Today, I spoke to Jeanne Meister, who is an internationally recognized workplace learning consultant, and the author of The 2020 Workplace (Harper). In this interview, Jeanne disects the 2020 workplace, shows some very interesting research findings, explains how companies can retain talent, gives her opinion on ROWE (I previously interviewed the creators of ROWE), and more.

Jeanne, what are the demographics for the 2020 workplace? How will this change how we work?

As we move into the future, most workplaces will have five generations of increasingly diverse individuals working side by side—Traditionalists, born before 1946; Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964; Generation X, born between 1965 and 1976; Millennials, born between 1977 and 1997; and Generation 2020, born after 1997.

In fact, one of the trends we see in looking to the future is that there will be five generations working side by side in the workplace.

The U.S. workforce will be both older and younger, as the number of workers aged 55 years and older will grow from 13 percent of the labor force in 2000 to 20 percent in 2020 while at the same time, Millennials (individuals born between 1977 and 1997), who currently represent 22 percent of all workers, will be entering the workforce in record numbers and by 2014 will make up almost 47 percent of the workforce. Additionally, the U.S. workforce will be comprised of more women, as Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary of the Center for American Progress estimate that women are now half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. Compare this to 1967, when women made up only one-third of all workers. Finally, the U.S. workforce will be more ethnically diverse, particularly among younger workers, as from 1980 to 2020, Caucasian workers in the United States will decline from 82 percent to 63 percent. During the same period, the non-Caucasian portion of the workforce is projected to double from 18 percent to 37 percent, with the Latino portion almost tripling from 6 percent to 17 percent of the workforce.

Taken together, these shifts will present significant challenges and opportunities. How companies prepare for these changes will be crucial to attracting, developing, and keeping top talent.

Will it be harder to keep the next generation of talent? Won’t the average employee have 8 jobs at the age of 30?

To the average employee the goal is “work-life flexibility.” This will become paramount, and will replace “work-life balance”.

Work/life flexibility reinforces the view that there is no such thing as work time and home time. Rather, workers will aspire to have the flexibility to manage both work and home lives. Work/life flexibility revolves around the ability to multitask and assign work to various chunks of time so that all of a day’s priorities are accomplished, including those at work, at home, and at the gym. If the workplace of the future can allow for this flexibility, it will be easy to retain the next generation of talent.

What are some ways that companies can attract and retain talent?

One new way to attract and retain talent in the future will be to profile a company’s investment in corporate social responsibility. We predict that the focus on people, planet, and profits, also known as the triple bottom line, will become the main way organizations attract and retain new hires. This will be critical because 79 percent of a sample of 1,800 13- to 25-year-olds want to work for a company that cares about how it impacts on and contributes to society, as the Cone 2006 Millennial Cause Study found. More than half also say they would refuse to work for an irresponsible corporation.

Thus companies will need to move beyond corporate philanthropy by integrating corporate social responsibility into their core business strategy and by reporting quantitative goals to current employees, prospective hires, and investors. The Millennials and Gen 2020s will demand companies to be socially responsible or companies will risk losing valuable talent to competitors.

Do you believe in ROWE? Do people really need to work 9-5?

Absolutely ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment) is where we are headed in the 2020 workplace. In the 2020 workplace, creating a work/life-flexible world for employees will be key. An employee could leave the office at 3:00 p.m., go home, prepare dinner, help the children with their homework, then go back online at 9:00 p.m., after the children are in bed and the dinner dishes are done. If you can do this and still produce results for your employer, why not?

One company that has led the rest in creating work/life flexibility is Best Buy with its Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). In the results-oriented work environment, employees are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done. Since its inception in 2002 as a pilot program, ROWE has been incorporated as an official part of Best Buy’s recruiting pitch as well as its orientation for new hires. The company claims that productivity has increased 35 percent for those on ROWE, and employee engagement—which measures employee satisfaction and is often a barometer of retention—is way up too, according to a Gallup Organization survey that audits corporate cultures. If people can carry their office around virtually in their pockets or pocketbooks, why should it matter where and when they work if they meet or exceed their goals?

If you could change one thing about the workplace in 2020, what would it be?

Employees must adopt a global mind-set.

One of the most important changes that HR departments could begin spearheading immediately is the development of an organizational capacity to work with a geographically dispersed set of employees, customers, partners, and suppliers from diverse cultures across time, space, geographies, and organizational boundaries. Being truly global is evidenced by developing talent in-country to lead the organization and not rely extensively on expatriate assignments. Ask yourself: How many of your current executives live in the countries where you do business? Is the number of native executives proportional to the revenue of those countries?

If your organization is like many others, far more executives live in the headquarters country and key decisions are frequently made thousands of miles away from customers. How many of your senior executive team are from the countries where you are experiencing growth? One of the keys here is to consider how long it takes to build talent, especially in emerging markets, where the talent pool may be less experienced, and compare that to your organization’s revenue growth plans in emerging markets. To get started now, companies can begin by evaluating their global leadership mix; encouraging early career global assignments and ensuring that promotions to executive positions reflect the global makeup of your customer and revenue base.

——-
Jeanne Meister is the author of The 2020 Workplace (Harper). She is an internationally recognized workplace learning consultant dedicated to delivering competitive advantage, innovation and improved business results for organizations. Jeanne has worked as a consultant with over 200 organizations on launching, managing and reinventing a corporate university. The range of client engagements includes; Anheuser-Busch, Bank of Malaysia, Defense Acquisition University, Guardian Life Insurance, Ingersoll-Rand Corporation, and Wachovia. Jeanne is an adjunct faculty member in the MBA executive education program at the Indian School Of Business in Hyderabad, India. In addition, Jeanne’s research has been profiled in such publications as the Financial Times, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, HR Executive, Journal of Business Strategy, TRAINING, T&D Magazine, Outlook, a publication of Accenture and Workforce Management.

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No, I’m not talking about Star Trek but rather a common drive amongst leaders that can get them in trouble.  I’ve seen this drive recently in a couple of different business-owning customers.  My definition of it is a fast-acting, emotionally-driven decision.

I think there is some value to it especially in the early, entrepreneurial stages of a company.  Start-ups certainly need to be nimble to compete against larger, established competitors with deeper pockets.  However, the impulse drive can outlive its value if the owner/founder overuses it as his/her company grows larger.

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Daytime television hostess, Food Network celebrity chef, and best-selling author – Rachael Ray’s career has many lessons to teach those interested in achieving personal branding success from zero to 60 in less than a decade.

In less than 10 years, Rachael Ray’s personal brand has taken her from an Albany, NY, grocery store to multiple streams of income from television, books, magazines, and product endorsements.

And, like many other successfully branded personalities, Rachael Ray hasn’t strayed far from the original 30-Minute Meals book and brand that launched her career from upstate New York to her break-out spot on the nationally televised Today show, and all that has happened since.

The origins of Rachael Ray’s brand

Rachael Ray didn’t “invent” her 30-Minute Meals brand, but she was savvy enough to recognize the havoc that Domino’s Pizza’s heavily-promoted delivery in 30-minutes, or it’s free! offer was having on the sales of the upscale gourmet market where she was a buyer.

To combat the market erosion created by Domino’s Pizza, she began teaching Wednesday evening 30-minute meal cooking classes that became quite popular, attracting a broad cross-section of attendees to the store where she worked. This lead to a weekly segment on the local television station’s news, providing her with an opportunity to develop her television “voice.”

In response to customer comments that her 30-minute recipes were not all available in one place, she published the first edition of her employer-subsidized 30-Minute Meals recipe collection in 1999.

The initial print run of 10,000 copies sold out in 3 months, leading to more promotional opportunities, including Public Radio, and – eventually – a last-minute invitation to appear on the Today show, which was the turning point in her career.

In 2001, she signed her first Food Network contract for the first season of her syndicated 30-Minute Meals show.

Since then, she’s published nearly a dozen additional 30-Minute Meal recipe books. In 2005, she signed a contract for a daytime TV interview program with King World Productions, Oprah’s production company. Also, in 2005, she began to publish a magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, published in partnership with the Reader’s Digest.

Lessons from Rachael Ray’s personal branding success

Rachael Ray’s path to personal branding success contains numerous lessons, including:

1. Looking, listening, and doing. As buyer for an upscale market, Rachel Ray’s success was based on her analysis of current trends, listening to her customers, and creating a position that leveraged a competitor’s 30-minute delivery claim into a healthier and more family-friendly alternative.
2. Perseverance. As she described to Donny Deutsch, during an interview on his Big Idea show, the Today Show approached her during one of the Northeast’s biggest snowstorms and asked her to immediately leave home and travel the 150 miles from Albany to New York City. With the help of her mother, she made the trip, and the rest is history. But, where would her career be now, if she declined the invitation?
3. Consistence. Although she has expanded her presence to other Food Network shows, her 30-Minute Meals remains a continuing part of her brand.
4. Personality. The “down home” qualities that endeared her to homemakers from every walk of life in her Albany cooking classes remains a part of her brand. She’s not a cooking diva, she’s not a gourmet cook, and she’s not a sex symbol. What she is, however, is a genuine, enthusiastic, human being that people can relate to. Unlike Martha Stewart, her shows aren’t “perfect,” sometimes there are glitches. In addition, she’s not overly well-dressed, and she usually wears jeans. But, she comes across as someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a cross-country flight.
5. Passions. In addition to grass-roots persona, she shares her passions. Her parents often appear on her shows, as does her husband. When she goes to Paris, she does it with a food budget of 40 dollars a day, one of her popular shows. As a dog lover, she’s help develop a line of healthy dog foods.

What about your personal branding success?

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your commitment to your personal branding success:

1. Market intelligence. Are you constantly taking the market’s temperature, listening to your market, monitoring your competition, and analyzing not only who is taking business away from you, but coming up with counter-punches to regain lost business?
2. Discipline. If producers from Today called you right now, in the middle of a blizzard, would you drive 148 miles to be at the studio at 5:30 AM?
3. Commitment. Would you be able to balance a commitment to what brought you success with an open mind towards new opportunities?
4. Personality. Do you have an approach to clients and prospects that sets you apart from the obvious experts in your field?
5. Passion. Do you allow yourself to be defined by your passions and beliefs, and strive to incorporate them in your everyday decisions?

What do you think are the key building blocks and lessons you can learn from Rachael Ray’s path to personal branding success? Did I overlook something? Can you think of others who have created equally significant personal brand during the last 10 years? Do you think 10 years is too long, too short, or just about the right length of time to build a personal brand? What do you think lies ahead for Rachael Ray? Share your opinions and ideas, below, as comments!

Author:

Roger C. Parker shares ideas for planning, writing, promoting, & profiting from brand building books in his daily writing tips blog. His latest book is #BOOK TITLE Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Compelling Article, Book, & Event Titles.

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In these trying economic times, we are all looking for opportunities to save costs and increase productivity. Businesses have a huge opportunity to increase productivity staring them in the face that unfortunately has gone virtually undetected.

What is that opportunity? The reclaimed productivity comes from changed e-mail habits. You think I kid? The research firm Basex recently estimated the cost of information overload to the world economy $900 billion annually. E-mail handling habits are among the top offenders.

Have you ever stopped to observe or consider what your organization’s e-mail culture is? How do your employees use it? How do they manage it? How do they send it? How do they save it? The habits they adopt, whether they are positive or negative, can be contagious and suddenly your business has its own e-mail culture.

Habits? Contagious? When you consider how many impressions these messages have all in each person in your organization daily, you can quickly understand how e-mail practices can become cultural and pervasive.

When over 300 Travel Bloggers, Writers and PR Pros left the Cantor Film Center in NYC on June 27, there were many feelings. Speechless was not one of them. Here, in your own words, some nuggets of wisdom from this year, suggestions for next year, travel tips and marketing takeaways…THIS was TBEX ’10:

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The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

If you asked your parents how to write a resume, they would probably tell you to list every job you’d ever had, and then detail everything you’d done at those jobs.  Twenty-five years ago, when people mailed their typed resumes to the person to whom they’d be reporting, that was sound advice.  In today’s market, wasting space on your resume with irrelevant information is a quick way to land it in the rejection pile.

If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, chances are good that you’ve had at least one job that wasn’t relevant to your overall career path.  For instance, someone looking to hire you for corporate communications really won’t be interested in the job you had serving milkshakes at the Dairy Queen. So don’t waste space on your resume talking about it.

Let’s say that you’ve been in the workforce for 20 years, but you’ve only spent 10 of those years in related professional roles.  It’s okay to include a line on your resume that says, “Ten years previous experience providing outstanding customer service in the retail and restaurant industries.” It won’t matter to a finance company when or where you held those positions, but it lets them know that you understand how service businesses work in the real world.

The next time you encounter a recruiter, ask him how much time he typically spends reviewing a resume.  Most will tell you a number between five and 30 seconds.  That’s right: the same document into which you invest hours of your time receives just half-a-minute of his. That’s why it’s critical that your resume contain only accomplishments relevant to the job you’re seeking.  If you’re applying for that corporate communications gig, you don’t want the hiring manager’s eyes to fall on “Dairy Queen” rather than “published company newsletter”.

Forget what your parents told you.  In today’s job market, a resume doesn’t have to—and generally shouldn’t—include every single thing you’ve done at your past jobs.  Tailor each resume to highlight your most relevant accomplishments, and employers may actually spend a little more time reading it over.

 

Author: Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, and presenter.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Click Job Search Tips for more articles like this, Minnesota Headhunter for most recent blog posts.

Stay in touch with me by clicking Blog Posts by RSS, Blog Posts by Email and/or the From The Desk Of Paul DeBettignies Newsletter

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

If you asked your parents how to write a resume, they would probably tell you to list every job you’d ever had, and then detail everything you’d done at those jobs.  Twenty-five years ago, when people mailed their typed resumes to the person to whom they’d be reporting, that was sound advice.  In today’s market, wasting space on your resume with irrelevant information is a quick way to land it in the rejection pile.

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Here are a selection of tweets from June 2010:

• Michael Watkins: Are Your Leaders Teaching the Next Generation of Leaders?
• Are you the last to know? @LisaHaneberg: Our Strengths and Weaknesses are Known
• Mike Henry Sr: Generosity Fuels Prosperity
• @hulmevision: Creating Sustainable Relationships
• @Bill_George: http://ow.ly/23c5e Were these from bad actions by good leaders or were they just unprepared for their situations?
• @Rypple: People with multiple siblings tend to be better leaders. http://bit.ly/99ETGj
• @RonEdmondson: 5 Ways to Influence Those Who Lead You…Leading Up!
• Good read! Four Myths That Keep You From Truth-Telling by @mjasmus
• @ellenfweber: Is wisdom still alive and will it guide you today?
• @donhornsby: Patrick Lencioni: The Most Important Leadership Trait You Shun - WSJ
• FT: What men need to learn about leadership
• Scott Eblin: What Am I Supposed To Be Learning From This?
• Mike Henry Sr: Inspiring People
• FT: Saying sorry is too easy. The really hard word work is avoiding the regrettable action in the first place. http://bit.ly/cg0gjd
• What can you do today to make a difference? by @LeaderTalk
• @work_matters: The Best Bosses Are The Most Self-Aware: More Evidence (and then http://bit.ly/YH9OL)
• @JohnBaldoni: You don't get to choose your next crisis.
• @greatleadership: Establishing a Culture of Distributed Leadership
• Developing Positive Leadership Habits | Aspire-CS
• @LeaderChat: How To See Yourself Through Others’ Eyes--it's hard, but one technique can help. From Psych Central
• @tom_peters Books That Matter 2010 (To Me)
• @MargieMcKinney: Wal-Mart is a little different in China http://tinyurl.com/2apfpah
• @scottmckain: Often we need to be confronted by divergent viewpoints to strengthen our purpose and provoke...action. http://Ez.com/bptk
• @HarvardBiz: What Lies Ahead for Leadership? Series Summary
• @DanielDecker: The Curse of Knowledge (and a few antidotes to neutralize it)
• @wallybock: Who's in charge?
• @tom_peters: New PDF from Tom: Excellence Oath & Credo It's a must-read (and strive-for).
• J Chambers: Ability to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that’s the future of leadership. http://bit.ly/9afTyk
• @mikehenrysr: Great leaders don't try to be perfect, they try to be themselves. And that's what makes them great. http://bit.ly/cKnRyo
• @JohnBaldoni: Blown Call: A lesson in graciousness @FastCompany Great lesson!
• @mikemyatt: Leaders & emotional outbursts - why the two don't mix
• @artpetty: Today's Leadership Tip at Building Better Leaders-5 Ideas to Help You Find Time to Think

See more on Twitter.

24 little hours.

Or in my case, 17 little hours.

What I’ve experienced in the last week can only be described as a whirlwind. I began working full time for Galavanting Productions on June 15th and every day since then has been total, beautiful chaos. Let me explain.

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