The New Workforce: Five Sweeping Trends That Will Shape Your Company’s Future

By: Harriet Hankin

AMACOM Books

Harriet Hankin is the President and an owner of CGI Consulting Group, Inc., a benefits design consulting and administration company. Since joining CGI in 1985, she has been instrumental in helping grow the company from a dozen employees to being a recognized leader in unique and creative benefit solutions. Prior to joining CGI, Harriet was Director of Corporate Benefits for Aramark, a worldwide, diversified management company, and Manager of Compensation and Benefits for Provident National Bank.

In this volume, Hankin focuses attention on “five sweeping trends that will shape your future.” She devotes a separate chapter to each and includes a “virtual timeline” which lists several generations and indicates the key influences on each:

  • The Silent Generation (born 1922-1945): The Great Depression and the New Deal; World War II; the Holocaust; Hiroshima; radio, and films
  • The Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964): Vietnam War; assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy; placing a man on the Moon; Watergate; impact of the Cold War (e.g. bomb shelters); television; women’s liberation; sexual revolution; environmental concerns (e.g. Green Party, Exxon Valdez)
  • Generation X (born 1965-1976): Demolition of the Berlin Wall; Challenger disaster; Clinton sex scandals; skyrocketing growth of the stock market and an abundant economy in the 1980s and 1990s; 24-hour, live news coverage; the dot-com economy; high-tech start-ups
  • Baby Boom Echo (born 1977-2000): Oklahoma City bombing; Columbine High School massacre; Y2K; Internet, WWW, and e-business; September 11, 2001, terrorists attacks; corporate scandals (e.g. Enron); video games; instant messaging

Then, in Part II, Hankin examines the impact of the five major emerging workforce trends on human resources, specifically, the impact on HR policies and procedures, recruiting, compensation and benefits, and learning and training. Her proposed “Formula for the Future” stresses flexibility, respect, and “tons of communication.” In an Appendix, she provides a survey that helps decision-makers in all organizations to prepare themselves for “the new workforce.” Hankin offers an analysis of how and why each generation has been influenced by its predecessors as well as by events within its own portion of the “virtual timeframe.”

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