21st Century Needs With 20th Century Issues
It’s 2018 and yet a lot of companies still live in the 20th century. Why does this keep happening? Millenials make up to 34% of the workforce (according to a study in 2015), that’s 1 in every 3 empoyees, and the percentage will keep growing in these next years. Why do I focus on Millennials? Because unlike the X-Generation, Millennials had contact with technology among other qualities since an early age that translates into a different set of needs on the work environment.
Yet, most of the companies around the world are owned and ran by Baby boomers and by X-Gen’s. This might begin to explain why there is still a lack of understanding and updated services, benefits, and carreer opportunities needed today. What do I mean by this? In a lot of companies worldwide, there is still strict work-hours to attend, a lack of balance (or appreciation) for work-life opportunities, promotions led by experience in a position rather than skills or talent, etc. While this keeps happening, their workforce is getting younger and younger. Job descriptions that involve only manual labor or repetitive activities are getting replaced by technology in a lot of companies, and so are a lot of jobs. Instead of focusing on shifting the job activities, companies tend to downsize people or keep low salaries.
The jobs of the future are happening right now and a lot of companies don’t even realize this. The lack of vision from these companies not only result in higher turn-over rates and less employee engagement, but ultimately, in poor revenues as a company, bad employers evaluations, and the danger of a shutdown. This can lead to even bigger problems in the economy. I know from first-hand experience, that a lof of these patterns happen because of a “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” perspective. It shure worked fine a few years ago, but now it’s time to move on and look for new solutions.
Fortunately, there have been a lot of advancements during these last five years to cope with the changes and needs in the workplace. We went from repetitive tasks to employee experience, from regular paychecks to gamification systems, and from having bosses to having leaders or mentors.
Nowadays, some benefits such as flexible schedule, home-office, maternity leave, and others are becoming regular in some industries. Organizations should be fully aware of the consequences of falling behind on HR policies and needs. The workforce is changing, the needs are changing, the times and the economy are changing; so why to remain in the past? As organizations continue to evolve, we’ll begin to experience a new wave of changes to which we’ll find at some point hard to believe and maybe even struggle to keep up with, but remember, that’s the beauty of change.
