Page 73 - Retaining Top Employees

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Know Your Demographics 61

ized for many Gen-Xers their decline of respect for major
institutions. This attitude developed during the 1970s and
early ’80s, when large companies laid off hundreds of
thousands of employees in “rightsizing” realignments. The
fact that many of those laid off were parents of Gen-Xers
led members of that generation to become cynical about
the loyalty previously exhibited by their parents,
which seemed to
them to have been It’s the People, Stupid
misplaced. Gen-Xers did not throw
out the concept of loyalty
But in the End, People altogether.They transferred their nat-
ural affinity for loyalty from institu-
Are People
tions to people.While a Boomer
The life events detailed could be expected to “stick with the
above produced a different company” through thick and thin,the
set of attitudes and beliefs Gen-Xer is much more likely to “stick
in each generation. with the person.” Hence the growing
In order to examine phenomenon of “teams” of workers
moving from one organization to
those differences in detail,
another en masse.
it’s important to first estab-
lish a consistent framework
within which we can make meaningful comparisons.
It’s vital to realize that, although there are differences in atti-
tudes and beliefs between Boomers or Gen-Xers, retaining top
employees from either generation involves addressing the same
principal issues. After all, people are people: no one flicked a
switch in 1962 that changed everyone born after that date into
a different species. The differences, as we shall see, are in the
nature of the response by each generation, not in the issues
themselves.

The Seven Areas of Distinction in Employee Retention
Effective retention involves distinguishing how Boomers and
Gen-Xers differ in their perceptions of the workplace, in particu-
lar the following seven areas: