Rome has changed, and so shall the Romans have to.
From 1975 to 2000, these twenty-five years were the migration of the blue-collar workers to white-collar managers. People and skill management was not a lesson of textbooks. It was a lesson learned on the field. One grew in ranks basis their achievements, meeting umber goals, product, value, customer, service, and revenue numbers. Probably the remanences of the work culture from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. Not to forget that this work culture was an adaptation from the war into the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution had inherited the culture from the war or the regimental behaviour from the defence services.
The industrial or farming population were migrating to the emerging urban professional organizations finding their riches. The population was shaped like a pyramid, with many young people at the bottom, a medium number of middle-aged in the middle, and a few old folks on the top. This has changed radically in just the last few decades and will shift further over the decades ahead.
We now have a diamond- or rectangular-shaped populations courtesy combination of lower birth rates and longer life expectancies; at some point may have inverted pyramids — the old will outnumber the young. Yet, many of our talent management practices today are derived from this old idea. Thus, many of today's organizational designs and talent management practices are based on the idea that the population, and specifically the workforce, is shaped like a pyramid. As we prepare for a workforce in which older workers outnumber the young, we need to redesign many of our standard approaches, and the new geometry requires rethinking many aspects.
Here's are some legacy practices derived from the old assumption, along with questions that need answers.
Mandatory retirement — Will there be enough young people to replace those who leave? For many skill sets, the answer is increasingly "no." How can you make your workplace more attractive to older workers to encourage talented employees to stay on longer?
Linear careers — Do people always want to take on "more?" Career paths today assume that taking on more responsibility is the only logical move. One way to make your organization more attractive to older workers is to offer options to do less. Many people would like to stay active, but few want to work as hard at age 70 as they did at age 50. How can you create bell-shaped-curve career options that allow people to decelerate toward the end of their work lives?
Headcount-based metrics — Are your metrics limiting your ability to tap the widest possible pool of talent? Are you able to job-share and use part-time and cyclic workers?
Recruiting initiatives aimed primarily at young hires — If your business model depends on an influx of young talent, recognize that you're going to be challenged to hire a disproportionate share of the available hires. Are you really good at recruiting? If you can use talent at multiple levels, make sure your recruiting investments are geared to seek out people of all ages from a variety of sources?
Career paths that always move "up." Promotion has become a standard expectation — a primary form of reward and the key source of variety. It's how we get to do new things and make more money. This won't be a feasible approach in the new geometry. How can you give people variety without moving them up? How should you provide additional compensation opportunities? Is it appropriate to pay for breadth (people who can fill multiple roles)?
Prestige-based titles — Titles can lock organizations into an "always up" career path design. People are reluctant to take on a different role if the title associated with it isn't as prestigious as the one they currently hold. How can you begin to move toward task-based (Leader of XYZ Initiative) rather than prestige-based (Vice President) titles?
What would you add?
