching; no hope of younger workers won’t stay long,” Lewis warned.
for career growth; or employees feel devalued and unrec-
Although young women face many of the same career
ognized.
challenges as did boomers 25 years earlier, women today
Generational differences are also a factor, says Lewis. “Re- are spending more time at work than their predecessors.
cently, I was with a law enforcement agency in Oklaho- When applying for new positions, workers say some of
ma,” she explained. “They had a deputy chief, a boomer, the most important attributes they look for when evalu-
who had a discussion with a new recruit, a GenXer, that ating a potential employer are: good career advance-
didn’t go really well. The deputy told the recruit, ‘That’s ment opportunities, good work culture, and an ability
how we do things here. If you don’t like it you can leave.’ to offer fl exible schedules.
The recruit walked out the door after 26 weeks on the
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unem-
job.
ployment rate for women age 25–34 rose two percent-
“People get hired into an organization: Lockheed, NASA, age points from 4.8 to 6.8 percent from January 2008
or IBM, but they leave their manager, based on how that through February 2009.
person treats them or doesn’t,” Lewis said. “When people
come to work they are not just an employee, they are a
wife, mom, a husband, a brother a sister; they bring their
whole self and they want that to be acknowledged,” she
12 WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2009
www.womenofcolor.net
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