There is a massive generational shift underway in the workforce today – the post-Baby Boomer shift that demographers and workforce planners have been anticipating for decades; and it’s not only a generational shift in the numbers in the workforce, but an epic turning point.
The workforce is aging on one end of the spectrum and getting younger on the other, leaving a gap in the middle, with the prime age workforce shrinking as an overall percentage of the workforce.
Bruce Tulgan and RainmakerThinking have been tracking this transformation for more than 20 years, with the latest generational shift study presented in RainmakerThinking’s latest white paper, “The Great Generational Shift: the Emerging Post-Baby Boomer Workforce”.
The generational shift is no ordinary generation gap in the workplace, the study finds. Because this is an era of profound historical changes, generational difference today is a powerful lens through which to understand changes in the very nature of the workplace:
* The myth of job security is dead;
* Short-term rewards and benefits are the “new normal”;
* Employees today are much less likely to believe an employer’s long-term promises; and
* The free-agent mindset is now the prevailing workforce mindset.
The generational shift affects all members of the post-Boomer workforce: employers, workers, leaders, managers, and supervisors.
