Gloom in the Workplace

Generational diversity is a not subject in the HR community and we all realize that in not the too distant future, we will have five generations in the workplace. Leadership IQ, a Washington DC based training company polled over 11,000 employees in the United States and found that all generations expressed some dissatisfaction. Furthermore, they note that the rate of disconnect was almost directly related to age. The older worker was the most satisfied and the younger generations expressed the lowest satisfaction rate.

The survey asked a variety of questions relative to the workplace and the management style being presented today. The title of the article was “Workplace Gloom is Universal” and appeared in the February issues of Training and Development by staff writer, Michael Laff.

We have focused our training and development course, programs, and processes on mid-level management and we also believe that many managers are not learning the intangible skills necessary to manage a staff. Most employees want feedback in a timely fashion and they want to know exactly where they stand if relation to their peers in terms of performance and productivity. Keeping the workforce content is not a priority in most organizations today. Competition, economic conditions, cost of materials and supplies, healthcare benefits and more are keeping us all very “short-sighted” with our employees. It appears that the younger generation craves praise and become frustrated easily. Don’t we all?

People skills have been lost in history. They obviously haven’t been passed down through the generations. It must be because the older generation has accommodated to the “lack of praise” in the workplace and is no longer offering that commodity. When will we realize that we must continue to motivate our employees and keep them engaged in the strategy and development of our company? If we don’t, they will continue to move on until another company does just that. How many jobs do we expect them to have by the time they are thirty five?

We need to start training our managers or that figure will be in double digits.