Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y - Setting the Scene

Note to readers: Because there is an interesting (at least I find it so) discussion going on at present between David and myself on this and and the preceeding post (see comments in both cases) dealing in part with the differences between aspects of the US and Australian experience, I have decided to hold off making a new post until Wednesday. Please feel free to join the discussion.

In my first post on this topic, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y - What does it all mean?, I noted that the debate associated with these classifications had largely passed me by because it just wasn't relevant to the issues I was interested in.

I also noted that I had been forced to re-assess this position, not because my overall thinking had changed, but because people including my eldest were using these terms in ways that had behavioural impacts. I went on:

"So bravely venturing where thousands have gone before me, I have finally entered the world of Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, seeking to understand just what it all means or, perhaps more importantly, what people think it means.

Boy am I confused. It's almost as bad as reading some of the European derived marxist dialectic that for a period dominated so many articles in the historical journals. I used to sit in the library thinking that all this must make some sense until finally driven out into the fresh air to try to clear my head. "

My own Background

As I have said many times before, we all interpret things through a prism set by our own experience. Just to set the scene here.

I began working full time in the Commonwealth (Australian) Public Service in 1967. I first really started managing staff in 1973. Between 1973 and the early part of 1981 I managed up to 19 people and also played an active role in graduate recruitment.

In 1981 and 1982 I was back at University as a full time postgraduate student, mixing with other students and staff at all levels. Back in the Public Service from the start of 1983 to mid 1987 I was again managing up to 33 people. I then set up and managed a new consulting business. with a special focus on recruiting and training new staff to be as effective as quickly as possible. We had to do this - we were running with an average 15-17 head count - because we were new, doing new things, and did not have an existing staff pool to draw (pinch) from.

I then moved into independent consulting for a period before becoming CEO of a specialist medical college in 1998 and 1999. Again I was directly involved in managing staff of various ages. Moving to Ndarala at the start of 1990, I did not have direct staff responsibility because we have been very lean. But I was helping, among other things, professional services firms recruit and manage staff. Today I know my daughters' attitudes to work.

The point in all this? Over this period I have seen significant changes in the structure of work and in people's responses to those changes. To the degree that those changes have affected different age groups in different ways, there is a correlation (not a causation) between age and attitude.

To my mind, the things that really motivate staff are just the same today as they were in 1967 when I started working. To the degree that there is a change, it lies in the changing attitude of people towards employers.

Changing Attitudes to Work

Having told employees that they must be responsible for themselves, that they cannot expect the organisation to look after them, employers (public and private) are now reaping the wind they have sown. This is not age specific, although the way it manifests itself may be.

When I first came down to Sydney I did some part time outplacement work. The case that really stands out in my mind was someone who had been an assistant company secretary for a major Australian bank. An older man, I think that he was about my current age, he had never worked for anyone else. Retrenched, he was destroyed.

There was a somewhat happy ending to this case. He had particular skills in fraud prevention that got him a job elsewhere. But the scars remained.

A small incident? Consider this.

His wife, his children, his friends all knew what the bank had done, say 30-40 people. This may not affect the bank directly, although I note that it shortly afterwards went into decline because of internal problems that still linger. But multiply him by a million or so Australians all in contact in some way with similar experiences and the effects on people's general attitudes towards work and employers are profound.

We can see this manifesting itself in a variety of ways.

In a post on his blog, David Maister reported on a US and Canadian survey of MBA students. Fifty six per cent of students admitted to cheating. Why should this surprise us? If we can no longer trust our employer or, for that matter, our Government, if everything is focused on short term performance measures, then why should we not seize the moment?

Why am I still Positive?

All this sounds very negative. Well, in a funny way I remain very positive.

A key point in the context of the debate on Australia work choices legislation is the powerlessness of individuals. I think that that is true. But a million, five million, individuals have power. I am not talking about a political movement here, but about the way in which social attitudes force change.

We can already see this at micro level. Professional services firms across Australia are being forced to change because they cannot get younger staff to accept the old ways of working. Up and out still works for some, but is increasingly hard when the out in fact includes those you most want to retain. Attracting people into partnerships is becoming harder and harder.

I know of people, still a small number, who maximise their income by targeting redundancy. To make this work, you need a saleable skill. Then you deliberately target firms that you think are likely to be restructured or taken over. Work there, accept the package, and move on. Again, employers have to adjust.

Perhaps the most dramatic change of all is the changing role of women in the workforce, especially the professional workforce. Much of the debate here is still expressed in terms of paradigms coming from the high days of feminism. The reality is that women have won the battle of work. All that remains is the mopping up.

Sounds dramatic? Well, consider this.

Start with last year's Higher School Certificate (HSC) and University Admission results (here). As has been the case for a number of years now, more girls than boys did the HSC. Females outperformed males in the majority of courses and had a higher average UAI than males- a difference of 5.8 points.

For the benefit of international readers, the UAI is a ranking system derived from HSC results and used by universities in NSW and the ACT to grade students for admission. Given a limited number of places, the greater the student demand for a course or a university the higher the UAI required to get into that course or that university. Thus if you want to get into, say, medicine you may need to achieve a UAI of 99 out of a 100, putting you in the top one per cent of all students.

So what we have and have had for a number of years is more females than males (53.2 per cent female 2005) getting a UAI in the first place, more getting a higher UAI (58.1 per cent, for example, of all students getting a UAI higher than 90). The impact on the gender composition of university students varies from course to course (there are still more boys than girls in engineering) but overall has been quite dramatic. In optometry, dentistry and vet science, for example, the female proportion of all students is now over 80 per cent.

This feminisation of key parts of the professional work force comes at a time when overall numbers in the traditional entry level age cohorts have been dropping because of the previous decline in the birth rate. The social effects are quite profound and are slowly working their way through every aspect of Australia society.

Women's needs are different from men simply because of the question of children and the biological clock. The birthrate dropped in part because whole groups of women deferred children. Last year there was a mini baby boom, the highest number of births since 1971, as the same groups decided that now was the time to have children. This obviously affects the availability of the female workforce.

A second example. Like many countries, Australia has a shortage of doctors that varies across the country and is most pronounced in particular areas. This shortage is due in part to a very silly Commonwealth Government decision back in the late 1990s to cut the number of medical places because of a then view that there were in fact too many GPs and that this was leading to competition for patients and overservicing. But the size and distribution of the shortage over Australia has also been affected by the feminisation of the medical profession.

The length of time taken to train a doctor has been increasing. By the time you complete you first degree, then do your professional years, then gain entry to a specialist training program (these are generally five years) you are going to be 33 plus before you can set up your shingle.

From a woman's viewpoint, and assuming that you have not already decided to take some time out to have a child, you are likely to have a partner (the difficulty some professional women are experiencing in finding partners is another social issue) and be at least thinking about children.

Now linking all this back to my argument. Governments and employers of all types are just starting to come to grips with the challenge posed by this changing gender balance. I think that it will probably bring about fundamental changes in the way work is organised, changes that will benefit individuals of both sexes.

Back to Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y

I seem to have come a long way from a discussion that was meant to be about baby boomers etc. But I wanted to set a broader context. In my next post I will try to be disciplined and focus on the Australian discussion in this area.