Workplace Trends and Issues

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM, 2007) has identified the top challenges facing companies today:

  1. Succession planning (replacement of retiring leaders)

  2. Recruitment and selection of talented employees

  3. Engaging and retaining talented employees

  4. Providing leaders with the skills to be successful

  5. Rising health care costs

  6. Creating/maintaining a performance-based culture (rewarding exceptional job performance)

B-11

IN FOCUS

Name, Title, Generation

If you visit Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube as part of your daily routine, you’re probably a millennial. If avatar, blog, and Wiki don’t sound like Star Wars characters to you, then you’re surely a millennial. So what’s a millennial? Google it and you’ll find millennials are the Net Generation, born between 1981 and 1999. Millennials, also called Generation Y, are walking around loaded—with gadgets, that is. They are the most technologically savvy generation, and they have entered the workplace. They’re great at multitasking, pragmatic thinking, future-looking, team playing, and tech-operating. But they have their faults, too: They wear iPods during meetings, assume everything is public, have narcissistic tendencies, demand immediate praise, and don’t like to be criticized, not even constructively (Tyler, 2008).

Generation gaps are challenging employers in many ways. Some employers are seeing as many as four generations of workers walk through their doors. In their book When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work (2002), authors Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman discuss the generational issues facing the workplace. Multiple age groups means differing values, goals, and perceptions. In one example, they describe the ways the four generations view the process of feedback:

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Differing Work Styles Millennials often prefer to work collaboratively and may be most comfortable with the constant interaction that this work environment facilitates.
AP Photo/The Christian Science Monitor, Ann Hermes

  • Traditionalists (born 1900–1945): No news is good news.

  • Baby boomers (born 1946–1964): Once a year, with lots of documentation.

  • Generation Xers (born 1965–1980): Sorry to interrupt, but how am I doing?

  • Millennials (born 1981–1999): Feedback whenever I want it at the push of a button . . . and NOW!

Surely, the workplace of the future must embrace all generations, train them to get along, and build complementary teams. Leaders of the future will need to inspire all of their employees, from the traditionalists to the millennials.

To face these challenges, the workplace of the future is expected to become more dynamic, diversified, flexible, and responsive. Organizations and their employees will need to adapt to the ever-changing world of work, complete with resource limitations and technological innovations. Let’s examine how some of these challenges are being addressed.

Workforce Diversity

RECRUITING AND RETAINING DIVERSE TALENT

Changing workforce demographics continue to challenge many employers (see the In Focus box “Name, Title, Generation”). Diverse employees have diverse needs, interests, and expectations. Organizations that can best address these issues will be most likely to attract top candidates. Several organizations are creating excellent perk packages to recruit among the diversified field of top candidates. Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” (2008) shows more companies offering telecommuting (84 percent), compressed workweeks (82 percent), on-site gyms (69 percent), job sharing (63 percent), and on-site child care (29 percent), many of which are highly desirable to different populations such as working parents or older workers. Google, Fortune’s Best Company, doesn’t stop there. At Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, employees enjoy an amazing variety of on-site services such as gourmet meals, child care, health care, oil changes, car washes, dry cleaning, massage therapy, gyms, hairstylists, and fitness classes, to name just a few. Often called the Google Campus, this laid-back environment has proved successful in attracting the best candidates in the industry.

B-12

Telework and Telecommuting

THE BEST RETENTION TOOL

The latest estimates show that 33 million Americans hold jobs that could be performed at home by telecommuting (Fisher, 2008). Telecommuting programs offer advantages such as flexible work schedules, more freedom at work, and less time wasted commuting. One study focused on the best practices of several telework organizations, including Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Dow Chemical Corporation. These organizations were identified as having model telework programs in place, with recruitment and retention as the primary organizational benefits (Telework Coalition, 2006). More recently, the 2008–2009 WorldatWork Salary Budget Survey (n = 2,288) reported that the number of respondent employers offering telework options to their employees jumped from 30 percent in 2007 to 42 percent in 2008 (WorldatWork, 2008–2009). As with any major change in the workplace, telework poses new challenges to organizations. How does working from home affect performance, workplace relations, and career prospects? A recent meta-analysis asked these and many other questions about the effects of telecommuting (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007). The researchers found telecommuting has predominantly positive effects for both employees and employers, including higher job satisfaction, employee morale and autonomy, and improved supervisor–employee relations. I/O psychologists may guide employers to accept telework as an important solution to many problems.

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Telework or Telecommuting: Working at Home Kipp Jarecke-Cheng, a director of global public relations and communications for a design and technology consulting company, works from home in order to avoid a long commute. According to the Census Bureau, the typical telecommuter is now a 49-year-old college graduate working for a company with more than 100 employees (Tugend, 2014). For the self-motivated individual with good communication skills, telecommuting offers the advantages of greater autonomy and flexible time management. On the down side, teleworkers are more likely to work in the evenings and on the weekends (Steward, 2000). Men and women vary in their reasons for telecommuting. Being able to earn money and care for their children at the same time is a motivating factor for many women (Sullivan & Lewis, 2001).
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times/Redux

Internet Recruiting

USING THE WEB TO RECRUIT TOP TALENT

Internet job-search services, such as monster.com, hotjobs.com, and company Web sites, have changed the way in which employees are recruited. In its 2007 survey, the Conference Board, a global business membership and research organization, found that 73 percent of job seekers used the Internet to find information about prospective employers, to post resumes on job boards, and to gain career advice. This surge in Internet job-seeking poses new challenges for employers, such as compliance with new legal requirements for online applicant tracking, or simply how to narrow down the multitude of resume submissions brought on by the ease of resume posting.

Work-Life Balance

ENGAGING AND RETAINING EMPLOYEES WITH FAMILIES

Juggling the demands of both career and family can lead to many conflicts. This struggle, often called work–family conflict, results in higher absenteeism, lower morale, and higher turnover in the workplace. Further, results from a meta-analysis reviewing 38 studies found that employee perceptions of family-friendly work culture, along with supportive bosses and spouses, can reduce work-family conflict (Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2006). Therefore, it makes good business sense to help working parents balance the demands of work and family life. Unfortunately, several studies indicate that few U.S. employers have family-friendly policies. A recent Forbes survey revealed that the U.S. workplace is not family-oriented when compared with other industrialized countries (Forbes, 2007). The Forbes survey found that paid maternity and paternity leave, paid sick days, alternative work schedules, and other such family-friendly policies are lacking in many U.S. companies. Research also shows that “[workplace] policies for families in the U.S. are weaker than those of all high-income countries and even many middle-and low-income countries” (Heymann, 2007). Although many companies advertise family-friendly environments, few of them actually offer initiatives such as flexible scheduling. More employers must begin to adopt family-friendly policies and build pro-family cultures to attract and retain this large sector of the workforce.

B-13

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Juggling Career and Family Women compose nearly half of the total U.S. labor force, and work-family conflict has become a more significant issue for parents of both sexes. This businesswoman must balance her son’s child-care schedule against demands at the office.
Ariel Skelley/Getty Images

To keep pace with evolving challenges such as the ones described above, I/O psychologists will constantly need to adjust the focus of their research and its applications. In the future, I/O psychologists will continue to have a significant role in and around the workplace. To explore what it’s like to be an I/O psychologist, we’ll look at the preparation required for the job, and where you might go from there.